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  3. Beautiful Chaos

EBOOK

Beautiful Chaos

A Life in the Theater

Carey Perloff
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Pages
196
Year
2015
Language
English
Publisher
City Lights Publishers

About

Carey Perloff, Artistic Director of San Francisco's legendary American Conservatory Theater, pens a lively and revealing memoir of her twenty-plus years at the helm and delivers a provocative and impassioned manifesto for the role of live theater in today's technology-infused world. Perloff's personal and professional journey--her life as a woman in a male-dominated profession, as a wife and mother, a playwright, director, producer, arts advocate, and citizen in a city erupting with enormous change--is a compelling, entertaining story for anyone interested in how theater gets made. She offers a behind-the-scenes perspective, including her intimate working experiences with well-known actors, directors, and writers, including Tom Stoppard, Harold Pinter, Robert Wilson, David Strathairn, and Olympia Dukakis. Whether reminiscing about her turbulent first years as a young woman taking over an insolvent theater in crisis and transforming it into a thriving, world-class performance space, or ruminating on the potential for its future, Perloff takes on critical questions about arts education, cultural literacy, gender disparity, leadership, and power.

Related Subjects

  • Entertainment & Performing Arts
  • Biography & Autobiography
  • Adult Nonfiction
  • Women in Business
  • Business & Economics
  • Management
  • General
  • Theater
  • Performing Arts

Reviews

"For anyone interested in the complexities of the art of theater, this lively, entertaining and informative book is a must."
Corinna Lothar, Washington Times
"In a truly inspiring and rewarding read, Perloff recounts her tenure as the artistic director of San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.). . . . Perloff's story will certainly appeal to theater lovers, but her memoir will also engage any reader interested in the story of a professional pioneer and an individual working to reinvent a struggling organization."
Booklist
"The big questions Perloff tackles--artistic experimentation versus commercial imperative, survival in a changing financial landscape, why make theater and for whom ? -- are as pertinent in Britain as in San Francisco, or indeed anywhere people are making theater and trying to keep it afloat."
Laura Baggaley, Times Literary Supplement UK

Artists

Carey PerloffAuthor