Goncourt, Lecturing, Theatre

Since my last post, I've read an issue of Eclectic Reading, an issue of The New Yorker and an issue of The New Scientist.

I've read some Goncourt: La Faustin, and the most extraordinary La maison d'un artiste, a two-volume description of objets d'art and books, room by room, in the Goncourt house. It was totally unexpected, and unusual to read such a book. Then I read several books on education, an excellent one called The Lecturer's Toolkit, by Phil Race, probably the second most useful book on teaching I've read, after Reflective Teacher about twelve years ago. Then there was The Art of Lecturing, from a much decorated young prof of electrical engineering at University of Toronto. I read it quite carefully, and I realized more clearly than ever that conformity is rewarded in academic life -- this professor clearly does extremely well exactly what is expected of him, and honors are heaped on him as a result. Well, it certainly explains my situation... I also read Stephen Brookfield's Power of Critical Theory, which was well-done but not what I was looking for at this point in my career development.

Then it was on to stacks of reading about theatre. I read two books containing essays about important directors: Bradby's Directors' Theatre, and Mitter's Fifty Theatre Directors. There were also several essays on directing, like DeKoven's Changing Direction and Bogart's Director Prepares. The latter book contained possibly the first treatment of an essential truth I've ever read, about human nature needing to fight, to combat, to be challenged, and, in this case, how to harness that in the process of theatre. There were books on the practicalities of theatre companies, like Wallis' In Good Company. There were books on the technical aspects, which were a revelation: White's Technical Theatre, Bond's Stage Management. There were books on teaching theatre or acting: Izzo's Acting Interactive Theatre, McCullough's Theatre Praxis. And there were books about playwrights and how to act them, like McTeague's.