Another Opening, Another Show: A Lively Introduction to the Theatre

Rating:
Summary: Too Simple: simply wrong.
Review: Okay, if you're a non-major and you want to know something about theatre, wouldn't you want to know correct information? I unwittingly used this book full of errors to teach an Intro to theatre course, recently, and found myself constantly correcting or clarifying concepts in the book to my students. This shouldn't have been necessary. While I think it's fine to simplify concepts for beginning students, it's not okay to get things simply wrong. The design section has big problems in this regard. For instance they say "Although imprecise names like puce, chartreuse, and peach are still used to market products in the fashion and automobile industries, serious artists have abandoned such vague descriptions and use only the precise name that defines a particular hue . . ." I don't know who the "serious artists" are that the authors write about but no professionals I've ever worked with, in New York City and other places "use only the precise name." Usually we don't even use a name and grab something that is pretty much the color we want and say--dye the cloth this blue but a little lighter or we use names like peach and chartreuse. I have problems with some of their defintions and use of terms like 'intensity' when I've always heard the term 'saturation' used for the same concept, which is more descriptive and help students distinguish color from how bright or dim a light.
The way Markus and Sarver cover multi-cultural/diversity issues like color blind casting and plays by people of color is embarrassingly patronizing or just weird. If watching a place by Luis Valdez helps us "learn respect for people of different ethnic backgrounds" why doesn't watching a play by Henrik Ibsen, since I'm not, nor were any of my students, Norwegian or European?
The section on acting implys that Stanislavski's method acting is the only kind of actor training available in the United States. While they don't have to deliniate the Suzuki or other methods at least they could add that while method acting is the most popular actor training there are other actor training schools.
While the section on producing theatre is New York is pretty good I would not purchase the book for that.
The text seemed geared toward an elementary student not high school or college. And while it is not all bad, it has too many faults to be adopted for classroom use.