Theaters

Free for All: Joe Papp, The Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told
$39.95
"Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind" -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Joe Papp was clearly a revolutionary living in revolutionary times, and his life's story serves as a dramatic lesson about the nature and nurturing of art and culture. And it provides yet another data point--a biographical one--in the Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity debate as to whether commerce or community best serves the interests of creativity and the cultural arts.

"Free for all" teaches how a love of Shakespeare could overcome all obstacles, including public performance and assembly laws, financial challenges, professional skepticism, and, most of all, the engagement of audiences with no prior appreciation of the material whatsoever. And, as the title richly implies, all of this is possible precisely because Shakespeare himself was not there to assert copyright or to impose a DMCA takedown. (It is a great irony that the most significant obstacle to the publication of this book was Papp himself, while he was still alive.) It is therefore, at its core, a story about how a man with a vision and the bare minimum of freedoms to act transformed acting and theater in New York City and then in popular culture around the world.

"Free for all" also teaches (by example) the organic nature of art, and how Papp succeeded where others thought him crazy by starting small, building his audience among an authentic public slowly and organically, and, only then moving productions into larger private venues. And we are lucky that while this book was largely completed 20 years ago, virtually no new material was admitted so that we can see in retrospect, but without revisionism, Papp's process and results. When we ourselves wonder "where are the new voices?" or, more desperately, "where are the new audiences?" we can study how Papp was able to discard the false premises of commercialism and conjure art from an engaged and empowered community.

Unlike some experimentalists today, who exercise their freedoms mostly behind closed doors, Papp was sufficiently "out there" to be called before that most Un-American institution ever created, the House Committee on Un-American Activities. His formal denial of communism may seem like a historical footnote, but it underpins another key fact of the Free Culture movement: as Richard Stallman points out in Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman, cherishing freedom does not a communist make. "Free for all" thus forces us to think about both "free as in beer" and "free as in speech". It is obviously the latter that Papp enjoyed the most, not merely his own speech, but giving freedom of speech to an entire community.

If we want to understand how to maintain our hard-won freedoms in art and culture, and to reclaim those that are increasingly under attack by those who wish to enclose and destroy the public commons (by claiming such destruction is necessary for its survival), we'd do well to study Papp's biography and to honor the lessons he taught in his lifetime.

Melissa & Doug Deluxe Puppet Theater
$89.99
I bought this product about a year ago for my children (now 3 & 2 years old). They got very little use out of it at first, other than tipping it over on one another. The "chalk board" part is difficult to write on. It is too slick or something for the chalk, even after I primed it. They really haven't noticed that part, though. It went together fairly easy, though you have to follow the instructions precisely! (And go in the exact order they have it in.) They like putting on silly shows now and like it when I put on shows for them. I wish it didn't tip, but at least it isn't heavy and doesn't hurt anyone when it falls. It is also rather large, so you probably want to think about where it will go, since once it is together, its together! (Doesn't fold or slightly come apart for storage.) The sides are cloth panels. I wasn't exactly expecting that, but it isn't a bad thing- I just didn't realize it until I took it out of the box! I also like that it has a clock on it, because the kids were suddenly interested in clocks and time! It has taken numerous tumbles and withstood the beatings that two toddlers can dish up. A year later and it still looks like new.

Home Theater For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))
$24.99
This isn't a bad guide, just not what I was looking for. If you want detailed explanations for the various technologies (HDMI v1 compared to 1.3), this is a decent book. However, I was hoping for a lot more illustrations about how to do things (set up a home theater wiring patch panel, layout speakers for a 7.1 setup). I was amazed at how few illustrations were included. This topic cries out for pictures to illuminate the discussion, and this book just didn't provide any.

Also, the book doesn't really help guide you in planning your own home theater. It is more of a pre-shopping guide so that you are better informed than the average sales guy at Best Buy.

There's a lot of good information online at places like Crutchfield (with illustrations), so I was hoping for more from something I had to pay money for.

Theaters (A Norton/Library of Congress Visual Sourcebook)
$75.00
I used to be a Home Theater installer, and now that I'm getting to the point in my life where I can start putting my own home theater together, I wanted to be able to develop a plan that reflected the long history of theaters in this country, and adopt many unique architectural features found only in classic theaters. I have searched for months to find a book that could show a broad variety of theaters with enough visual detail to get ideas for my own. I had tried Melnick/Fuchs' "Cinema Treasures", Morrison's "Broadway Theaters", Valentine's "The Show Starts At The Sidewalk", Berger's "The Last Remaining Seats", and Jones' "The Southern Movie Palace" - all excellent books if you are looking for history of theaters. However, they all seemed to be short on the images, which is mostly what I was after (with the exception of Berger's and Melnick/Fuchs' books which I felt had great pictures, just not enough of them...).

When I opened this book, I was pleased to find a CD included many of the images and plan drawings in large format available for me to view! While this book doesn't go into the theater's detail and history as well as the other books in my view, as a visual reference, it is invaluable. I would liken this book to a fine still-life photography expo.