What's the Story: Essays about art, theater and storytelling

by Anne Bogart

Anne Bogart is an award-winning theatre maker, and a best-selling writer of books about theatre, art, and cultural politics. In this her latest collection of essays she explores the story-telling impulse, and asks how she, as a ‘product of postmodernism’, can reconnect to the primal act of making meaning and telling stories. She also asks how theatre practitioners can think of themselves not as stagers of plays but ‘orchestrators of social interactions’ and participants in an on-going dialogue about the future. We dream. And then occasionally we attempt to share our dreams with others. In recounting our dreams we try to construct a narrative... We also make stories out of our daytime existence. The human brain is a narrative creating machine that takes whatever happens and imposes chronology, meaning, cause and effect... We choose. We can choose to relate to our circumstances with bitterness or with openness. The stories that we tell determine nothing less than personal destiny . (From the introduction) This compelling new book is characteristically made up of chapters with one-word Spaciousness, Narrative, Heat, Limits, Error, Politics, Arrest, Empathy, Opposition, Collaboration and Sustenance. In addition to dipping into neuroscience, performance theory and sociology, Bogart also recounts vivid stories from her own life. But as neuroscience indicates, the event of remembering what happened is in fact the creation of something new.

Genres: Theatre, Nonfiction, Art, Essays

154 pages, Hardcover

First published April 8, 2014

About the author

Anne Bogart is the Artistic Director of SITI Company, which she founded with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. She is a Professor at Columbia University where she runs the Graduate Directing Program. Works with SITI include Café Variations, Trojan Women, American Document, Antigone, Under Construction, Freshwater, Who Do You Think You Are, Radio Macbeth, Hotel Cassiopeia, Death and the Ploughman, La Dispute, Score, bobrauschenbergamerica, Room, War of the Worlds, Cabin Pressure, War of the Worlds: The Radio Play, Alice’s Adventures, Culture of Desire, Bob, Going, Going, Gone, Small Lives/Big Dreams, The Medium, Noel Coward’s Hay Fever and Private Lives, August Strindberg’s Miss Julie, and Charles Mee’s Orestes. She is the author of four books: A Director Prepares, The Viewpoints Book, And Then, You Act and Conversations with Anne.

Reviews

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A valedictorian oration on eleven more topics that make theatre theater for Bogart and her SITI Company, this book is a capstone to previous books, a variety of dance, drama and wise words passed among many of her collaborators. With a focus on the narrative elements, her “oration” is evidence that SITI and one of her main inspirers, Tadashi Suzuki, started something magical in 1976, a couple years after Anne arrived in New York ready to direct. Has she ever written on synchronicity? Happy to see her include quotes from Carl Jung, Antonin Artaud and Jaron Lanier, the three rods for my dissertation, where Bogart makes a mystical fourth.

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a wonderful read. Anne approaches writing and the work in such a fresh and candid way. This book is full of personal anecdotes about her work in the theatre, relationships with other artists, and those who influenced her career. She shares her struggles and triumphs with us in expert storytelling. It's more of a guide like something you would find in a mentor, with no real answers about theatre or storytelling, just good life advice. Which is, incedentally, vital to theatre and storytelling. I laughed out loud, felt inspired, and learned a lot about humanity from this book.

[Gayle Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this collection of essays was like discovering a sister I never knew I had. Usually when I finish a book I stick it on the shelf and move on to the next. My sense is this slim collection will sit close at hand for years to come. I encourage you, whoever you are, to spend some time with this insightful woman. You'll be provoked, intrigued and in the end I hope encouraged to take the bits and pieces, the Flotsam and Jetsam of your life and create. I have been.

[Matt McBride · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though it's focused on acting, the book is a good primer on "making" in general, with each chapter functioning as a rubric category for art (which makes it sound joyless, but it's actually a very practical look at what makes art art).

[Luke Reynolds · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was pleasantly surprised by this book! Bogart's collection of essays does have scattered writing, but I found the material super invigorating and timely. Her cross-disciplinary approach to theater is enriching.

[Tom Helmick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a read that came from a discussion with John Divney who was given the book by a friend. I found it a challenging and rewarding read, one that expanded my sense and appreciation of theatre.

[Sebastián Bravo Montenegro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bogart is such a talented writer. The way she weaves personal experience, theater analysis, and philosophical questioning about life, art, and being an artist. 🩷

[Shana Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exquisite little book. It’s easy to read, and packed with theories and philosophies of art-making and collaborative processes. So much in here resonates with my own life and work.

[sabi · Rating 4 out of 5]

didn’t love as much as And Then You Act but still useful

[Meg Deere · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anne Bogart's first book, A Director Prepares: Seven Essays on Art and Theatre, changed my life and how I think about art making and communication. This book contains several wonderful chapters (particularly on Collaboration), but occasionally I recognized elements of the former books. This isn't a problem at all, I will re-read this book as needed, and will recommend certain chapters to students as they're making new work and sorting out story and structure.

I recommend all three of her books.

[Sasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal read! This book is both insightful and doesn't get too dense or boring. Reading this book feels like I am listening to this amazing theatre-maker talk about her life. Everything she says about the process of creating story is based on her personal experiences. There are so many valuable life lessons for young theatre-makers about creating story and about life. I've re-read this book multiple times, twice for class and once for myself. The book is very densely packed, but it reads so smoothly.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ms. Bogart is starting to repeat herself.

[Joan · Rating 5 out of 5]

What she said.

[Mills College Library]

792.01 B6743 2014