Author Topic: Useful Literature  (Read 3506 times)

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ZacAttack

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Useful Literature
« on: Jun 27, 2010, 10:39 pm »
    I was wondering if anyone has stumbled on useful books outside of actual stage management handbooks and the such.  The other day I picked up a copy of
How to Win Friends and Influence People and reading it from a stage manager's point of view it's a really useful book.  For example here's the main points from one of the chapters

 Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment
  • Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
  • Call attention to other people's mistakes indirectly.
  • Talk about your own mistakes first.
  • Ask questions instead of directly giving orders.
  • Let the other person save face.
  • Praise every improvement.
  • Give them a fine reputation to live up to.
  • Encourage them by making their faults seem easy to correct.
  • Make the other person happy about doing what you suggest.

And I also think, to a lesser extent, that Sun Tzu's The Art of War would be useful to read.  There are chapters that address planning, problem solving, and having to manage large groups of people.


What are everyone else's opinions about these?  Are there any other books that could be useful?
"It's not who's going to let me, it's who's going to stop me" ~ Ayn Rand

On_Headset

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Re: Useful Literature
« Reply #1 on: Jun 28, 2010, 02:03 pm »
Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behaviour has been extremely helpful to me. Yes, it's written as an etiquette guide, but if you take it as a companion to How To Win Friends, it becomes a guide to broader graceful living.

Not once in the entire book does she cover how to set a table or which fork to use. What she really talks about is how to articulate your needs without being a selfish jerk, how to deal with workplace politics, how to handle difficult people, how to address uncomfortable subjects and situations, how to smother bad ideas without generating hard feelings, how to use correspondence most effectively, and so on.

BeckyGG

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Re: Useful Literature
« Reply #2 on: Jul 01, 2010, 08:49 am »
When I was in school one of the books that was required reading for stage management was They Shoot Managers, Don't They?.  It's a pretty good book about managing in general.  While some of it doesn't apply, it is largely helpful in management techniques.
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bex

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Re: Useful Literature
« Reply #3 on: Nov 12, 2010, 11:11 pm »
It is a theatre book, but not one specifically aimed at stage management-  Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays by David Ball was without a doubt the most useful, informative, eye-opening book I read in my 4 years of school.  I cannot stress enough how much every theatre artist needs to read this book.  It was assigned reading for the Fundamentals of Directing class I took as a senior, and after reading it, all of the students in the class told the professor that she needed to assign it as the first thing that all of the Intro to Theatre for Majors students have to read as freshman.  We honestly couldn't believe that this book existed and nobody had told us to read it before our senior year...
It's written mainly for actors, directors, and designers- how to read & break down a script in all of the ways that you're taught in beginning acting classes, but the way it is explained is so much clearer, so much better explained than any other way I've ever read.  I'm gushing now, so I'll stop, but I HIGHLY recommend it.
You will have to sing for your supper & your mortgage, your dental coverage & your children's shoes, over & over again while people in desk jobs roll their eyes the minute you start to complain. So it's a good thing you like to sing.

dallas10086

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Re: Useful Literature
« Reply #4 on: Nov 13, 2010, 11:10 am »
Off the top of my head I'd say any of Jeffrey Gitomer's books, like Little Red Book of Selling. Sounds completely off-base, but when you realize that stage managers have to sell themselves and their work, it's valuable to pick up any information you can. I've also read One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success; one of the first examples is a theatre director slash computer programmer. It talks about how having more than one career can make you happier in general, and also how to manage your personal life while participating in multiple careers. Good for those of us in cities where the arts can't offer a living wage.

MatthewShiner

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Re: Useful Literature
« Reply #5 on: Nov 13, 2010, 11:51 am »
as far as management books, I like

The Heart of Coaching: Using Transformational Coaching to Create a High-Performance Coaching Culture  http://amzn.com/0966087437)

Although I haven't read it again in years, what I like about the style is it talks about leading a team with coaching skills, project based management, and really talked about situations where you can't just fire person, but have to work with the team you have.



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Re: Useful Literature
« Reply #6 on: Nov 13, 2010, 11:53 am »