Setting the Stage
ISBN: 9780819577221
Platform/Publisher: Project MUSE / Wesleyan University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Chapters; Download: Chapters
Subjects: Set designers; Theaters;

The life and work of a stage designer who worked with Kazan and Balanchine

David Hays, elected to the Theater Hall of Fame in 2014, created an exciting and successful career designing scenery and lighting for plays and musicals on Broadway, in London, and in Japan. Told with passion and wit, this book takes readers behind the scenes of the theater world to show how a stage designer collaborates with directors and producers to create great works of theater and dance. A designer who collaborated with the great directors of his time--Arthur Penn, Garson Kanin, Tyrone Guthrie, Elia Kazan, Jose Quintero, and Joe Layton--shares anecdotes that integrate technical insight with life lessons. He designed sets for the Metropolitan Opera, for Lincoln Center, for Martha Graham, and thirty ballets for George Balanchine. This colorful account of theater life is for scholars, practitioners, and theatregoers interested in how it all works.

Publication of this book is funded by the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.


David Hays was the set & lighting designer for more than fifty Broadway plays & musicals, thirty ballets for the legendary George Balanchine at the New York City Ballet, & many operas at the Metropolitan Opera. As a second career, he founded & led the National Theatre of the Deaf to appearances on seven continents. With his son Daniel, he is the author of "My Old Man & the Sea." Hays lives in Chester, Connecticut.

(Bowker Author Biography)

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