Presenting some of the best work from the 2017 Comparative Drama Conference at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, this collection highlights the latest research in comparative drama, performance and dramatic textual analysis. Contributors cover a broad range of topics, from the "practical ethnography" of directing foreign language productions to writing for theoretical stages to the "radical deaf theater" of Aaron Sawyer's The Vineyard. A full transcript of the keynote conversation with American playwright and screenwriter Lisa Loomer is included.

FOREWORD BY GUY KAWASAKI Presentation designer and internationally acclaimed communications expert Garr Reynolds, creator of the most popular Web site on presentation design and delivery on the Net — presentationzen.com — shares his experience in a provocative mix of illumination, inspiration, education, and guidance that will change the way you think about making presentations with PowerPoint or Keynote. Presentation Zen challenges the conventional wisdom of making "slide presentations" in today’s world and encourages you to think differently and more creatively about the preparation, design, and delivery of your presentations. Garr shares lessons and perspectives that draw upon practical advice from the fields of communication and business. Combining solid principles of design with the tenets of Zen simplicity, this book will help you along the path to simpler, more effective presentations.

Whether you are a university professor, researcher at a think tank, graduate student, or analyst at a private firm, chances are that at some point you have presented your work in front of an audience. Most of us approach this task by converting a written document into slides, but the result is often a text-heavy presentation saddled with bullet points, stock images, and graphs too complex for an audience to decipher—much less understand. Presenting is fundamentally different from writing, and with only a little more time, a little more effort, and a little more planning, you can communicate your work with force and clarity. Designed for presenters of scholarly or data-intensive content, Better Presentations details essential strategies for developing clear, sophisticated, and visually captivating presentations. Following three core principles—visualize, unify, and focus—Better Presentations describes how to visualize data effectively, find and use images appropriately, choose sensible fonts and colors, edit text for powerful delivery, and restructure a written argument for maximum engagement and persuasion. With a range of clear examples for what to do (and what not to do), the practical package offered in Better Presentations shares the best techniques to display work and the best tactics for winning over audiences. It pushes presenters past the frustration and intimidation of the process to more effective, memorable, and persuasive presentations.

Originally published by Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 1988.

Provides information on creating an effective digital presentation, covering such topics as animation, plot, contrast, software, and handouts.

A collection of best practices for creating slide presentations. It changes your approach, process and expectations for developing visual aides. It makes the difference between a good presentation and a great one.

Presentation Patterns is the first book on presentations that categorizes and organizes the building blocks (or patterns) that you’ll need to communicate effectively using presentation tools like Keynote and PowerPoint. Patterns are like the lower-level steps found inside recipes; they are the techniques you must master to be considered a master chef or master presenter. You can use the patterns in this book to construct your own recipes for different contexts, such as business meetings, technical demonstrations, scientific expositions, and keynotes, just to name a few. Although there are no such things as antirecipes, this book shows you lots of antipatterns—things you should avoid doing in presentations. Modern presentation tools often encourage ineffective presentation techniques, but this book shows you how to avoid them. Each pattern is introduced with a memorable name, a definition, and a brief explanation of motivation. Readers learn where the pattern applies, the consequences of applying it, and how to apply it. The authors also identify critical antipatterns: clichés, fallacies, and design mistakes that cause presentations to disappoint. These problems are easy to avoid—once you know how. Presentation Patterns will help you Plan what you’ll say, who you’ll say it to, how long you’ll talk, and where you’ll present Perfectly calibrate your presentation to your audience Use the storyteller’s “narrative arc” to full advantage Strengthen your credibility—and avoid mistakes that hurt it Hone your message before you ever touch presentation software Incorporate visuals that support your message instead of hindering it Create highly effective “infodecks” that work when you’re not able to deliver a talk in person Construct slides that really communicate and avoid “Ant Fonts,” “Floodmarks,” “Alienating Artifacts,” and other errors Master 13 powerful techniques for delivering your presentation with power, authority, and clarity Whether you use this book as a handy reference or read it from start to finish, it will be a revelation: an entirely new language for systematically planning, creating, and delivering more powerful presentations. You’ll quickly find it indispensable—no matter what you’re presenting, who your audiences are, or what message you’re driving home.

R Markdown: The Definitive Guide is the first official book authored by the core R Markdown developers that provides a comprehensive and accurate reference to the R Markdown ecosystem. With R Markdown, you can easily create reproducible data analysis reports, presentations, dashboards, interactive applications, books, dissertations, websites, and journal articles, while enjoying the simplicity of Markdown and the great power of R and other languages. In this book, you will learn Basics: Syntax of Markdown and R code chunks, how to generate figures and tables, and how to use other computing languages Built-in output formats of R Markdown: PDF/HTML/Word/RTF/Markdown documents and ioslides/Slidy/Beamer/PowerPoint presentations Extensions and applications: Dashboards, Tufte handouts, xaringan/reveal.js presentations, websites, books, journal articles, and interactive tutorials Advanced topics: Parameterized reports, HTML widgets, document templates, custom output formats, and Shiny documents. Yihui Xie is a software engineer at RStudio. He has authored and co-authored several R packages, including knitr, rmarkdown, bookdown, blogdown, shiny, xaringan, and animation. He has published three other books, Dynamic Documents with R and knitr, bookdown: Authoring Books and Technical Documents with R Markdown, and blogdown: Creating Websites with R Markdown. J.J. Allaire is the founder of RStudio and the creator of the RStudio IDE. He is an author of several packages in the R Markdown ecosystem including rmarkdown, flexdashboard, learnr, and radix. Garrett Grolemund is the co-author of R for Data Science and author of Hands-On Programming with R. He wrote the lubridate R package and works for RStudio as an advocate who trains engineers to do data science with R and the Tidyverse.

A practical guide based on a proprietary skill assessment tool—a Myers-Briggs for presenters—that provides tips and strategies that address the core element for becoming a successful presenter: YOU What kind of presenter are you? Are you charming? Purposeful? Informative? Inspiring? Do you have natural charisma? A clear message? A powerful vision? What’s Your Presentation Persona? is a revolutionary guide based on Badge, the first-of-its-kind proprietary skill assessment tool―a Myers-Briggs for presenters―that provides strategies and tips that address the core element for becoming a successful presenter: YOU. This groundbreaking book identifies 16 presentation personas, each with its own strengths and weaknesses, and shows you how to leverage your unique qualities to become a more powerful, persuasive, and successful presenter. Take the self-assessment test in the book and discover your persona. Are you: • The Director: a respected leader with an empathetic core (Oprah Winfrey or Ned Stark from Game of Thrones) • The Captivator: a charismatic presenter with a natural, unrehearsed flair (Gary Vaynerchuk or Captain Kirk from Star Trek) • The Producer: a successful speaker who believes in hard work—not luck (Martin Luther King Jr. or Walter White from Breaking Bad) • The Scholar: an always-curious learner informed by their own wisdom (Elon Musk or Hermoine Granger from Harry Potter) • The Liberator: an optimistic visionary who loves to inspire (Tony Robbins or William Wallace from Braveheart) The key to reaching others is knowing who you are. Get to know yourself. Build on your strengths. Work on your weaknesses. Learn how to deliver your message with confidence, charisma, humor, and authenticity. Be yourself—but better. Once you’ve mastered your presentation persona, explore others you’d like to experiment with and learn from. Incorporate techniques into your unique style to become the strongest, most well-rounded communicator you can be―so you can razzle-dazzle any audience on any topic anytime.

Plan, create, and deliver amazing presentations! Alexei Kapterev's online presentation on presentations has seen more than one million views, all with no advertising or promotion. Building on this hit, he now brings us Presentation Secrets outlining his successful tactics for planning, producing, and presenting memorable and unique presentations. The author shares his insight, wisdom, and advice with impressive clarity and detail, covering the three main components required to a presentation: storyline design, slide design, and delivery. Presentation Secrets lets you get to work immediately, fully prepared, armed with confidence, and ready to inspire. Teaches everything that goes into a successful and memorable presentation Helps create a storyline, from planning the beginning, middle, and end, to establishing key points, to making a presentation scalable Discusses how to design a slide template that meets your goals, ensure consistency, and find focal points Dissects the delivery of a presentation, including how to create "a character", integrate mistakes, listening to yourself, talking to the audience, and avoiding monotony Includes non-presentation metaphor to drive home your understanding of storytelling, improvisation, and delivery Also featuring real-world examples of presentations from the worlds of business, science, and politics, such as Steve Jobs, Hans Rosling, and Al Gore, this unique book delivers tried and tested secrets and inside tips for making a sensational presentation!