How are we to understand the actor's work as a fully embodied process? 'Embodied cognition' is a branch of contemporary philosophy which attempts to frame human understanding as a fully embodied interaction with the environment. Engaging with ideas of contemporary significance from neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, and philosophy, Why Do Actors Train? challenges outmoded mind/body dualistic notions that permeate common conceptions of how actors work. Theories of embodiment are drawn up to shed important light on the ways and reasons actors do what they do. Through detailed, step-by-step analyses of specific actor-training exercises, the author examines the tools that actors use to perform roles. This book provides theatre practitioners with a new lens to re-examine their craft, offering a framework to understand the art form as one that is fundamentally grounded in embodied experience.

The great French mime performer, Claude Kipnis, reveals the mechanisms and techniques of mime in an easy-to-understand translation. This is not a theoretical "art of" book, but a functional "how to" and "why to" instructional guide. Individual exercises are included, together with detailed coverage of body movements, the illusion and how to create a world. We know of no other book that so comprehensively explains how the functions of mime are achieved. Certainly a basic text for any aspiring mime.

Intended for students and children taking part in speech and drama competitions and exams, this book contains a range of audition speeches. It includes female, male and unisex speeches selected from both plays and children's books. Where relevant the author has indicated how a speech could be shortened for younger children. There is also an introductory section with contributions from Alan Ayckbourn, Carol Schroder (teacher and examiner for the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art), Richard Carpenter (TV writer) and Ed Wilson (Director of the National Youth Theatre) and senior casting directors for the RSC, TV and film. This edition has been freshly revised to include 10 new speeches from well known recent productions as well as children's books including Harry Potter. 'A superb compilation' Amateur Stage

Traditional speech work has long favored an upper-class white accent as the model of intelligibility. Because of that, generations of actors have felt disconnected from their own identities and acting choices. This much-needed textbook redresses that trend and encourages actors to achieve intelligibility through rigorous language analysis and an exploration of their own accent and articulation practices. Following an acting class model, where you first analyze the script then reveal yourself through it, this work breaks down a process for analyzing language in a way that excites the imagination. Guiding the student through the labyrinth of abstract concepts and terms, readers are delivered into the practicality of exercises and explorations, giving them self-awareness that enables them to make their own speech come alive. Informed throughout by notes from the author's own extensive experience working with directors and acting teachers, this book serves as an ideal speech-training resource for the 21st -century actor, and includes specially commissioned online videos demonstrating key exercises.

Annie Morrison, creator of the Morrison Bone Prop, abandons the notion that language and thought are mainly processed in the left cerebral hemisphere, and coaches the actor to speak from the heart. Through this method, words acquire physical properties, such as weight, texture, colour and kinetic force. Think about Martin Luther King, Mao Zedong or Malala Yousafzai; potent speech impacts external events. And internally, it forms and shapes the world of the speaker. Seeing articulation as a purely mechanical skill is detrimental to an actor's process: it is crucial to understand what language is doing on a biological level. This workbook is invaluable for actors, both professional and in training, and also for voice and speech teachers.

Before there was "Glee "or "American Idol, "there was Stagedoor Manor, a theater camp in the Catskills where big-time Hollywood casting directors came to find the next generation of stars. It's where Natalie Portman, Robert Downey, Jr., Zach Braff, Mandy Moore, Lea Michele, and many others got their start as kids. At age thirty-one, Mickey Rapkin, a senior editor at "GQ "and self-proclaimed theater geek, was lucky enough to go, too, when he followed three determined teen actors through the rivalries, heartbreak, and triumphs of a summer at Stagedoor Manor.
Every summer since 1975, a new crop of campers has entered Stagedoor Manor to begin an intense, often wrenching introduction to professional theater. The offspring of Hollywood players like Ron Howard, Nora Ephron, and Bruce Willis work alongside kids on scholarship. Some campers have agents, others are just beginning. The faculty--all seasoned professionals--demand adult-size dedication and performances from the kids. Add in talent scouts from Disney and Paradigm and you have an intense, exciting environment where some thrive and others fail. Eye-opening, funny, and full of drama and heart, "Theater Geek "offers an illuminating romp through the world of serious child actors.

What is artistic resonance and how can it be linked to one's life and one's art? This latest book of essays from legendary theatre director Anne Bogart, considers the creation of resonance in the artistic endeavour, with a focus on the performing arts. The word 'resonance' comes from the Latin meaning to 're-sound' or 'sound together'. From music to physics, resonance is a common thread that evokes a response and, in general, is understood as a quality that makes something personally meaningful and valuable. For Bogart, curiosity is a key personal quality to be nurtured throughout life and that very same curiosity, as an artist, thinker and human being. Creating pathways between performance theory, art history, neuroscience, music, architecture and the visual arts, and consistently forging new thought-paths, the writing draws upon Anne Bogart's own life and artistic journeys to illuminate potent philosophical ideas. Woven with personal anecdotes, stories and reflections, this is a book that will be of interest to any theatre artist and anyone who reflects on the power of the arts, of theatre-making and what it means to be engaged in the artistic process.

This comprehensive manual shows the who, what, when, why and how of comedy improvisation. It is a complete improv curriculum program divided into twenty-four class-length units. The book is divided into four parts including: Introduction explains what improv is and how to create an improv team. Improv Skills shows some basic rules, physicalization, characterization, teamwork, use of suggestion. Structuring describes who, what and how to make improv structures. Strategies gives hints and tips for evaluating performance and putting on a show. Unlike other improv books, this book provides the tools to start an improv team or club at your school. Includes a lesson plan and a unique section that shows how to structure and create your own new improv games. Also includes appendices with many games and exercises. Sample chapters: What is improv?, Creating an improv Team, Improv Foundations, Rules of the Stage, Physicalization, Characterization, Teamwork, Use of Suggestion, Games, and many more.

This wide-ranging volume explores the technical and physical aspects of voice as a craft, questioning its definitions, its historical presence, training practices and its publications. Drawing on a wealth of experience, Jane Boston presents a selection of readings that demonstrate and contextualize some of the defining moments of voice throughout history. This clear and accessible text examines the relationship between voice and aesthetics and poetics, against the backdrop of class, race and gender politics, demonstrating how vocal training has been and still is inevitably connected to such issues. Underpinned by theory, voice practitioner accounts, and cultural and historical contextualization, this comprehensive resource will be invaluable for practitioners, researchers and students of voice studies, physical theatre and theatre history.

Romeo and Juliet always use 'thou' to each other, but they are the only pair of lovers in Shakespeare to do this. Why? All the women in Richard III address Richard as 'thou', but no man ever does. Why? When characters address the dead, they use 'thou' - except for Hamlet, who addresses Yorick as 'you'. Why? Shakespeare's contemporaries would have known the answers to these questions because they understood what 'thou' signified, but modern actors and audiences are in the dark. Through performance-oriented analysis of extracts from the plays, this book explores the language of 'trulls' and termagants, true loves and unwelcome wooers, male impersonators, smothering mothers, warring spouses and fighting men, as well as investigating lese-majeste, Freudian slips, crisis moments and rhetorical flourishes. Drawing on work with RSC actors, as well as the author's experience of playing a range of Shakespearean roles, the book equips the reader with a new tool for tracking emotions, weighing power relations and appreciating dazzling complexity.

There are hundreds of biographies of filmstars and dozens of scholarly works on acting in general. But what about the ephemeral yet indelible moments when, for a brief scene or even just a single shot, an actor's performance triggers a visceral response in the viewer? Moment of Action delves into the mysteries of screen performance, revealing both the acting techniques and the technical apparatuses that coalesce in an instant of cinematic alchemy to create movie gold. Considering a range of acting styles while examining films as varied as Bringing Up Baby, Psycho, The Red Shoes, Godzilla, and The Bourne Identity, Murray Pomerance traces the common dynamics that work to structure the complex relationship between the act of cinematic performance and its eventual perception. Mining the spaces where subjective and objective analyses merge, Pomerance offers both a deeply personal account of film viewership and a detailed examination of the intuitive gestures, orchestrated movements, and backstage maneuvers that go into creating those phenomenal moments onscreen. Moment of Action takes us on an innovative exploration of the nexus at which the actor's keen skills spark and kindle the audience's receptive energies.

Rhythm is often referred to as one of the key elements of performance and acting, being of central importance to both performance making and training. Yet what is meant by this term and how it is approached and applied in this context are subjects seldom discussed in detail. Addressing these, Rhythm in Acting and Performance explores the meanings, mechanisms and metaphors associated with rhythm in this field, offering an overview and analysis of the ways rhythm has been, and is embodied and understood by performers, directors, educators, playwrights, designers and scholars. From the rhythmic movements and speech of actors in ancient Greece, to Stanislavski's use of Tempo-rhythm as a tool for building a character and tapping emotions, continuing through to the use of rhythm and musicality in contemporary approaches to actor training and dramaturgy, this subject finds resonance across a broad range of performance domains. In these settings, rhythm has often been identified as an effective tool for developing the coordination and conscious awareness of individual performers, ensembles and their immediate relationship to an audience. This text examines the principles and techniques underlying these processes, focusing on key approaches adopted and developed within European and American performance practices over the last century. Interviews and case studies of individual practitioners, offer insight into the ways rhythm is approached and utilised within this field. Each of these sections includes practical examples as well as analytical reflections, offering a basis for comparing both the common threads and the broad differences that can be found here. Unpacking this often mystified and neglected subject, this book offers students and practitioners a wealth of informative and useful insights to aid and inspire further creative and academic explorations of rhythm within this field.

A practical guide to the principles of teaching and learning movement, this book instructs the actor on how to train the body to become a medium of expression. Starting with a break-down of the principles of actor training through exercises and theatre games, Dick McCaw teaches the actor about their own body and its possibilities including: the different ways it can move, the space it occupies and finally its rhythm, timing and pacing. With 64 exercises supported by diagrams and online video, Dick McCaw draws on his 20 years of teaching experience to coach the reader in the dynamics of movement education to achieve a responsive and articulate body.