Dramatism and Musical Theater: Experiments in Rhetorical Performance is an innovative workbook for both students and teachers in advanced communication performance. Meeting at the nexus of English composition, advanced rhetoric, theater, music, and drama, this book utilizes Kenneth Burke's method of dramatism to discover the motives inherent in performance practices, whether they be in the classroom or on the stage. In this book Kimberly Eckel Beasley and James P. Beasley take the five corners of the dramatistic pentad (act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose) and demonstrate their utilization in performance analysis. The authors then correlate those performance practices with the production of five contemporary musicals: Little Women, Aida, Street Scene, Into the Woods, and Children of Eden in order to emphasize the use of the dramatistic pentad in character, scene, and staging direction. By doing so, the book highlights dramatism as a performance practice necessary for effective participation in artistic communities. Dramatism and Musical Theater: Experiments in Rhetorical Performance is also an indispensable guide for teachers and directors to successfully navigate the challenges of collegiate theatrical production.

In Casting Directors' Secrets, casting directors from New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and Vancouver offer insight in their own words into the do's and don'ts of the audition process and reveal the three biggest mistakes made by actors at this crucial stage. The book offers instruction in these areas and more: How to get the audition - training and preparation, headshots and resume, finding an agent, auditioning for agents; audition/interview etiquette - being late, canceling your appointment, waiting room do's and don'ts, staying focused, filling out the paperwork, behavior toward other actors; bad habits - perfume and cologne, first impressions, don't look for the casting couch!, you and your ego, brown-nosing, tell the truth but not the whole truth; artistic preparation - what your agent should tell you, working with sides, eye contact and the fourth wall, ice-cold readings; performing the audition - rewriting the dialogue, false starts, losing your place, violence in audition scenes (don't make it too real!); growing as an actor - taking risks, attending classes, maintaining the momentum; and more!

Vocal Traditions: Training in the Performing Arts explores the 18 most influential voice training techniques and methodologies of the past 100 years. This extensive international collection highlights historically important voice teachers, contemporary leaders in the field, and rising schools of thought. Each vocal tradition showcases its instructional perspective, offering backgrounds on the founder(s), key concepts, example exercises, and further resources. The text's systematic approach allows a unique pedagogical evaluation of the vast voice training field, which not only includes university and conservatory training but also private session and workshop coaching as well. Covering a global range of voice training systems, this book will be of interest to those studying voice, singing, speech, and accents, as well as researchers from the fields of communication, music education, and performance. This book was originally published as a series in the Voice and Speech Review journal.

In the four decades since its first publication, Michael Chekhov's To the Actor has become a standard text for students of the theater. But To the Actor is a shortened, heavily modified version of the great director/actor/teacher's original manuscript, and On the Technique of Acting is the first and only book ever to incorporate the complete text of that brilliant manuscript. Scholars and teachers of Chekhov's technique have hailed On the Technique of Acting as the clearest, most accurate presentation of the principles he taught Yul Brynner, Gregory Peck, Marilyn Monroe, Anthony Quinn, Beatrice Straight, and Mala Powers, among others.

This new, definitive edition of Chekhov's masterful work clarifies the principles outlined in To the Actor concerning the pivotal role of the imagination in actors' understanding of themselves and the roles they play. On the Technique of Acting also expands on Chekhov's previously published work with many unique features, including:

• Thirty additional exercises
• A chapter devoted to screen acting
• More thorough explanations of the Psychological Gesture, inner tempo vs. outer tempo, and other key concepts of Chekhov's approach

For actors, directors, and anyone interested in the theater, On teh Technique of Acting is an essential handbook.

A dynamic, inventive and articulate stage director explores in practical, down-to-cases language "The Method: " what it is and is not; the nonsense, the misconceptions, the myths that have sprung up and flourished around it; its development as a workable theory of stage technique and its application to all types of theatrical production.

In What a Body Can Do, Ben Spatz develops, for the first time, a rigorous theory of embodied technique as knowledge. He argues that viewing technique as both training and research has much to offer current debates over the role of practice in the university, including the debates around "practice as research." Drawing on critical perspectives from the sociology of knowledge, phenomenology, dance studies, enactive cognition, and other areas, Spatz argues that technique is a major area of historical and ongoing research in physical culture, performing arts, and everyday life.

There is an old phenomenon in theatre arts: Education! And there is a new tendency: theatre arts for the very young! The relationship to education is clear, but what about the profit for the arts? The world of children as a horizon of experiences? The role of music as a dramaturgical element? Is it needed to divide the performance in actors and spectators? Is there a special age for a successful reception? How much should theatre artists be confronted with the physical and psychological development of children? It seems that Theatre for Early Years is a work in progress. There are more and more examples on the stages of the world: In Europe, in the States, in Australia. A variety of different perspectives are included in this research in performing arts from birth to three. The authors are reflecting their work, their observations, their directorship - to discover a new audience, to accompany the new generation in aesthetics, to make the signs of the time transparent. And maybe the development of Theatre for Early Years is a new challenge to renew the language of theatre, to establish an art of simplicity for the complexity of theatre.

Latinx Actor Training presents essays and pioneering research from leading Latinx practitioners and scholars in the United States to examine the history and future of Latino/a/x actor training practices and approaches. Born out of the urgent need to address the inequities in academia and the industry as Latinx representation on stage and screen remains disproportionately low despite population growth, this book seeks to reimagine and restructure the practice of actor training by inviting deep investigation into heritage and identity practices. Latinx Actor Training features contributions covering current and historical acting methodologies, principles, and training, explorations of linguistic identity, casting considerations, and culturally inclusive practices that aim to empower a new generation of Latinx actors and to assist the educators who are entrusted with their training. This book is dedicated to creating career success and championing positive narratives to combat pervasive and damaging stereotypes. Latinx Actor Training offers culturally inclusive pedagogies that will be invaluable for students, practitioners, and scholars interested in the intersections of Latinx herencia (heritage), identity, and actor training.

The book is a biographical study establishing Ernie McClintock as a leading figure of the Black Theatre Movement In this contemporary moment in education and political consciousness, McClintock's biography and the impact on the Black Arts Movement will resonate with undergraduate students and serve as a powerful case study for theatre professors to integrate into their course curriculum. Contributes to the growing discourse of Black Arts Movement scholarship, Black acting theory, and queer studies.

1. The book provides practical guidance that will support the reader as they develop and deliver a costumed-interpreted character of their own. 2. The book provides a variety of examples for the reader to draw upon in their own practice. Comprehensive guidance on verbal techniques, such as voice tone and the use of accents, is provided. The importance of non-verbal communication is also covered, ensuring that the book will be useful to practitioners working at museum and heritage sites around the world. 3. This is the first practical guide to provide a non-US approach to costumed interpretation. The author demonstrates how it is possible to enhance visitor experience and on-site engagement through the use of costumed interpretation.

This book offers the perspective of a program leader, practitioner, and scholar of actor training. It appeals to theatre artists and scholars alike. Students and teachers will also be interested in this firsthand account of training in an age of pandemics and social justice. The book's examination of training programs through cultural diversity and social justice is ripe for the current moment. It addresses the past and present state of training to envision the field's future. The book's unique research method offers an ethnographic investigation of training at drama schools in six countries spanning three continents. Over 100 interviews accompany onsite investigations of eighteen of the most distinguished acting programs in the world. Actor Training in Anglophone Countries is the only book of its kind that studies the history of training from an international perspective.

The Motional Improvisation of Al Wunder takes readers on a journey through the life history, creative genealogies and unique working processes of one of the master teachers of Euro-American postmodern movement-based improvisational performance who has, until now, received scant critical attention. The book offers a long overdue examination of the significant impact made by an important figure on grassroots movement-based improvisational performance in 1960s/1970s America and in Australia from the 1980s onwards. It revisits the work of groundbreaking New York choreographer Alwin Nikolais, with whom Wunder trained and for whom he later taught in the 1960s; covers collaborations with founders of 'Action Theater' Ruth Zaporah and 'Motivity Aerial Dance' Terry Sendgraff as part of the explosion of improvisation in San Francisco in the 1970s and tracks the consolidation of a unique pedagogy that would see hundreds of students learn how to map their performative creativity in Melbourne from the 1980s onwards. It conducts a fascinating investigation into the wellsprings of Wunder's approach to improvised performance as an end in itself, covering teaching innovations such as his use of the Hum Drum, positive feedback, personal power sources and articulators. It includes valuable contributions from a number of ex-students and established Australian artists in dance, music and visual art who share the profound impact Wunder has made on their creative practices. This book will be a valuable resource to movement/dance improvisation students and teachers at undergraduate and postgraduate level and independent artists drawn to movement improvisation as performance.

A broad-ranging guide to the process, collaborations and lasting influences of one of Europe's leading Twentieth Century actor trainers. Written for students and scholars of Theatre Studies, particularly acting, directing, European theatre and 20th Century theatre. By far the most comprehensive and up to date setting out of Meyerhold's role in theatre.

WHY PUBLISH: - The author applies over 15 years experience and insights as a theatre practitioner to her argument. - The book offers a fresh vantage point for a play that has been exhaustively analysed. - Shakespeare scholarship travels well globally, and so the work will appeal to a broad, international, English-speaking audience.

This volume explores the relationship between the emphasis on performance in Elizabethan humanist education and the flourishing of literary brilliance around the turn of the sixteenth century. This study asks us what lessons we can learn today from Shakespeare's Latin grammar school. What were the cognitive benefits of an education so deeply rooted in what Demosthenes and Quintilian called "actio"-acting? Because of the vast difference between educational practice then and now, we have not often followed one essential thread: the focus on performance. This study examines the connections relevant to the education offered in schools today. This book will be of great interest to teachers, scholars, and administrators in performing arts and education.

Somewhere in America, an army of pre-teen competitive dancers plots to take over the world. And if their new routine is good enough, they'll claw their way to the top at Nationals in Tampa Bay. A play about ambition, growing up, and how to find our souls in the heat of it all.

This book argues that Shakespeare and various cultures of celebrity have enjoyed a ceaselessly adaptive, symbiotic relationship since the final decade of the sixteenth century, through which each entity has contributed to the vitality and adaptability of the other. In five chapters, Jennifer Holl explores the early modern culture of theatrical celebrity and its resonances in print and performance, especially in Shakespeare's interrogations of this emerging phenomenon in sonnets and histories, before moving on to examine the ways that shifting cultures of stage, film, and digital celebrity have perpetually recreated the Shakespeare, or even the #shakespeare, with whom audiences continue to interact. Situated at an intersection of multiple critical conversations, this book will be of great interest to scholars and graduate students of Shakespeare and Shakespearean appropriations, early modern theater, and celebrity studies.

Never before has a monologue book been written completely by people who are actually funny for a living!THThis incredibly hysterical cutting-edge collection of monologues will give an actor the extra bang he needs to land the perfect comedic role. EMen's Comedic Monologues That Are Actually FunnyE features monologues by writers and comics who have written for and/or performed on ESaturday Night LiveE EThe Tonight ShowE ELast Comic StandingE E! Entertainment Comedy Central Stage and many many more.THThis book is the answer to the comedic monologue needs of male actors everywhere!

The importance of play and fun to people's lives cannot be stressed enough in today's cultural climate of high stress, high stakes, and competition. One activity that gains recognition and credibility as both fun and transformative is theatrical improvisation or improv. In this book, Ruth Yamamoto reviews her research on the influences of improvisation on community college students. Educators, theatre artists, improvisers, or anyone interested building community, developing self-awareness, and affecting positive social change will want to read this book. Dr. Yamamoto examines the principles of improvisation and the concepts of play and flow to add credibility to a craft and practice that is often viewed a frivolous and silly. Ruth Yamamoto extends her research through interviews with applied improvisation professionals, examples and suggestions of games and exercises, and provides solid evidence of the serious, positive benefits of improvisation.

This is the first book of its kind to explain and detail research for practice for actors. The book has a versatile approach that offers meaningful points of intersection in a variety of performance-based contexts, and avoids enshrining a set methodology or praxis which might be perceived as conflicting with other approaches. This is a supplementary text designed to support study and training across programs of performance study.