Somatic Voices in Performance Research and Beyond brings together a community of international practitioner-researchers who explore voice through soma or soma through voice. Somatic methodologies offer research processes within a new area of vocal, somatic and performance praxis. Voice work and theoretical ideas emerge from dance, acting and performance training while they also move beyond commonly recognized somatics and performance processes. From philosophies and pedagogies to ethnic-racial and queer studies, this collection advances embodied aspects of voices, the multidisciplinary potentialities of somatic studies, vocal diversity and inclusion, somatic modes of sounding, listening and writing voice. Methodologies that can be found in this collection draw on: eastern traditions body psychotherapy-somatic psychology Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais Method Authentic Movement, Body-Mind Centering, Continuum Movement, Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy Fitzmaurice Voicework, Linklater Technique, Roy Hart Method post-Stanislavski and post-Grotowski actor-training traditions somaesthetics The volume also includes contributions by the founders of: Shin Somatics, Body and Earth, Voice Movement Integration SOMart, Somatic Acting Process This book is a polyphonic and multimodal compilation of experiential invitations to each reader's own somatic voice. It culminates with the "voices" of contributing participants to a praxical symposium at East 15 Acting School in London (July 19-20, 2019). It fills a significant gap for scholars in the fields of voice studies, theatre studies, somatic studies, artistic research and pedagogy. It is also a vital read for graduate students, doctoral and postdoctoral researchers.

Outlines key physical and mental preparation tips and skills for students training to become performers. This book is meant to serve as a companion to live instruction in acting, musical theatre, theatre movement, physical theatre, and dance classes, encouraging a deeper analysis of studio work to ignite thoughtful in-class discussions, innovative research, and creativity in performance. Focuses on the development of the actor-dancer, instead of prioritizing one over the other.

Performing in Contemporary Musicals brings into sharp focus the skills performers must possess when tackling shows that are newly written, in development, or somewhere in between. The authors bust myths about contemporary musical theatre and analyze the development timelines of musicals from around the world. They also explore how performers can become invaluable to a creative team by developing the skills needed to move a new musical forward including: contemporary acting and singing techniques, dramaturgy, quickly picking up new material, and collaboration. Each chapter features insightful industry interviews, recommended activities, an extensive reading list, and an online companion for further study. This textbook is the only comprehensive resource that provides an overview of the development process of a new musical while guiding musical theatre performers to be fruitful collaborators in a new works scenario.

Performing in Contemporary Musicals brings into sharp focus the skills performers must possess when tackling shows that are newly written, in development, or somewhere in between. The authors bust myths about contemporary musical theatre and analyze the development timelines of musicals from around the world. They also explore how performers can become invaluable to a creative team by developing the skills needed to move a new musical forward including: contemporary acting and singing techniques, dramaturgy, quickly picking up new material, and collaboration. Each chapter features insightful industry interviews, recommended activities, an extensive reading list, and an online companion for further study. This textbook is the only comprehensive resource that provides an overview of the development process of a new musical while guiding musical theatre performers to be fruitful collaborators in a new works scenario.

This practical guide presents a wide array of games and exercises designed to develop the players observation, imagination, presentation and self-confidence. This long-awaited new edition has been fully revised and extended, now including example workshops and an index of games to help instructors get the most out of the exercises in rehearsals, workshops and classes. Christine Poulter shares what she has learned from her students over the years, and opens up the language of the book to the worlds of youth work, healthcare, the prison service, 'customer care', management training, and secondary school education. This is an essential resource for directors, drama teachers, and students of Drama, Theatre and Performance at all levels. It will also be useful to anyone looking to improve their presentation skills.

Borderlands Children's Theatre highlights the social and performative construction of Chicana/o Mexican-American Childhood. Borderlands Children's Theatre teach and educate Anglo citizens on Chicana/o Mexican-American culture. Borderlands Children's Theatre explores traditional and contemporary literature and dramatic literature for Chicana/o Mexican-American children and youth. Borderlands Children's Theatre is a more in-depth analysis of Chicana/o Mexican-American childhood in the field of Childhood Studies. Borderlands Children's Theatre is a unique scholarly book that is the first to examine U.S. Chicana/o/Mexican-American childhood in Performance Studies.

Part of the popular and successful Routledge Performance Practitioners series Includes a wealth of both original exercises and invaluable primary material Written with input from Hart's close collaborators and company members

The Art of Knife Fighting for Stage and Screen: An Actor's and Director's Guide to Staged Violence provides detailed information for the safe use of knives and daggers in a theatrical setting and an in-depth understanding of safe theatrical weapons. The book starts with an extensive safety review, then moves on to the basic techniques of dagger fighting, starting with grip and body postures. Readers will then learn about the basic actions of cuts, parries, blocks, and disarms. During this process, they will explore the connection between body and weapon and start learning the elements of storytelling through choreography. Special attention is given to suicides, threats, and murder and how directors, choreographers, performers, teachers, and students can approach these techniques in a way that is physically and mentally safe. The book also covers the use of throwing knives, knife flips, and other tricks to help add a little flair to your fight. The Art of Knife Fighting for Stage and Screen teaches the safe theatrical use of the knife for directors, performers, educators, and students of stage combat.

This book offers a clear and novel method from inserting mystical ideals into theatrical productions. This book introduces a new way of understanding the history of theatre. This book gives an east-to-understand overview of mystical thinking. This book lays out a clear understanding of how theatre might positively influence the audience and society.

An accessible account of the cultural history of Chinese gender relations and sexuality, from the Ming dynasty to the Chinese Communist Party A unique insight of the life experiences of female impersonators in traditional Chinese theatre An engaging analysis of the transformation of Chinese society through the lens of theatre and performing arts An urgent assessment of the ambiguous role of male players of female roles in contemporary China

Vince introduces readers to the sources of information available to the theatre historian, and to some of the methods that have been used in the interpretation of that evidence. He provides an analytical survey of the principal written and artifactual evidence for the history of the Renaissance theatres of Italy, Spain, England, and France. The book includes a discussion of the various types of evidence available to the theatre historian, with special reference to those sources that have proved to be of central importance, and an evaluative sketch of some of the most significant scholarship. Wherever possible, the reader is directed to original documents and sources that reproduce primary evidence. Each chapter concludes with a reference bibliography.

The Art of Knife Fighting for Stage and Screen: An Actor's and Director's Guide to Staged Violence provides detailed information for the safe use of knives and daggers in a theatrical setting and an in-depth understanding of safe theatrical weapons. The book starts with an extensive safety review, then moves on to the basic techniques of dagger fighting, starting with grip and body postures. Readers will then learn about the basic actions of cuts, parries, blocks, and disarms. During this process, they will explore the connection between body and weapon and start learning the elements of storytelling through choreography. Special attention is given to suicides, threats, and murder and how directors, choreographers, performers, teachers, and students can approach these techniques in a way that is physically and mentally safe. The book also covers the use of throwing knives, knife flips, and other tricks to help add a little flair to your fight. The Art of Knife Fighting for Stage and Screen teaches the safe theatrical use of the knife for directors, performers, educators, and students of stage combat.

The starting point for virtually all theatre is studying the play script, but what does this involve? "Interpreting the Play Script: Contemplation and Analysis" argues that one type of analysis cannot fit every play, nor does one method suit every theatre artist or collaborative team. The first text to combine traditional and non-traditional models, it gives students a range of tools with which to approach different kinds of performance. Supported by pragmatic questions, practical exercises and sources for further reading, this book will challenge students and theatre practitioners to engage with the play using both analysis and contemplation. It is essential reading for anyone wanting to unlock and more fully understand the performance potential of any play.

This book is situated at the intersection of queer/gender studies and theories of acting pedagogy and performance. It explores the social and cultural matrix in which matters of gender are negotiated, including that of post-secondary theatre and drama education. It identifies the predicament of gender dissident actors who must contend with the widespread enforcement of realist paradigms within the academy, and proposes a re-imagining of the way drama/theatre/performance are practised in order to serve more fairly and effectively the needs of queer actors in training. This is located within a larger project of critique in reference to the art form as a whole. The book stimulates discussion among practitioners and scholars on matters concerning various kinds of diversity: of gender expression, of approaches to the teaching of acting, and to the way the art form may be imagined and executed in the early years of the 21st Century, in particular in the face of the climate crisis. But it is also an aid to practitioners who are seeking new theoretical and practical approaches to dealing with gender diversity in acting pedagogy.

Routledge Performance Practitioners is a series of introductory guides to the key theatre-makers of the last century. Each volume explains the background to and the work of one of the major influences on twentieth- and twenty-first-century performance. Antonin Artaud was an active theatre-maker and theorist whose ideas reshaped contemporary approaches to performance. This is the first book to combine an overview of Artaud's life with a focus on his work as an actor and director; an analysis of his key theories, including the Theatre of Cruelty and the double; a consideration of his work as a director at the Theatre Alfred Jarry and his production of Strindberg's A Dream Play; and a series of practical exercises to develop an approach to theatre based on Artaud's key ideas. As a first step towards critical understanding and as an initial exploration before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance Practitioners are unbeatable value for today's student.

- Introduces a system of text analysis that synthesizes physical, psychological, and vocal components in order to truthfully embody heightened texts and contexts. - Takes a primarily ensemble-based physical practice and re-purposing it to give the solo practitioner, or an actor preparing a role in an ensemble without a shared 'vocabulary' a means to use a physically based process on their own. - The work is suitable for individual practice, either for creating original work, or for preparing a role while working with a cast that does not have a shared vocabulary or physical/vocal practice.

- Introduces a system of text analysis that synthesizes physical, psychological, and vocal components in order to truthfully embody heightened texts and contexts. - Takes a primarily ensemble-based physical practice and re-purposing it to give the solo practitioner, or an actor preparing a role in an ensemble without a shared 'vocabulary' a means to use a physically based process on their own. - The work is suitable for individual practice, either for creating original work, or for preparing a role while working with a cast that does not have a shared vocabulary or physical/vocal practice.

The Routledge Companion to Studio Performance Practice is a unique, indispensable guide to the training methods of the world's key theatre practitioners. Compiling the practical work outlined in the popular Routledge Performance Practitioners series of guidebooks, each set of exercises has been edited and contextualised by an expert in that particular approach. Each chapter provides a taster of one practitioner's work, answering the same key questions: 'How did this artist work? How can I begin to put my understanding of this to practical use?' Newly written chapter introductions put the exercises in context, explaining how they fit into the wider methods and philosophy of the practitioner in question. All 21 volumes in the original series are represented in this volume.

For whom does the actor perform? To answer this foundational question of the actor's art, Grotowski scholar Kris Salata explores acting as a self-revelatory action, introduces Grotowski's concept of "carnal prayer," and develops an interdisciplinary theory of acting and spectating. Acting after Grotowski: Theatre's Carnal Prayer attempts to overcome the religious/secular binary by treating "prayer" as a pre-religious, originary deed, and ultimately situates theatre along with ritual in their shared territory of play. Grounded in theatre practice, Salata's narrative moves through postmodern philosophy, critical theory, theatre, performance, ritual, and religious studies, concluding that the fundamental structure of prayer, which underpins the actor's deed, can be found in any self-revelatory creative act.

Using Open Scenes as a "way in" to scripted material, this book establishes a foundational actor training methodology that can be applied to the performance of film or television acting, commercials, and theatrical realism. Unlike other methodologies, this unique approach is devoid of casting considerations or imposed identity, providing actors opportunities that do not rely on nor are restricted by age, gender, race, ethnicity, regional accent, body type, identity, or other defining or delimiting aspects that come into play during the casting process. This allows the actor to focus on personal authenticity as they develop their skills. This book will appeal to undergraduate students, acting teachers, and the contemporary actor seeking a career in film, television, or other electronic media. Visit the companion website www.usingopenscenestoactsuccessful.godaddysites.com for additional Open Scenes and more.

Talk-show confessions, online rants, stand-up routines, inspirational speeches, banal reflections and calls to arms: we live in an age of solo voices demanding to be heard. In The Contemporary American Monologue Eddie Paterson looks at the pioneering work of US artists Spalding Gray, Laurie Anderson, Anna Deavere Smith and Karen Finley, and the development of solo performance in the US as a method of cultural and political critique. Ironic confession, post-punk poetry, investigations of race and violence, and subversive polemic, this book reveals the link between the rise of radical monologue in the late 20th century and history of speechmaking, politics, civil rights, individual freedom and the American Dream in the United States. It shows how US artists are speaking back to the cultural, political and economic forces that shape the world. Eddie Paterson traces the importance of the monologue in Shakespeare, Brecht, Beckett, Chekov, Pinter, O'Neill and Williams, before offering a comprehensive analysis of several of the most influential and innovative American practitioners of monologue performance. The Contemporary American Monologue constitutes the first book-length account of US monologists that links the tradition of oratory and speechmaking in the colony to the appearance of solo performance as a distinctly American phenomenon.

This book includes a critical analysis of pedagogy in performance training environments. Includes descriptions of teaching interventions, research and exploratory practice to support the needs and abilities of the individual with dis/ability or difference. Outlines support for individuals in a variety of areas, such as: dyslexia, dyspraxia, visual or hearing impairment, learning and physical dis/abilities, wheelchair users, aphantasia, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autistic spectrum.

This book includes a critical analysis of pedagogy in performance training environments. Includes descriptions of teaching interventions, research and exploratory practice to support the needs and abilities of the individual with dis/ability or difference. Outlines support for individuals in a variety of areas, such as: dyslexia, dyspraxia, visual or hearing impairment, learning and physical dis/abilities, wheelchair users, aphantasia, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autistic spectrum.

Actors on Guard, Second Edition is the most comprehensive book covering the current practices in learning, rehearsing and performing safe and dynamic swordfights with the single rapier and the rapier and dagger for both stage and screen. Focusing specifically on the Elizabethan rapier and dagger - the most popular weapons used in stage fights - Actors on Guard provides actors, directors, teachers, stage managers and technicians the skills and knowledge essential to presenting safe and effective swordfights. The book takes the reader through the complex process of selecting safe stage weapons, learning the basic handling and management of the rapier and dagger, as well as how to safely move and interact in the potentially dangerous process of learning, rehearsing and performing choreographed swordplay. This new edition has been revised with current industry practices, featuring hundreds of step-by-step practical exercises in the care and handling of prop swords, footwork, guards, parries, cutting and thrusting techniques, blade taking actions, disarms, wounds and kills using the rapier and dagger, with revised diagrams and photographs. An excellent sourcebook for university stage combat classes as well as self-learners, Actors on Guard provides the reader with the historical, theoretical and practical basis for mastering the art of sword fighting for the stage and screen. The book includes access to a wealth of online resources, with additional information that expands upon specific mechanics, techniques and concepts covered in the text as well as some video demonstrations of solo and partnered techniques and exercises.