Auditions are an integral part of every performer's life. From getting into drama school through to a successful career in an overcrowded industry, Auditions: The Complete Guide offers crucial advice, resources and tried and tested techniques to maximise success before, during and after each audition. Written by an established casting director and former actor, with over 35 years of experience on a wide range of productions, this book offers a wealth of personal and professional insights, covering: * drama and theatre schools * showcases * amateur and professional auditions * contemporary, classical, physical and musical theatre * television and commercial castings, movie screen tests and self taping * voice-overs and radio drama * networking * recalls and workshops * handling job offers, and rejection From training to triumph, nerves to networking and camera to casting couch, Auditions: The Complete Guide is an entertaining, accessible and indispensable read for every performer. Richard Evans CDG has cast a wide variety of productions in all media since 1989 and, prior to this, worked as an actor for 10 years. He has devised and presented audition and career development workshops at many top drama and theatre schools worldwide, and at the Actors Centre, London and has written Auditions: A Practical Guide (Routledge, 2009) and 'A Casting Director's Perspective' for The Actors' Yearbook, 2005. He is a member of The Casting Directors' Guild of Great Britain and Ireland. www.auditionsthecompleteguide.com

Integrative Performance serves a crucial need of 21st-century performers by providing a transdisciplinary approach to training. Its radical new take on performance practice is designed for a climate that increasingly requires fully rounded artists. The book critiques and interrogates key current practices and offers a proven alternative to the idea that rigorous and effective training must separate the disciplines into discrete categories of acting, singing, and dance. Experience Bryon's Integrative Performance Practice is a way of working that will profoundly shift how performers engage with their training, conditioning and performance disciplines. It synthesizes the various elements of performance work in order to empower the performer as they practice across disciplines within any genre, style or aesthetic. Theory and practice are balanced throughout, using: Regular box-outs, introducing the work's theoretical underpinnings through quotes, case studies and critical interjections. A full program of exercises ranging from training of specific muscle groups, through working with text, to more subtle structures for integrative awareness and presence. This book is the result of over twenty years of practice and research working with interdisciplinary artists across the world to produce a training that fully prepares performers for the demands of contemporary performance and all its somatic, emotive and vocal possibilities.

Arthur Lessac's Embodied Actor Training situates the work of renowned voice and movement trainer Arthur Lessac in the context of contemporary actor training. Supported by the work of Constantin Stanislavsky and Maurice Merleau-Ponty's theories of embodiment, the book explores Lessac's practice in terms of embodied acting, a key subject in contemporary performance. In doing so, the author explains how the actor can come to experience both skill and expression as a subjective whole through active meditation and spatial attunement. As well as feeding this psychophysical approach into a wider discussion of embodiment, the book provides concrete examples of how the practice can be put into effect. Using insights gleaned from interviews conducted with Lessac and his Master Teachers, the author enlightens our own understanding of Lessac's practices. Three valuable appendices enhance the reader's experience. These include: a biographical timeline of Lessac's life and career sample curricula and a lesson plan for teachers at university level explorations for personal discovery Melissa Hurt is a Lessac Certified Trainer and has taught acting and Lessac's voice, speech, and movement work at colleges across the United States. She has a PhD from the University of Oregon and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University.

This is the first English translation of Michael Chekhov's two-volume autobiography, combining The Path of the Actor (1927) and extensive extracts from his later volume Life and Encounters. Full of illuminating anecdotes and insightful observations involving prominent characters from the MAT and the European theatre of the early twentieth century, Chekhov takes us through events in his acting career and personal life, from his childhood in St. Petersburg until his emigration to Latvia and Lithuania in the early 1930s. Accompanying Chekhov's witty, penetrating, and immensely touching accounts are extensive and authoritative notes compiled by leading Russian Chekhov scholar, Andrei Kirillov. Anglo-Russian trained actor Bella Merlin provides a useful hands-on overview of how the contemporary practitioner might utilise and develop Chekhov's ideas. Chekhov was arguably one of the greatest actors of the twentieth century. His life made a huge impact on his profession, and his actor-training techniques inspired many a Hollywood legend - including such actors as Anthony Hopkins and Jack Nicholson -while his books outlining his teaching methods and philosophy of acting are still bestsellers today The Path of the Actor is an extraordinary document which allows us unprecedented access into the life, times, mind and soul of a truly extraordinary man.

Immaterial Culture engages with texts that are now largely unread and dismissed as trivial or dubious: the vast body of plays - thrillers, narrative poetry, comedy sketches, documentaries and adaptations of literature and drama - that aired on American network radio during the medium's so-called golden age. For a quarter century, from the stock market crash of 1929 to the introduction of the TV dinner in 1954, radio plays enjoyed an exposure unrivalled by stage, film, television and print media. As well as entertaining audiences numbering in the tens of millions for a single broadcast, these scripted performances - many of which were penned by noted novelists, poets and dramatists - played important and often conflicting roles in advertising, government propaganda and education. Reading these fugitive and often self-conscious texts in the context in which they were created and presented, the author considers what their neglect might tell us about ourselves, our visual bias and our attitudes toward commercial art and propaganda. The study's ample scope, its interdisciplinary approach and its insistence on the primacy of the texts under discussion serve to regenerate the discourse about cultural products that challenge the way we classify art and marginalise the unclassifiable.

Whitman's Ecstatic Union rereads the first three editions of Leaves of Grass within the context of a nineteenth-century antebellum evangelical culture of conversion. Though Whitman intended to write a new American Bible and "inaugurate a religion," contemporary scholarship has often ignored the religious element in his poetry. But just as evangelists sought the redemption of America through the reconstruction of individual subjects in conversion, Leaves of Grass sought to redeem the nation by inducing ecstatic, regenerating experiences in its readers. Whitman's Ecstatic Union explores the ecstasy of conversion as a liminal moment outside of language and culture, and-employing Althusser's model of ideological interpellation and anthropological models of religious ritual-shows how evangelicalism remade subjects by inducing ecstasy and instilling new narratives of identity. The book analyzes Whitman's historical relationship to preaching and conversion and reads the 1855 "Song of Myself" as a conversion narrative. A focus on the 1856 edition and the poem "To You" explores the sacred seductions at the heart of Whitman's poetry. "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" and Whitman's vision of a world of perfect miracles are then connected to a conception of universal affection, uncannily paralleling Jonathan Edward's ideal of "love to being in general." A conclusion looks toward the transformations of Whitman's vision in the 1860 edition.

Konstantin Stanislavsky transformed theatre in the West and was indisputably one of the twentieth century's greatest innovators. His life and work mark some of the most significant artistic and political milestones of that tumultuous century, from the emancipation of the serfs to the Russian Revolution. Little wonder, then, that his correspondence contains gripping exchanges with the famous and infamous of his day: men such as Tolstoy, Chekhov, Trotsky and Stalin, among others. Laurence Senelick, one of the world's foremost scholars of Russian literature, mines the Moscow archives and the definitive Russian edition of Stanislavsky's letters, to produce the fullest collection of the letters in any language other than Russian. He sheds new light on this fascinating field. Senelick takes us from the earliest extant letter of an eleven-year-old Konstantin in 1874, through his work as actor, director and actor trainer with the Moscow Art Theatre, to messages written just before his death in 1938 at the age of seventy-five. We discover Stanislavsky as son, brother and father, as lover and husband, as businessman and "internal emigre." He is seen as a wealthy tourist and an impoverished touring actor, a privileged subject of the Tsar and a harried victim of the Bolsheviks. Senelick shares key insights into Stanislavsky's work on such important productions as The Seagull, The Cherry Orchard, Hamlet, Othello, and The Marriage of Figaro. The letters also reveal the steps that led up to the publication of his writings My Life in Art and An Actor's Work on Himself. This handsome edition is also comprehensively annotated and fully illustrated.

'Robert Cohen's book, Acting Power, follows the tradition of his other book, Acting One, and has been the veritable bible for acting teachers for the last quarter century.' - David Krasner, Emerson College 'This book, above all else, is an attempt to explore the qualities of acting power.... to suggest to you, the actor, an approach toward not merely good acting but powerful acting. Great actors display the power to frighten - and the power to seduce - and can shift between the one and the other like a violinist can her notes.' - From the Preface The first edition of Acting Power was a groundbreaking work of acting theory which applied sociological and psychological principles to actor training. The book went on to influence a generation of theatre and performance studies students and academics, and was translated into five languages. This carefully revised 21st Century Edition (re)considers, in the context of today's field: questions such as 'should actors act from the inside or the outside?' and 'should the actor live the role or present the role?'; contemporary research into communication theory, cybernetics, and cognitive science; brilliantly illuminating and witty exercises for solo study and classroom use, and a through-line of useful references to classic plays; penetrating observations about the actor's art by more than 75 distinguished professional actors and directors. Cohen's elegant and rigorous updates emphasise the continuing relevance of his uniquely integrated and life-affirming approach to this field. The new edition draws on his extraordinarily rich career as teacher, scholar, director, translator and dramaturg. It is a recipe for thrilling theatre in any genre.

John Astington brings the acting style of the Shakespearean period to life, describing and analysing the art of the player in the English professional theatre between Richard Tarlton and Thomas Betterton. The book pays close attention to the cultural context of stage playing, the critical language used about it, and the kinds of training and professional practice employed in the theatre at various times over the course of roughly one hundred years - 1558-1660. Perfect for courses, this survey takes into account recent discoveries about actors and their social networks, about apprenticeship and company affiliations, and about playing outside the major centre of theatre, London. Astington considers the educational tradition of playing, in schools, universities, legal inns, and choral communities, in comparison to the work of the professional players. A comprehensive biographical dictionary of all major professional players of the Shakespearean period is included as a handy reference guide.

"The study of acting should not begin with an exploration of feeling, perception, imagination, memories, intention, personalization, self-identification... or even performance but physical action."

Michael Lugering's The Expressive Actor presents a foundational, preparatory training method, using movement to unlock the entire acting process. Its action-based perspective integrates voice, movement and basic acting training into a unified approach.

A wealth of exercises and diagrams guide the reader through this internationally taught program, making it an ideal step-by-step course for both solo and classroom use. Through this course, voice and body training becomes more than a simple skill-building activity it is the central prerequisite to any actor training.

This new Routledge edition has been fully updated, to include:

This volume is based on papers given at the biennial Women in French conference held in Leeds in May 2011. Drawing on a range of interconnecting disciplines and forms of cultural production, it explores the relationship between French and Francophone women and the material world. Bringing together researchers from the United Kingdom, France and other Francophone countries, the book reflects the engagement of women researchers with contemporary debates. The first section focuses on the female body, examining dance and the performing arts but also the material objectification suffered by rape victims in France. The next highlights the contradictions of the im/materiality of the body, the act of writing and the text, in terms of dichotomies, permeable identities and fluid boundaries. The third section turns its attention to the practicalities of 'the material' in relation to women's engagement with the economy - the gendering of domestic work, women's discourse, the precariousness of women's employment and the alienating impersonality of consumer spaces. The concluding section considers the relationship of the female body to the material object, whether subverting, co-opting or indeed absorbing it. In the final chapters of the book the tactile and the visual converge in explorations of 'the material' in cinematic representations of the female body.

This original study, published initially in 1959, introduces students of philosophy and of theology to a treatment of religion based upon the methods of modern philosophy - particularly logical empiricism and existentialism. Above and beyond the importance of its point of view, this book is distinguished by its clarity and by its objective and understanding presentation of diverse points of view.

This book explores the way in which the contemporary proliferation of forms of storytelling practice in international theatre has created a distinctive set of performance practices. Texts and performers discussed include Split Britches, Billy Connolly, Anna Deavere Smith's Let Me Down Easy, Spalding Gray, David Hare's Via Dolorosa

"a work on the art and craft of comedy as important in its own way as works by Stanislavski and Chekhov" - Oxford Theatre Companion In 1939, a young, inexperienced actor wrote to a famous actress of his acquaintance, asking for advice on playing comedy. She responded enthusiastically, and they corresponded variously over the next year. The Craft of Comedy, a record of these exchanges, soon emerged as one of the few classic texts in the field of comedy acting. This major new edition takes a brilliant book and makes it better. Editor Robert Barton has devised extensive supplementary material, including: An introduction to the correspondents, the culture of the time, and the evolution of their book; Summaries, definitions, and exercises and practice scenes for readers wishing to explore Athene Seyler's invaluable advice; Photographs, additional essays by Seyler, and a guide to easily accessed video clips of her performing. Seyler's lucid guidance, and Barton's scrupulous editorship, ensure this legendary work's rightful status is restored: as one of the great practical guides to the craft of comedy, and an essential resource for actors and students of acting.

'Absolutely delicious . . . Janelle Brown is a surgeon of the complex relationships between women. I gobbled this up' Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of All Adults Here 'You won't be able to put this novel down and you won't want to' Laura Dave, no. 1 New York Times bestselling author of The Last Thing He Told Me 'One of those books you'll devour' Chris Bohjalian, New York Times bestselling author of The Flight Attendant 'Janelle Brown has done it again. She has created a deliciously twisty page-turner you won't be able to put down' Angie Kim, Edgar Award-winning author of Miracle Creek 'You be me, and I'll be you' I whispered. As children, Sam and Elli were two halves of a perfect whole: gorgeous identical twins whose parents sometimes couldn't even tell them apart. And once Hollywood discovered them, they became B-list child TV stars, often inhabiting the same role. But as adults, their lives have splintered. After leaving acting, Elli reinvented herself as the perfect homemaker: married to a real estate lawyer, living in a house just blocks from the beach. Meanwhile, Sam has never recovered from her failed Hollywood career, or from her addiction to the pills and booze that have propped her up for the last fifteen years. Sam hasn't spoken to her sister since her destructive behavior finally drove a wedge between them. So when her father calls out of the blue, Sam is shocked to learn that Elli's life has been in turmoil: her husband moved out, and Elli just adopted a two-year-old girl. Now she's stopped answering her phone and checked in to a mysterious spa in Ojai. Is her sister just decompressing, or is she in trouble? Could she have possibly joined a cult? As Sam works to connect the dots left by Elli's baffling disappearance, she realizes that the bond between her and her sister is more complicated than she ever knew.

A focus on the body, its actions, and its cognitive mechanisms identifies ... foundational principles of activity that link the three elements of theatre; Story, Space, and Time. The three meet in, are defined by, and expressed through the actor s body. " from the Introduction

Embodied Acting" is an essential, pragmatic intervention in the study of how recent discoveries within cognitive science can and should be applied to performance. For too long, a conceptual separation of mind and body has dominated actor training in the West. Cognitive science has shown this binary to be illusory, shattering the traditional boundaries between mind and body, reason and emotion, knowledge and imagination. This revolutionary new volume explores the impact that a more holistic approach to the "bodymind" can have on the acting process.

Drawing on his experience as an actor, director and scholar, Rick Kemp interrogates the key cognitive activities involved in performance, including:

• non-verbal communication
• the relationship between thought, speech, and gesture
• the relationship between self and character
• empathy, imagination, and emotion.

New perspectives on the work of Stanislavski, Michael Chekhov, and Jacques Lecoq as well as contemporary practitioners including Daniel Day-Lewis and Katie Mitchell are explored through practical exercises and accessible explanations. Blending theory, practice, and cutting-edge neuroscience, Kemp presents a radical re-examination of the unconscious activities engaged in creating, and presenting, a role.

'A focus on the body, its actions, and its cognitive mechanisms identifies ... foundational principles of activity that link the three elements of theatre; Story, Space, and Time. The three meet in, are defined by, and expressed through the actor's body.' - from the Introduction Embodied Acting is an essential, pragmatic intervention in the study of how recent discoveries within cognitive science can - and should - be applied to performance. For too long, a conceptual separation of mind and body has dominated actor training in the West. Cognitive science has shown this binary to be illusory, shattering the traditional boundaries between mind and body, reason and emotion, knowledge and imagination. This revolutionary new volume explores the impact that a more holistic approach to the "bodymind" can have on the acting process. Drawing on his experience as an actor, director and scholar, Rick Kemp interrogates the key cognitive activities involved in performance, including: non-verbal communication the relationship between thought, speech, and gesture the relationship between self and character empathy, imagination, and emotion. New perspectives on the work of Stanislavski, Michael Chekhov, and Jacques Lecoq - as well as contemporary practitioners including Daniel Day-Lewis and Katie Mitchell - are explored through practical exercises and accessible explanations. Blending theory, practice, and cutting-edge neuroscience, Kemp presents a radical re-examination of the unconscious activities engaged in creating, and presenting, a role.

Secrets of Screen Acting, Fourth Edition, is a step-by-step guide to the elements of successful screen acting.

When it was first published in 1993, Secrets of Screen Acting broke new ground in explaining how acting for the camera is different from acting on stage. Reaction time is altered, physical timing and placement are reconceived, and the proportions of the digital frame itself become the measure of all things, so the director must conceptualize each image in terms of this new rectangle and actors must 'fit' into the frame. Based on a revolutionary non-Method approach to acting, this book shows what actually works: how an actor, an announcer, or anyone working in front of the cameras can maximise the effectiveness of their performances on screen. This fourth edition is completely updated to cover new techniques, film references, and insights, including:

Updated information on vocal work outside acting, such as audiobooks and voice-overs

Guidance on the technique of "whisper acting"

New information about working with video games, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, and other non-traditional forms of screen work

Updated guidance on self-taping auditions

Coverage of working with CGI and invisible acting partners on green screen

Information on typecasting and stereotyping

A quick history of theatre and film in 10 pictures

A new emphasis on illustrations depicting acting techniques

Information on and best practices for presenting oneself to the industry

Many new illustrations, all specifically drawn for this edition

This book is perfectly suited for Acting for the Screen university courses, actors training on their own, and actors involved in all forms of screen work, including Zoom, Skype, Vox Pops, and more.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 2. Screen versus Stage 3. The Frame 4. The Camera 5. Sound and Vocal Levels 6. Reactions and Business 7. Screen Acting 8. Casting 9. Auditions and Interviews 10. Rehearsals and technicals 11. The Shoot and 12. Post-Production 13. Presenting 14. Career Thoughts and Epilogue

Every scene or action or speech has a so therefore. It is the goal, the ultimate statement of the character. You should know the so therefore as you begin your scene ... The climax and the payoff is the so therefore. from Al Ruscio s Preface

When working through a scene with a student, renowned actor and acting teacher Al Ruscio will ask, so therefore, what? to urge them to capture the specific actions and desires that define their character at that moment. So Therefore interweaves tried-and-tested practical exercises with sound advice, and illustrative tales from Ruscio s remarkable career, to form a training handbook as uniquely pragmatic as his favourite phrase. Breaking down his method into three broad focuses, Ruscio considers:

• Warming Up including relaxation, going beneath the words and emotional recall;
• Scene Work ranging from character analysis to an exploration of action;
• The Play discovering its spine, progressing through rehearsals and sustaining a performance.

But So Therefore also reflects wisely on such diverse subjects as Stage versus Film, and Stamina, Luck and Chutzpah. Enriching and generous, it is the culmination of a career that has taken in dozens of major motion pictures, and spans the entire history of television as well as half a century spent training actors.

Al Ruscio graduated from the famed Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre and has been teaching acting for five decades. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Screen Actors Guild and is a current voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences."

Archaeologies of Presence is a brilliant exploration of how the performance of presence can be understood through the relationships between performance theory and archaeological thinking. Drawing together carefully commissioned contributions by leading international scholars and artists, this radical new work poses a number of essential questions: What are the principle signifiers of theatrical presence? How is presence achieved through theatrical performance? What makes a memory come alive and live again? How is presence connected with identity? Is presence synonymous with 'being in the moment'? What is the nature of the 'co-presence' of audience and performer? Where does performance practice end and its documentation begin? Co-edited by performance specialists Gabriella Giannachi and Nick Kaye, and archaeologist Michael Shanks, Archaeologies of Presence represents an innovative and rewarding feat of interdisciplinary scholarship.

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

'I've been waiting for someone to write this book for years: a thorough-going analysis and reconsideration of American approaches to Stanislavsky from a feminist perspective ... lively, intelligent, and engaging.' Phillip Zarrilli, University of Exeter

'Theatre people of any gender will be transformed by Rose Malague 's eye-opening study An Actress Prepares... This book will be useful to all scholars and practitioners determined to make gender equity central to how they hone their craft and their thinking.' Jill Dolan, Princeton University

'Every day, thousands of women enter acting classes where most of them will receive some variation on the Stanislavsky-based training that has now been taught in the U.S. for nearly ninety years. Yet relatively little feminist consideration has been given to the experience of the student actress: What happens to women in Method actor training?'

An Actress Prepares is the first book to interrogate Method acting from a specifically feminist perspective. Rose Malague addresses "the Method" not only with much-needed critical distance, but also the crucial insider's view of a trained actor. Case studies examine the preeminent American teachers who popularized and transformed elements of Stanislavsky 's System within the U.S. Strasberg, Adler, Meisner, and Hagen by analyzing and comparing their related but distinctly different approaches.

This book confronts the sexism that still exists in actor training and exposes the gender biases embedded within the Method itself. Its in-depth examination of these Stanislavskian techniques seeks to reclaim Method acting from its patriarchal practices and to empower women who act.

In Rehearsal is a clear and accessible how-to approach to the rehearsal process. Author Gary Sloan brings more than thirty years' worth of acting experience to bear on the question of how to rehearse both as an individual actor and as part of the team of professionals that underpins any successful production. Interviews with acclaimed actors, directors, playwrights, and designers share a wealth of knowledge on dynamic collaboration.

The book is divided in to three main stages, helping the reader to refine their craft in as straightforward and accessible manner as possible:

• In the world A flexible rehearsal program that can be employed daily, as well as over a typical four week production rehearsal.
• In the room Advice on working independently and productively with other members of a company, such as directors, playwrights, designers and technical crew; how your personal creative process varies depending on the role, be it Shakespeare, musicals, film, television or understudying.
• On your own Creating your own rehearsal process, exploring original and famous rehearsal techniques, breaking through actor's block and how to practice every day.

In Rehearsal breaks down the rehearsal process from the actor 's perspective and equips its reader with the tools to become a generous and resourceful performer both inside and outside the studio. Its independent, creative and daily rehearsal techniques are essential for any modern actor.

From Komisarjevsky in the 1920s, to Cheek by Jowl 's Russian sister company almost a century later, Russian actor training has had a unique influence on modern British theatre. Russians in Britain, edited by Jonathan Pitches, is the first work of its type to identify a relationship between both countries theatrical traditions as continuous as it is complex.

Unravelling new strands of transmission and translation linking the great Russian migr practitioners to the second and third generation artists who responded to their ideas, Russians in Britain takes in:

• Komisarjevsky and the British theatre establishment.
• Stanislavsky in the British conservatoire.
• Meyerhold in the academy.
• Michael Chekhov in the private studio.
• Littlewood 's Theatre Workshop and the Northern Stage Ensemble.
• Katie Mitchell, Declan Donnellan and Michael Boyd.

Charting a hitherto untold story with historical and contemporary implications, these nine essays present a compelling alternative history of theatrical practice in the UK.

Adolphe Appia swept away the foundations of traditional theatre and set the agenda for the development of theatrical practice this century. In Adolphe Appia: Texts on Theatre, Richard Beacham brings together for the first time selections from all his major writings. The publication of these essays, many of which have long been unavailable in English, represents a significant addition to our understanding of the development of theatrical art. It will be an invaluable sourcebook for theatre students and welcomed as an important contribution to the literature of the modern stage.