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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"The Student Actor Prepares" is a practical, interactive approach to a student actor's journey. Each chapter includes acting principles, their importance to the process, and workbook entries for emotional work, script analysis, and applications to the study of theater. Topics cover a brief history of the art of acting and how the study of acting can be an advantage in numerous occupations; an actor's discovery of emotional work; movement and mime practices for the actor; vocal practices for the actor; solo improvisational study; script analysis for the individual actor; rehearsal tips; monologue work; original solo work; audition information; working with an acting partner or in a production; acting resources; and research topics.

'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.

(Applause Books). There has been a great change in the last twenty years to actor auditions, which now require the demonstration of enormous flexibility. The actor is often expected to show more range than ever before, and often several shorter audition speeches are asked for instead of one or two longer ones. To stay at the top of his or her game, the Shakespearean actor needs more knowledge of what makes the play tick, especially since the early plays demand a different style from the later ones. Each genre (comedy, history, tragedy) has different requirements. No current monologue book deals directly with the bulk of these concerns. One More unto the Speech, Dear Friends now fills that gap. This three volume set will help actors discover the extra details of humanity that the original folio texts automatically offer. Of Shakespeare's 37 plays, only Pericles is not included. In the trilogy of books there are over 900 separate audition possibilities. This represents about 600 more monologues than are available in any other series. There are four parts to each speech: * A background giving context and approximate timing; * A modern text version; * The original folio version; * Commentary to explain the differences between the two texts including full discussion of the devices peculiar to that speech's genre, the age and gender of the character, and more.

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.

"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.

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.

Slovenia gained its independence in 1991, and joined the European Union in 2004. This book, with its substantial introduction and four Slovene plays in translation, makes a unique contribution to an understanding of both the dramatic and theatrical history of this period of enormous political change in Slovenia. The Great Brilliant Waltz (1985) by Drago Janč ar was written and produced when Slovenia was still part of the former Yugoslavia. This black comedy is set in the mental hospital 'Freedom Sets Free', a metaphor for the totalitarian society of the communist era. Draga Potoč njak is foremost among the few female playwrights in Slovenia. Based on real events, The Noise Animals Make is Unbearable (2003) shows a mentally retarded and severely autistic Bosnian boy after soldiers kill his whole family in front of his eyes, leaving only his grandmother. Critics have seen the play as the best tribute that Slovene drama has offered to the victims of the Bosnian war. The fabric of Duş an Jovanović 's comedy The Boozski Clinic (1999) is the transition into capitalism. Losers on the edge of society, examples of the collateral damage of a newly capitalist society whose rules of operating they do not wish to obey, congregate in a small bar in a small town which used to be the pride of the communist government. Matjaz Zupancic's play The Corridor (2004) is set in the corridor outside a television studio where the 'reality' programme 'Big Brother' is being filmed. The ever-present television camera in the studio represents current invisible but nonetheless totalitarian power, with its technical interference and controlling of individuals' lives.

"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:

Whether you're applying for drama school, taking an exam, or auditioning for a professional role, it's likely you'll be required to perform one or more monologues, including a piece from a contemporary play. It's vital to come up with something fresh that's suited both to you - in order to allow you to express who you are as a performer - and to the specific purposes of the audition. In this book, you'll find forty fantastic speeches featuring male roles, all written and premiered since the year 2014, by some of today's most exciting dramatic voices from the UK and USA. Playwrights include Annie Baker, Andrew Bovell, Jez Butterworth, Caryl Churchill, Mark Gatiss, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Anna Jordan, Arinze Kene, Rona Munro and Evan Placey. The plays featured were premiered at leading venues including the National, the Royal Court, the Bush and Hampstead in London, prestigious theatres in Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Manchester, and by renowned companies including Frantic Assembly and Paines Plough. Drawing on her experience as an actor, director and teacher at several leading drama schools, Trilby James introduces each speech with a user-friendly, bullet-point list of essential things you need to know about the character, and then five inspiring ideas to help you perform the monologue. This book also features a step-by-step guide to the process of selecting and preparing your speech, and approaching the audition itself. 'Easy-to-use... The guidance is perhaps the most thorough I have seen in a monologue book' Teaching Drama on Trilby James's first volume of Contemporary Monologues Please note that some of the speeches in this volume contain strong language and themes which some readers may find inappropriate.

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.

'A book that will stand the test of time' - Pierce Brosnan An essential guide to the Stanislavski technique, filtering out the complexities of the system and offering a dynamic, hands-on approach. Provides a comprehensive understanding of character, preparation, text, subtext and objectives. How to prepare for drama school and professional auditions How to develop a 3-dimensional, truthful character Preparation exercises to help you get in character Rehearsal guidelines An appendix of Transitive/Active Verbs and more

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.

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.

Acts and apparitions examines how new performance practices from the 1990s to the present day have been driven by questions of the real and the ensuing political implications of the concept's rapidly disintegrating authority. This book departs significantly from existing scholarship on contemporary performance in its rejection of the dramatic/postdramatic binary and its interrogation of previous applications of Derridean poststructuralism to theatrical representation and notions of the real. It offers new perspectives on the political analysis of contemporary theatre and performance across a wide range of models from Forced Entertainment and the Wooster Group, to Roland Schimmelpfennig and Howard Barker; from verbatim theatre to audio tours and the interactive performances of Ontroerend Goed. -- .

'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.