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Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Theatre, drama > Acting techniques
By popular demand, we offer a follow-up book of theatre games specifically for young acting students. Written especially for those who coach adolescent actors, this delightfully fresh updated workbook tells you how, when, what and why of theatre games for young performers. Starter scenes allow first-time performers to ease onto the stage in baby steps. Spontaneity is encouraged along with etiquette and basic acting principles. The concept of pantomime, improvisation, character development, voice and body control are all presented in game format with exercises. Anyone working with young actors in schools or recreational centres will find the book exceptionally helpful.
Actor Movement: Expression of the Physical Being is a textbook and video resource for the working actor, the student and all those who lead and witness movement for the actor, including movement tutors, movement directors and directors. Great actors are not simply great interpreters of text; they are also great interpreters of movement; able to 'embody' all aspects of a character's life, with body and imagination as their instruments. In their work they are expected to become many bodies, all behaving differently from their own. Actors have to construct, inhabit and offer each character's body, with its multiplicity of known and unknown physical expression. Featuring: Over 155 exercises Four full actor movement processes for creating character Over 20 illustrations and images Complementary online footage supporting 26 of the practical elements Inspiring confidence in the actor to make fully owned physical choices and develop a love of movement, this essential new textbook is ideal for those actors seeking to give to their movement all the complexity and range possible for great acting.
Worried about short rehearsal time? Think that fluffing your lines
will be the end of your career? Are you afraid you'll be typecast?
Is there such a thing as acting too much? How should a stage actor
adjust performance for a camera? And how should an actor behave
backstage?
This book provides a historical overview and then-and-now comparison of performing for British television drama. By examining changing acting styles from distinct eras of television production - studio realism and location realism - it makes a unique contribution to both television and performance studies, unpacking the various determinants that have combined to influence how performers work in the medium. The book compares the original versions of The Quatermass Experiment(BBC, 1953), Doctor Who (BBC, 1963-89) and Survivors (BBC, 1975-77) with their respective modern-day re-makes, unpacking the effects of the shift from multi-camera studio to single-camera location production. Textual analysis is combined with extensive archival research into production process and reception, alongside interviews with numerous actors and production personnel from more than sixty years of television production. -- .
Performance practice is the study of how music was performed over the centuries, both by its originators (the composers and performers who introduced the works) and, later, by revivalists. This first of its kind "Dictionary" offers entries on composers, musicians/performers, technical terms, performance centers, musical instruments, and genres, all aimed at elucidating issues in performance practice. This A-Z guide will help students, scholars, and listeners understand how musical works were originally performed and subsequently changed over the centuries. Compiled by a leading scholar in the field, this work will serve as both a point-of-entry for beginners as well as a roadmap for advanced scholarship in the field.
Rhythm is often referred to as one of the key elements of performance and acting, being of central importance to both performance making and training. Yet what is meant by this term and how it is approached and applied in this context are subjects seldom discussed in detail. Addressing these, Rhythm in Acting and Performance explores the meanings, mechanisms and metaphors associated with rhythm in this field, offering an overview and analysis of the ways rhythm has been, and is embodied and understood by performers, directors, educators, playwrights, designers and scholars. From the rhythmic movements and speech of actors in ancient Greece, to Stanislavski's use of Tempo-rhythm as a tool for building a character and tapping emotions, continuing through to the use of rhythm and musicality in contemporary approaches to actor training and dramaturgy, this subject finds resonance across a broad range of performance domains. In these settings, rhythm has often been identified as an effective tool for developing the coordination and conscious awareness of individual performers, ensembles and their immediate relationship to an audience. This text examines the principles and techniques underlying these processes, focusing on key approaches adopted and developed within European and American performance practices over the last century. Interviews and case studies of individual practitioners, offer insight into the ways rhythm is approached and utilised within this field. Each of these sections includes practical examples as well as analytical reflections, offering a basis for comparing both the common threads and the broad differences that can be found here. Unpacking this often mystified and neglected subject, this book offers students and practitioners a wealth of informative and useful insights to aid and inspire further creative and academic explorations of rhythm within this field.
Stanislavski’s ‘system’ has dominated actor-training in the West since his writings were first translated into English in the 1920s and 30s. His systematic attempt to outline a psycho-physical technique for acting single-handedly revolutionized standards of acting in the theatre.
Acting in Musical Theatre remains the only complete course in approaching a role in a musical. It covers fundamental skills for novice actors, practical insights for professionals, and even tips to help veteran musical performers refine their craft. Educators will find the clear structure ideal for use with multiple courses and programs.
Written to meet the needs of thousands of students and pre-professional singers participating in production workshops and classes in opera and musical theater, Acting for Singers leads singing performers step by step from the studio or classroom through audition and rehearsals to a successful performance. Using a clear, systematic, positive approach, this practical guide explains how to analyze a script or libretto, shows how to develop a character building on material in the score, and gives the singing performer the tools to act believably. More than just a "how-to" acting book, however, Acting for Singers also addresses the problems of concentration, trust, projection, communication, and the self-doubt that often afflicts performers pursuing the goal of believable performance. Part I establishes the basic principles of acting and singing together, and teaches the reader how to improvise as a key tool to explore and develop characters. Part II teaches the singer how to analyze theatrical work for rehearsing, and performing. Using concrete examples from Carmen and West Side Story, and imaginative exercises following each chapter, this text teaches all singers how to be effective singing actors.
A practical guide for actors who want to find work in the corporate sector, by a veteran with over 1400 corporate events to his credit. Thousands of actors in the UK make their living not from treading the boards but in the conference centres and training rooms of the nation's corporate sector. In this, the first book to be published about the increasingly accessible and lucrative business of corporate acting, Paul Clayton shows how this sort of work - training, coaching, role-plays, Forum Theatre and live events - can keep you in paid employment, and your skills sharp, whilst you look for other acting opportunities. He takes you through every aspect of the industry, with a series of practical examples and invaluable tips at every stage, including: What sort of work is available - and how you can get it The various role-play techniques you'll encounter The dos and don'ts for offering constructive feedback to your clients What Forum Theatre is - and how to do it How to handle live events - and escape with your dignity intact Written with humour and great insight, So You Want To Be A Corporate Actor? encourages you to look at your skills from a business point of view, enabling you to take control over your own career. It is a must-read for any actor wishing to broaden their skills and make themselves more employable at all stages of their career. 'For actors wishing to utilise their theatrical skills within the corporate world, this book should be their bible. It is crystal clear, informative and irreverent - and lays out in simple terms how actors need to think and present themselves to be employable.' Janet Rawson, Co-founder of Steps Drama Learning Development
The Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, director and teacher has written a blunt, unsparingly honest guide to acting. In True and False David Mamet overturns conventional opinion and tells aspiring actors what they really need to know. He leaves no aspect of acting untouched: how to judge the role, approach the part, work with the playwright; the right way to undertake auditions and the proper approach to agents and the business in general. True and False slaughters a wide range of sacred cows and yet offers an invaluable guide to the acting profession.
This is a survey of the small supporting roles, such as foils, feeds, attendants and messengers, that feature in Shakespeare's plays. Exploring topics such as how bit players should conduct themselves within a scene, and how blank verse or prose may be spoken to bring out the complexities of character definition, the book aims to bring insights to the dynamic of scenic construction in Shakespeare's work.;The author explores the different functions of minimal characters, from clearing the stage to epitomizing the overall effect of the comedy or tragedy, and discusses how they can extend the audience's knowledge of the social world of the play. She goes on to describe the entire corpus of minimal roles in a selection of six plays: "Richard III", "The Tempest", "King Lear", "Antony & Cleopatra", "Measure for Measure" and "Julius Caesar".;This edition has an appendix designed to aid directors in making decisions about the speaking parts of the minimal characters. It also includes an index of characters (including line references), as well as a detailed general index.
'This book gives some of the very best of Shakespeare's twenty-first-century colleagues an opportunity to share insights that can only come from playing him' Nicholas Hytner, from his Foreword Twelve leading actors take us behind the scenes of landmark Shakespearean productions, each recreating in detail their memorable performance in a major role. Roger Allam on his Falstaff in both Henry IV plays at Shakespeare's Globe Eileen Atkins on Viola in two productions of Twelfth Night seventeen years apart Simon Russell Beale on Cassius in Deborah Warner's modern-dress Julius Caesar Chiwetel Ejiofor on his Donmar Warehouse Othello, directed by Michael Grandage Sara Kestelman on Hippolyta and Titania in Peter Brook's iconic white-box Dream Ian McKellen on one of Shakespeare's most demanding of roles: King Lear Michael Pennington on stepping in at the eleventh hour as Timon of Athens Alan Rickman on re-evaluating the melancholic Jaques in As You Like It Fiona Shaw on Shakespeare's Shrew, Katherine, in Jonathan Miller's production Patrick Stewart on his Las Vegas-set Shylock, a role he has played many times Harriet Walter on Imogen in Shakespeare's late romance, Cymbeline, at the RSC Zoe Wanamaker on her National Theatre Beatrice, directed by Nicholas Hytner Each actor leads us through the choices they made in rehearsal, and how the character works in performance, shedding new light on some of the most challenging roles in the canon. The result is a series of individual masterclasses that will be invaluable for other actors and directors, as well as students of Shakespeare - and fascinating for audiences of the plays. Shakespeare On Stage: Volume 2 was shortlisted for the 2018 Theatre Book Prize. 'Absorbing and original... Curry's actors are often thinking and talking as that other professional performer, Shakespeare himself, might have done.' TLS on Shakespeare On Stage: Vol. 1
THE GOOD AUDITION GUIDES: Helping you select and perform the audition piece that is best suited to your performing skills As an actor at any level - whether you are doing theatre studies at school, taking part in youth theatre, preparing for drama-school showcases, or attending professional acting workshops - you will often be required to prepare a duologue with a fellow performer. Your success is often based on locating and selecting a fresh, dynamic scene suited to your specific performing skills, as well as your interplay as a duo. Which is where this book comes in. This collection features twenty-five fantastic duologues for two women, almost all written since the year 2000 by some of our most exciting dramatic voices, offering a wide variety of character types and styles of writing. Playwrights featured include Alexi Kaye Campbell, Helen Edmundson, Vivienne Franzmann, Sam Holcroft, Anna Jordan, Chloe Moss, Rona Munro, Lynn Nottage, Evan Placey and Jessica Swale, and the plays themselves were premiered at the very best theatres across the UK including the National Theatre, Manchester Royal Exchange, Shakespeare's Globe, and the Almeida, Bush, Soho, Royal Court and Tricycle Theatres. Drawing on her experience as an actor, director and teacher at several leading drama schools, Trilby James equips each duologue with a thorough introduction including the vital information you need to place the piece in context (the who, what, when, where and why) and suggestions about how to perform the scene to its maximum effect (including the characters' objectives). The collection also features an introduction on the whole process of selecting and preparing a duologue, and how to present it to the greatest effect. The result is the most comprehensive and useful contemporary duologue book of its kind now available. 'Sound practical advice... a source of inspiration for teachers and students alike' Teaching Drama Magazine on The Good Audition Guides
A unique survey of the twentieth century's most influential acting methods, offering invaluable practical insights for actors and drama teachers. Each of the ten famous techniques included in this handbook is described in detail by one of today's foremost practitioners. Each chapter outlines the development of the respective technique and offers practical guidance for actors wishing to explore it for themselves. * Lee Strasberg Technique by Anna Strasberg * Stella Adler Technique by Tom Oppenheim * Sanford Meisner Technique by Victoria Hart * Michael Chekhov Technique and The Mask by Per Brahe * Uta Hagen's Technique by Carol Rosenfeld * Physical Acting Inspired by Grotowski by Stephen Wangh * The Viewpoints by Mary Overlie * Practical Aesthetics by Robert Bella * Interdisciplinary Training by Fritz Ertl * Neo-classical Training by Louis Scheeder
'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.
Nothing will ever replace the active pleasure of telling and listening to stories. Only a live storyteller can impart to a tale that very human touch that brings a gleam of understanding to the listener's eye. The wonderful world of storytelling is revealed in this resource manual for beginners and seasoned performers. Many ideas for finding, writing, adapting and presenting stories are included. Three parts including: Choosing Stories to Tell, Developing Original Ideas and Presenting the Story. Story examples and exercises are given throughout. Each chapter is concluded with discussion questions and activities. A comprehensive textbook for oral interpretation. Sample chapters: What Is Storytelling?: Choosing a Story to Tell; Types of Stories and Where to Tell Them; The Situation, Audience and Location; Analyzing the Story; Ideas from Experience; Creating Character.
From the Renaissance commedia dell'arte to today's Second City comedy troupe, improvisation has been a hit. Learn the structure behind the spontaneity of comedy improvisation. Over thirty-five performance-tested improv structures and performance tips in this book help even a beginner tackle this "off the cuff" humor with confidence. Learn the elements of successful improvisation: setting, characters, conflict and action, and dialog and humor. Then have fun polishing your new skills in comedy clubs, coffee houses or acting classes. Instruction on loosening up, writing routines, coping with audiences and protecting original routines through contracts and copyrights are also included. Nine chapters: Basics of improvisation and Comedy, improvisation in the Classroom, Simple Improv Structures, Character Improv Structures, Advanced Improv Structures, Advanced Acting Exercises, Forming a Comedy/Improv Show, Putting on an Improv Show, Protecting Yourself and Your Work.
As part of the ever-growing, increasingly popular Drama Games series, Jessica Swale returns with another dip-in, flick-through, quick-fire resource book, packed with dozens of drama games that can be used in the process of devising theatre. The games will be invaluable to directors and theatre companies at all levels who are creating new pieces of theatre from scratch and need lively, dynamic games to fire the imagination. They will particularly appeal to school, youth theatre and community groups where devising is a growing trend - and a core element of the drama curriculum. Written with clear instructions on How to Play, notes on the Aim of the Game, and illuminating examples from professional productions, the games cover every aspect of the devising process and develop all the skills required: generating ideas, creating characters and scenarios, using stimuli, structuring the piece, and creating an ensemble. Mike Leigh, the most dedicated and celebrated creator of devised work, hails the book in his foreword as 'highly original and massively useful'. 'A remarkable compendium of games and exercises... a lively starting point for rich invention' Mike Leigh, from his Foreword
Blue Sky Body: Thresholds for Embodied Research is the follow-up to Ben Spatz's 2015 book What a Body Can Do, charting a course through more than twenty years of embodied, artistic, and scholarly research. Emerging from the confluence of theory and practice, this book combines full-length critical essays with a kaleidoscopic selection of fragments from journal entries, performance texts, and other unpublished materials to offer a series of entry points organized by seven keywords: city, song, movement, theater, sex, document, politics. Brimming with thoughtful and sometimes provocative takes on embodiment, technology, decoloniality, the university, and the politics of knowledge, the work shared here models the integration of artistic and embodied research with critical thought, opening new avenues for transformative action and experimentation. Invaluable to scholars and practitioners working through and beyond performance, Blue Sky Body is both an unconventional introduction to embodied research and a methodological intervention at the edges of contemporary theory.
This collection of Applied Improvisation stories and strategies draws back the curtain on an exciting, innovative, growing field of practice and research that is changing the way people lead, create, and collaborate. Applied Improvisation is the umbrella term widely used to denote the application of improvised theatre's theories, tenets, games, techniques, and exercises beyond conventional theatre spaces, to foster the growth and/or development of flexible structures, new mindsets, and a range of inter and intra-personal skills required in today's volatile and uncertain world. This edited collection offers one of the first surveys of the range of practice, featuring 12 in-depth case studies by leading Applied Improvisation practitioners and a foreword by Phelim McDermott and Lee Simpson. The contributors in this anthology are professional Applied Improvisation facilitators working in sectors as diverse as business, social science, theatre, education, law, and government. All have experienced the power of improvisation, have a driving need to share those experiences, and are united in the belief that improvisation can positively transform just about all human activity. Each contributor describes their practice, integrates feedback from clients, and includes a workbook component outlining some of the exercises used in their case study to give facilitators and students a model for their own application. This book will serve as a valuable resource for both experienced and new Applied Improvisation facilitators seeking to develop leaders and to build resilient communities, innovative teams, and vibrant organizations. For theatre practitioners, educators, and students, it opens up a new realm of practice and work. |
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