Improvisation is a highly creative and collaborative art form, encompassing the skills of storytelling, character creation and stage presence all in the moment. However, with an array of styles and techniques to choose from, it can be hard for new practitioners to negotiate the moving parts and find their own individuality. In this practical guide, Artistic Director and improv expert Jason Moran explores the basic pillars of improvisation and explains how to practically apply these in an improvised scene, game or situation. Each chapter showcases a different pillar and offers a practical checklist to make each scene interesting and robust. This helpful book unpacks and analyses real-life improvised examples from the stage, rehearsal room and classroom, illustrating to the reader what works well and what could work better, making it essential reading for actors, presenters and anyone who wants to increase their confidence in public performances.

In celebration of his one-hundredth birthday, a charming, irresistibly readable, and handsomely packaged look back at the life and times of the greatest entertainer in American history, Frank Sinatra. Sinatra's Century is an irresistible collection of one-hundred short reflections on the man, his music, and his larger-than-life story, by a lifetime fan who also happens to be one of the poetry world's most prominent voices. David Lehman uses each of these short pieces to look back on a single facet of the entertainer's story-from his childhood in Hoboken, to his emergence as "The Voice" in the 1940s, to the wild professional (and romantic) fluctuations that followed. Lehman offers new insights and revisits familiar stories-Sinatra's dramatic love affairs with some of the most beautiful stars in Hollywood, including Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe, and Ava Gardner; his fall from grace in the late 1940s and resurrection during the "Capitol Years" of the 1950s; his bonds with the rest of the Rat Pack; and his long tenure as the Chairman of the Board, viewed as the eminence grise of popular music inspiring generations of artists, from Bobby Darin to Bono to Bob Dylan. Brimming with Lehman's own lifelong affection for Sinatra, the book includes lists of unforgettable performances; engaging insight on what made Sinatra the model of American machismo-and the epitome of romance; and clear-eyed assessments of the foibles that impacted his life and work. Warm and enlightening, Sinatra's Century is full-throated appreciation of Sinatra for every fan.

Bruce Kimmel has managed to eke out a career in one form of show business or another for over forty years. A successful Grammy-nominated record producer, Kimmel began his show business journey as an actor, in a time when being a young up-and-coming thespian was fun, thrilling, and when anything seemed possible. It was a different world for a young actor in the 1970s, and Kimmel's journey is paved with laughs, tears, success, and an amazing cast of players. At twenty-seven, he wrote, co-directed, and starred in a film that would become a major cult success, The First Nudie Musical. He did TV pilots, guest shots, series, plays. He met and worked with incredible people. It was the kind of time we will never see again. And then things changed. The nature of the business changed. And the path to dealing with those changes-getting older, trying to survive in an ever increasingly negative and cutthroat world-becomes a story of reinvention and rebirth. Through it all, Kimmel tells his tale with wit, candor, affection, and self-effacing honesty. Enjoy being the fly on the wall as Kimmel hangs out with Elsa Lanchester, Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy; goes to Groucho's house and plays the piano for him; works with Shirley Jones, David Cassidy, Susan Dey on The Partridge Family. We observe his long friendship with Cindy Williams, watch as he works with screen legends Patricia Neal, Jean Simmons, Leslie Nielsen, Patrick Macnee, Bud Cort, and Geraldine Fitzgerald, and as he hangs out with Hugh Hefner at the Playboy mansion., Bruce Kimmel's showbiz tales are loaded with laughs, wide-eyed wonder, and heart.

What does a forty-two-year-old, small-town pastor do when he wins one of the most popular singing competitions in the world? Todd Tilghman and his wife, Brooke, share how decades of unrelenting challenges have taught them a joyful mindset of embracing not only winning The Voice but also "every little win" along the way. When Todd Tilghman, pastor and father of eight from Meridian, Mississippi, auditioned for The Voice,he counted it as a win simply to sing in front of an audience other than family and church members. Despite no music or vocal training, he not only made it through the blind audition--with all four celebrity judges vying to coach him--he also won the show's entire eighteenth season. Fans were drawn to Todd's tremendous joy on stage, giving them much-needed inspiration during the hard challenges of a global pandemic. In their first book, Todd and Brooke share how their focus on joy and celebrating every little win has helped them to overcome numerous challenges over their twenty-plus-year marriage. From adopting two children from South Korea to fighting for their newborn son's life to pastoring a small congregation through periods of adversity, Todd and Brooke share the lessons they've learned and the strategies that have moved them from fear to faith to ever-present joy.

"Cracked Shell Whole Yolk" is a collection of life events from the mind of a woman who survives domestic violence. Margo Viola escapes her abuser through the only avenue available "Death." After cheating death herself, she in turn had crossed the line and committed the sin of having another person's life taken. Cracked Shell Whole Yolk depicts the trials and tribulations of Margo's entire life path, coupled with her overwhelming desire to make right what she had wronged. Margo shows an innate ability to overcome adversity. Margo's life story proves that there are desperate changes needed in our Judicial System to narrow the brood spectrum of disparity, while handling Domestic Violence cases. Margo uses her bitter life experience as a tool for self-betterement and a guide to help others. She displays how one woman picked up her life, with heightened clarity and determination. Her strives marked the truth by living proof, of how one individual can make a difference. Margo's Memoir prompts society to take a cold hard look at the true dynamics of Domestic Violence, and how it plagues our community, thus erodes our family core. Cracked Shell/Whole Yolk is a thrilling adventure of a woman's life that soars at each turn of the page. Her experience touches all of us as a collective whole. Margo truly emerges from a "Cracked Shell" into a fully rounded "Whole Yolk"

Many stars from China, Japan and Korea are the most popular and instantly recognizable in the world. East Asian Film Stars brings together some of the world's leading cinema scholars to offer their insights into the work of regional and transnational screen legends, contemporary superstars and mysterious cult personas.

An unrivalled icon of grace and femininity, Audrey Hepburn is perhaps the most beloved star in the history of cinema. She enchanted millions of people with the sweetness of her smile and her inimitable style and was able to renew her image throughout the decades, anticipating fashion trends and establishing a new ideal of beauty. This volume retraces Hepburn's incredible rise, from the early years to her worldwide fame. The book is divided into four sections: 'A Star is Born', which follows Audrey's first steps into the spotlight as a doe-eyed dancer; 'The Golden Age', how Audrey became the muse of Hubert de Givenchy and gave Hollywood a new ideal of elegance; 'A Diva's Style', which touches on Breakfast at Tiffany's, where Holly Golighty went down in the history of cinema with her sunglasses and little black dress, along with many others of Audrey's later film work; and 'Saving the Children'. This final section of the book puts great emphasis on her humanitarian work as UNICEF ambassador, on the side of all the children of the world. Both on screen and in real life, Audrey has remained faithful to the elegance of understatement and kindness, hidden behind her unforgettable smile.

Other early 'stand-out' roles came in the premieres of Caryl Churchill's Cloud Nine (1979) and Mike Leigh's Goose Pimples (1981). He was Malcolm Bradbury's History Man on TV (1981) before joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1982, where he has played a huge variety of leading role in modern plays such as David Edgar's Maydays (1983) and Peter Flannery's Singer (1989) but chiefly in Shakespeare. He was the Fool to Michael Gambon's Lear, a famous Richard III, Shylock, Malvolio, Leontes, Macbeth with Harriet Walter, and, currently, Iago. For the RSC he was also Cyrano and Tamburlaine and the Malcontent. Interspersed with these were appearances at the National Theatre - as Astrov to Ian McKellen's Uncle Vanya, as Stanley Spencer in Pam Gems's play and as Titus Andronicus, which he originated at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg. In October 2004 he will appear at the National again in his own play based on Primo Levi's This was a Man. Following his debut as a writer with Year of the King, he has written four novels - Middlepost, Indoor Boy, Cheap Lives and The Feast - as well as an autobiography, Beside Myself (2001), and a play, I.D. (premiered at the Almeida, 2003).

The book is about Heaven, but does not include any near death experience for sensationalism. The author shares many miracles so that the reader may understand that this is a bona fide account of Heaven because God does not back what is not true, the miracles being His backing. There is a section on how the devil became the devil so that the reader may understand matters in Heaven and on earth. The underlying truth always is that whatever is good on earth is automatically in Heaven. Also whatever was good and fantastic on earth first appeared in Heaven; that is why it is called an invention and not a creation.

In The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock Edward White explores the Hitchcock phenomenon-what defines it, how it was invented, what it reveals about the man at its core and how its legacy continues to shape our cultural world. The book's twelve chapters illuminate different aspects of Hitchcock's life and work: "The Boy Who Couldn't Grow Up"; "The Murderer"; "The Auteur"; "The Womanizer"; "The Fat Man"; "The Dandy"; "The Family Man"; "The Voyeur"; "The Entertainer"; "The Pioneer"; "The Londoner"; "The Man of God". Each of these angles reveals something fundamental about the man he was and the mythological creature he has become, presenting not just the life Hitchcock lived, but also the various versions of himself that he projected and those projected on his behalf. White's portrayal illuminates a vital truth: Hitchcock was more than a Hollywood titan; he was the definitive modern artist and his significance reaches far beyond the confines of cinema.