The Actor Training Reader

Author: Mark Evans
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780415824019
Category : Acting
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The Actor Training Reader is an invaluable resource for students and teachers of acting, offering access to a wide range of key texts that identify, explore, illuminate and interrogate the challenges, practices and processes involved in training the modern actor. A companion volume to the highly-acclaimed Actor Training (Hodge 2010), this book collects key writings by influential actor training practitioners of the twentieth century, introduced with essays from leading academics in the field of actor training. Key practitioners included are: Eugenio Barba; Anne Bogart; Bertolt Brecht; Peter Brook; Michael Chekhov; and Konstantin Stanislavsky. The book sets established, widely used texts alongside less well-known ones in order to trace the development of actor training from the pioneering advances of Eastern Europe to the acting games of Augusto Boal. The texts are grouped into thematic sections rather than chronologically in order to encourage a comparison of different approaches to similar aspects of the craft. Each section will have a specially commissioned introductory essay by an expert in that area of actor training, which will bring context, critical engagement and contemporary relevance to the extracts and offer provocations for further discussion.

Twentieth Century Actor Training

Author: Alison Hodge
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 0415194512
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Book Description
THE SECOND EDITION OF THIS TITLE, ENTITLED ACTOR TRAINING, IS NOW AVAILABLE. Actor training is arguably the central phenomenon of twentieth century theatre making. Here for the first time, the theories, training exercises and productions of fourteen directors are analysed in a single volume, each one written by a leading expert. The practitioners included are: * Stella Adler * Bertolt Brecht * Joseph Chaikin * Jacques Copeau * Joan Littlewood * Vsevelod Meyerhold * Konstantin Stanislavsky * Eugenio Barba * Peter Brook * Michael Chekhov * Jerzy Grotowski * Sanford Meisner * Wlodimierz Staniewski * Lee Strasbourg Each chapter provides a unique account of specific training exercises and an analysis of their relationship to the practitioners theoretical and aesthetic concerns. The collection examines the relationship between actor training and production and considers how directly the actor training relates to performance. With detailed accounts of the principles, exercises and their application to many of the landmark productions of the past hundred years, this book will be invaluable to students, teachers, practitioners, and academics alike.

Movement Training for the Modern Actor

Author: Mark Evans
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135892938
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 394

Book Description
This book is the first critical analysis of the key principles and practices informing the movement training of actors in the modern era. Focusing on the cultural history of modern movement training for actors, Evans traces the development of the ‘neutral’ body as a significant area of practice within drama school training and the relationship between movement pedagogy and the operation of discipline and power in shaping the professional identity of the actor. The volume looks in detail at the influence of the leading figures in movement training — Laban, Alexander, Copeau and Lecoq — on twentieth century professional actor training, and is informed by interviews with students and staff at leading English drama schools. Mark Evans re-evaluates the significance of movement training in the professional drama school, offering a new understanding of the body as a site for performative resistance to industrialization. Despite the publication of a number of ‘how to’ books on movement training for the professional acting student, this is the first text to look behind the curtain and write the unseen biography of the actor’s body.

Michael Chekhov

Author: Franc Chamberlain
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429941064
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 161

Book Description
Following in the footsteps of his renowned teacher Konstantin Stanislavsky, Michael Chekhov’s work as an actor, author and theatre practitioner gave great insight into how to access the creative self. This revised and updated edition of Michael Chekhov includes: • A biographical introduction to Chekhov’s life • A clear explanation of his key writings • An analysis of his work as a director • A practical guide to Chekhov’s unique actor-training exercises. As a first step towards critical understanding, and as an initial exploration before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance Practitioners offer unbeatable value for today’s student.

The Invisible Actor

Author: Yoshi Oida
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350148288
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 123

Book Description
The Invisible Actor presents the captivating and unique methods of the distinguished Japanese actor and director, Yoshi Oida. While a member of Peter Brook's theatre company in Paris, Yoshi Oida developed a masterful approach to acting that combined the oriental tradition of supreme and studied control with the Western performer's need to characterise and expose depths of emotion. Written with Lorna Marshall, Yoshi Oida explains that once the audience becomes openly aware of the actor's method and becomes too conscious of the actor's artistry, the wonder of performance dies. The audience must never see the actor but only his or her performance. Throughout Lorna Marshall provides contextual commentary on Yoshi Oida's work and methods. In a new foreword to accompany the Bloomsbury Revelations edition, Yoshi Oida revisits the questions that have informed his career as an actor and explores how his skilful approach to acting has shaped the wider contours of his life.

Training the Actor's Body

Author: Dick McCaw
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472587855
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
A practical guide to the principles of teaching and learning movement, this book instructs the actor on how to train the body to become a medium of expression. Starting with a break-down of the principles of actor training through exercises and theatre games, Dick McCaw teaches the actor about their own body and its possibilities including: the different ways it can move, the space it occupies and finally its rhythm, timing and pacing. With 64 exercises supported by diagrams and online video, Dick McCaw draws on his 20 years of teaching experience to coach the reader in the dynamics of movement education to achieve a responsive and articulate body.

Teaching Strategies for Neurodiversity and Dyslexia in Actor Training

Author: Petronilla Whitfield
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429858191
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 366

Book Description
Teaching Strategies for Neurodiversity and Dyslexia in Actor Training addresses some of the challenges met by acting students with dyslexia and highlights the abilities demonstrated by individuals with specific learning differences in actor training. The book offers six tested teaching strategies, created from practical and theoretical research investigations with dyslexic acting students, using the methodologies of case study and action research. Utilizing Shakespeare’s text as a laboratory of practice and drawing directly from the voices and practical work of the dyslexic students themselves, the book explores: the stress caused by dyslexia and how the teacher might ameliorate it through changes in their practice the theories and discourse surrounding the label of dyslexia the visual, kinaesthetic, and multisensory processing preferences demonstrated by some acting students assessed as dyslexic acting approaches for engaging with Shakespeare’s language, enabling those with dyslexia to develop their authentic voice and abilities a grounding of the words and the meaning of the text through embodied cognition, spatial awareness, and epistemic tools Stanislavski’s method of units and actions and how it can benefit and obstruct the student with dyslexia when working on Shakespeare Interpretive Mnemonics as a memory support and hermeneutic process, and the use of color and drawing towards an autonomy in live performance This book is a valuable resource for voice and actor training, professional performance, and for those who are curious about emancipatory methods that support difference through humanistic teaching philosophies.

Voice and the Young Actor

Author: Rena Cook
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 147253915X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 205

Book Description
"Many high school theatre teachers do not have access to intensive voice instruction. Rena's book will fill that void. It is instructive, concise, easy to understand, and most importantly for the high school student, fun. High school teachers will find the book an invaluable voice and acting resource. It would be beneficial to all high school theatre programs to have Voice and the Young Actor as a textbook." Kim Moore, High School Teacher, Colorado There are thousands of students enrolled in school drama classes in yet very often young actors cannot be heard, are culturally encouraged to trail off at the ends of sentences, and habitually use only the lowest pitches of the voice. Drama teachers, frequently ask, "How can I get my students to speak up, to be clear, to articulate?" Voice and the Young Actor is written for the school actor, is inviting in format, language and illustration and offers clear and inspiring instructions. A DVD features 85 mins and 28 filmed voice workshop exercises with the author and two students. These students log their reflections in the book on what they have learned throughout their training and there is space for the reader to do the same. A workbook in format, Voice and the Young Actor provides simple, interactive vocal exercises and shows young performers how to take voice work into acting.

Training of the American Actor (Large Print 16pt)

Author: Arthur Bartow
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1458781267
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 530

Book Description
The first comprehensive survey and study of the major techniques developed by and for the American actor over the past 60 years. Presented side-by-side, each of the 10 disciplines included is described in detail by one of today's foremost practitioners. An invaluable resource both for the young actor embarking on a career and for the theatre professional polishing his or her craft. ''successful acting must reflect a society's current beliefs. The men and women who developed each new technique were convinced that previous methods were not equal to the full challenges of their time and place, and the techniques in this book have been adapted to current needs in order to continue to be successful methods for training actors. The actor's journey is an individual one, and the actor seeks a form, or a variety of forms, of training that will assist in unlocking his own creative gifts of expression.''

The Expressive Actor

Author: Michael Lugering
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415669308
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Book Description
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.