Description
Book Synopsis This work is a straightforward approach to the creative process of actor training. Combining principles of verbal and nonverbal communication with the basic tenets of Stanislavski''s approach, it includes a step-by-step guide for reading, analyzing, and preparing a text for performance. The book also provides a template for rehearsing a sonnet, a soliloquy, and scenes from plays of heightened language ranging from Shakespeare, Moliere, and Congreve, to Ibsen, Shaw, and Lynn Nottage.
Using improvisation, games and exercises with a series of tools designed to enhance the creative process, the book outlines the specific steps necessary to engage in the basic tenets of acting: overcoming obstacles and playing action-based objectives. Enlarging the field of study to include status, opposition, and releasing, as well as scansion and an emphasis on operative words and images, the actor emerges from this training process prepared to play any text, in any style, under any circum
Table of Contents
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- Introduction
- One. Basic Concepts
- Two. Communication
- Three. Verse
- Four. The Sonnet: The Argument
- Five. The Soliloquy: Transformation
- Six. The Scene: The Loop, Part I
- Seven. The Scene: The Loop, Part II
- Eight. Molière: Status
- Nine. Congreve: Extended Character
- Ten. Ibsen: Opposites
- Eleven. Shaw: The Basic 8
- Twelve. Nottage: Releases
- Appendix: Additional Plays and Playwrights
- Glossary
- Sources and Resources
- Index of Games and Exercises
