Performing Arts

Actioning is one of the most widely used rehearsal techniques for actors. It helps bring clarity to every moment or thought in the text, energizing rehearsals and bringing performances to life. This step-by-step guide draws on concepts from Stanislavsky, using sample scenes from both classic and contemporary plays, and is filled with exercises to demonstrate the technique at work.

An inspiring, practical guide to working with young people on their voices, from a highly experienced teacher, actor, and director. This book is for all youth-theatre leaders, workshop facilitators, and teachers who want to help their students to develop their voices. It offers a step-by-step course of workshops and themed sessions, along with a series of exercises and vocal warm-ups.

This comprehensive, practical manual covers the day-to-day, real-world essentials an actor needs to succeed in the industry. Honest, straightforward, and empowering, this book will help you unlock your potential and focus on being the best, most employable—and, hopefully, successful—actor you can be. The essential, one-stop handbook for actors, with everything you need to survive and thrive.

"Every day do at least one thing that might lead to work, and then get on with living your life." With this mantra in mind, Chairman of London's Actors Centre, Paul Clayton, presents a series of invaluable exercises for the newly graduated professional actor to improve their chances of employment.

The Viewpoints is a technique of improvisation that grew out of the postmodern dance world. It was first articulated by choreographer Mary Overlie, who broke down the two dominant issues performers deal with—space and time—into six categories. Since that time, directors Anne Bogart and Tina Landau have expanded her notions and adapted them for actors to function together spontaneously and intuitively and to generate bold, theatrical work.

The Viewpoints are a set of names given to certain principles of movement through time and space—they constitute a language for talking about what happens on stage. Coupling this with Composition, which is the practice of selecting and arranging the separate components of theatrical language into a cohesive work of art, provides theatre artists with an important new tool for creating and understanding their art form.

Primarily intended for the many theatre artists who, in the last several years, have become intrigued with Viewpoints yet have had no single source to refer to in their investigations. It can also be used by anyone with a general interest in collaboration and the creative process, whether in art, business or daily life.

Anne Bogart is Artistic Director of the SITI Company, which she founded with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. She is the recipient of two OBIE Awards and a Bessie Award, and is an associate professor at Columbia University. Her recent works include Alice’s Adventures; Bobrauschenbergamerica; Small Lives, Big Dreams; Marathon Dancing; and The Baltimore Waltz.

Tina Landau, noted director and playwright, whose original work includes Space (Time magazine 10 Best), Dream True (with composer Ricky Ian Gordon) and Floyd Collins (with composer Adam Guettel), which received the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Musical, an OBIE Award and seven Drama Desk nominations. She has been an ensemble member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company since 1997.

A new title in the ever-popular Drama Games series, Thomasina Unsworth (teacher at Rose Bruford College) presents over eighty energizing, instructive, and dynamic games for actors to develop their own performances—by working on themselves, their characters, and their connection to the text.

Insightful, empowering and always reassuring, this book provides all the tools actors need to understand, confront, and ultimately overcome stage fright and its effects, thereby regaining control over their lives and careers. It’s also valuable reading for any teacher, director or stage manager working closely with actors, and a fascinating insight for anyone interested in what actors go through.