Broadway Bookshelf — For Actors — Page 21

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For Actors Books

Theatre

(2010)

This lively introduction to theatre offers equal measures of appreciation of theatrical arts, history of performance, and descriptions of the collaborative theatrical crafts. The author’s enthusiasm for and knowledge of the current theatre, highlighted by contemporary production shots from around the world, put the students in the front row. The text includes extensive excerpts from seven plays: Prometheus Bound, Oedipus Tyrannos, The York Cycle, Romeo and Juliet, The Bourgeois Gentleman, The ...

The Intent to Live: Achieving Your True Potential as an Actor

(2005)

“I call this book The Intent to Live because great actors don’t seem to be acting, they seem to be actually living.” –Larry Moss, from the Introduction When Oscar-winning actors Helen Hunt and Hilary Swank accepted their Academy Awards, each credited Larry Moss’s guidance as key to their career-making performances. There is a two-year waiting list for his advanced acting classes. But now everyone–professionals and amateurs alike–can discover Moss’s passionate, in-depth teachi...

The Intent to Live: Achieving Your True Potential as an Actor

True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor

(1999)

True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor by David Mamet is an instructional book on acting, and the life and habits of the successful actor. In it, Mamet outlines his thoughts on acting, and gives advice for those practicing the craft and for aspiring practitioners. In the book, Mamet derides the practice of teaching drama students the system of Constantin Stanislavski or method acting of Lee Strasberg. In Mamet's opinion, time spent searching for emotion memory or considering cha...

Stage Makeup: The Actor's Complete Guide to Today's Techniques and Materials

(1999)

Whether you are an actor in a summer-stock or regional theater, an acting conservatory program, a high-school or college production, a community theater, a local holiday pageant...or anywhere else, this is the best all-purpose "how-to" guide to makeup for the theater. Besides period makeup, age makeup, and special-effects applications, the book delves into fantasy makeup, animal faces, and other kinds of stylization found on the contemporary stageand with the use of the most up-to-date materials...

Stage Makeup: The Actor's Complete Guide to Today's Techniques and Materials

The Pot of Gold and Other Plays

(1965)

One of the supreme comic writers of the Roman world, Plautus (c.254–184 BC), skilfully adapted classic Greek comic models to the manners and customs of his day. This collection features a varied selection of his finest plays, from the light-hearted comedy Pseudolus, in which the lovesick Calidorus and his slave try to liberate his lover from her pimp, to the more subversive The Prisoners, which raises serious questions about the role of slavery. Also included are The Brothers Menaechmus, which...

Playing Shakespeare: An Actor's Guide

(2001)

Walking the boards in a play by the Bard can be one of the most rewarding and frightening experiences of an actor's life. Drawing on 35 years' experience as associate director of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), Barton here offers advice on tackling Shakespeare as a performer. Along with assistance from fellow RSC players, including Ian McKellan, Judi Dench, Ben Kingsley, and Patrick Stewart, Barton offers tips on replicating the often tongue-twisting prose, exploring the characters, underst...

The Threepenny Opera

(1994)

Brutal, scandalous, perverted, yet humorous, hummable, and with a happy ending- Bertolt Brecht's revolutionary masterpiece The Threepenny Opera is a landmark of modern drama that has become embedded in the Western cultural imagination. Through the love story of Polly Peachum and "Mack the Knife" Macheath, the play satirizes the bourgeois of the Weimar Republic, revealing a society at the height of decadence and on the verge of chaos. Complemented with music by Kurt Weill, it was one of the earli...

The Power of the Actor

(2005)

In The Power of the Actor, a Los Angeles Times bestseller, premier acting teacher and coach Ivana Chubbuck reveals her cutting-edge technique, which has launched some of the most successful acting careers in Hollywood. The first book from the instructor who has taught Charlize Theron, Brad Pitt, Elisabeth Shue, Djimon Hounsou, and Halle Berry, The Power of the Actor guides you to dynamic and effective results. For many of today’s major talents, the Chubbuck Technique is the leading edge of ac...

A Director Prepares: Seven Essays on Art and Theatre

(2001)

Bogart (directing, Columbia Univ.) is the artistic director of the SITI Company, an ensemble-based theater company that she founded with Tadshi Suzuki. Her book is aimed at the practitioner but has value for the avid theater goer as well. What we see on stage, as a whole, is a culmination of bits and pieces, steps forward and backward, as a work of "art" is created and then presented. In each essay, Bogart discusses one of seven concepts violence, memory, terror, eroticism, stereotype, embarras...

A Director Prepares: Seven Essays on Art and Theatre

The Cherry Orchard

(2010)

Anton Chekhov is a unique force in modern drama, his works cherished for their brilliant wit and insight into the human condition. In this stunning new translation of one of Chekhov’s most popular and beloved plays, Laurence Senelick presents a fresh perspective on the master playwright and his groundbreaking dramas. He brings this timeless trial of art and love to life as memorable characters have clashing desires and lose balance in the shifting eruptions of society and a modernizing Russia....

Stage Makeup

(1990)

Key Benefit: A classic in the field, this book helps makeup artists and actors learn the proper technique when applying stage makeup. Key Topics: This easy, step-by-step guide is comprised of 20 comprehensive chapters covering all aspects of stage makeup application. Topics include: basic techniques as well as new methods and materials for all types of stage makeup; updated information on hairstyles and fashions. Revered as the stage makeup bible, this book includes listings of makeup colors fro...

Henry IV, Parts I & II

(2007)

The Longman Cultural Editions series presents the only paperback edition of both parts of Henry IV published in one volume, together with relevant literary and historical contextual materials that illluminate without overwhelming the primary texts. This edition presents both parts of Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays in the authoritative Bevington edition, tracing the full course of Prince Hal’s ambiguous journey from prodigal youth to his role as King Henry V, as well as the controversial caree...

The Stanislavski System: The Professional Training of an Actor

(1984)

This clearly written guide to the Stanislavski method has long been a favorite among students and teachers of acting. Now, in light of books and articles recently published in the Soviet Union, Sonia Moore has made revisions that include a new section on the subtext of a role. She provides detailed explanations of all the methods that actors in training have found indispensable for more than twenty years. Designed to create better actors, this guide will put individuals in touch with themselves...

The Stanislavski System: The Professional Training of an Actor

The Collected Works of William Butler Yeats

(2010)

This Halcyon Classics collection contains dozens of works by William Butler Yeats, one of the foremost figures of 20th-Century English-language poetry, drama, and literature. Yeats (1865-1939) is best known for his poetry, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923, the first Irish writer so honored. Yeats was born and educated in Dublin, studying poetry in his youth. From an early age he was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. Those topics feature in the firs...

The Collected Works of William Butler Yeats

Theatre: A Way of Seeing

(2001)

Consistently praised for being "streamlined" and "clear and student friendly," this text offers the beginning theatre student an exciting, full-color introduction to all aspects of theatre. It presents the experience of theatre, who sees, what is seen, where and how it is seen largely from the viewpoint of audiences exposed to a complex, living art that involves people, spaces, plays, designs, staging, forms, language, and productions. The book includes the appropriate coverage of the history, d...

Heartbreak House

(2005)

When Ellie Dunn joins a house-party at the home of the eccentric Captain Shotover, she causes a stir with her decision to marry for money rather than love, and the Captain’s forthright daughter Hesione protests vigorously against the pragmatic young woman’s choice. Opinion on the matter quickly divides and a lively argument about money and morality, idealism and realism ensues as Hesione’s rakish husband, snobbish sister and Ellie’s fiancé – a wealthy industrialist – enter the debat...

Our Day Out: Improving Standards in English through Drama

(2011)

This revised version of Willy Russell's much loved play won rave reviews when it opened in Liverpool in 2009. Slightly updated and featuring more songs, it retains all the humor and appeal of the original. This educational edition in Methuen Drama's Critical Scripts series has been prepared by national Drama in Secondary English experts Ruth Moore and Paul Bunyan, building on a decade of highly effective work and research. Mrs Kay's Progress Class are off to Alton Towers - until Mr Briggs ...

Our Day Out: Improving Standards in English through Drama

A Challenge for the Actor

(1991)

This volume completes Hagen's earlier classic, Respect for Acting (Macmillan, 1973). The beliefs, professionalism, and standards of training and performance that make Respect required reading for all actors are explored in this acting textbook that represents a lifetime of performance and teaching. Unlike the more academic texts, Hagen's study reflects exercises, insights, and techniques that have been taught and practiced in acting studios and on stages for many years. Readers should not be pu...

An Unsocial Socialist

(1972)

An Unsocial Socialist was published in 1887, having been written in 1883. The tale begins with a humorous description of student antics at a girl's school then changes focus to a seemingly uncouth laborer who, it soon develops, is really a wealthy gentleman in hiding from his overly affectionate wife. He needs the freedom gained by matrimonial truancy to promote the socialistic cause, to which he is an active convert. Once the subject of socialism emerges, it dominates the story, allowing only ...

Daisy Miller

(2006)

Daisy Miller and Winterbourne first meet in Vevey, Switzerland, where Winterbourne is vacationing from his alleged studies (although an attachment to an older lady is rumoured). They are introduced by Randolph Miller, Daisy's 9-year old brother. Randolph considers their hometown of Schenectady, New York, to be absolutely superior to all of Europe. Daisy, however, is absolutely delighted with the continent, especially the high society which she wishes to enter. Winterbourne is at first confused...

Bacchae

(1999)

Euripides' classic drama about the often mortifying consequences of the unbridled--and frequently hysterical--celebration of the feast of Dionysus, the God of wine.

The Fugitive

(2010)

1913. English novelist and playwright, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932, Galsworthy became known for his portrayal of the British upper middle class and for his social satire. The Fugitive is one of the Third Series of Plays.

Mrs. Warren's Profession

(2010)

Mrs Warren's Profession is a play written by George Bernard Shaw in 1893. The story centers on the relationship between Mrs Kitty Warren, a brothel owner, described by the author as "on the whole, a genial and fairly presentable old blackguard of a woman" and her daughter, Vivie. Mrs Warren is a middle-aged woman whose Cambridge-educated daughter, Vivie, is horrified to discover that her mother's fortune was made managing high-class brothels. The two women make a brief reconciliation when Mrs Wa...

Death and the Maiden

(2009)

"Generally, it's the tortured who turn into torturers."" -Carl Gustav Jung. Suspense mounts when Paulina and her husband offer hospitality to a stranger. Paulina thinks she recognizes, in their guest, the man who tortured her in prison, and she subsequently takes him hostage to find out the truth. A stunningly blunt and compelling play, Death and the Maiden explores brilliantly the issues of torture, power, vulnerability, ethics, and trust. An award-winning play by Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman, ...

Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre

(1987)

Impro ought to be required reading not only for theatre people generally but also for teachers, educators, and students of all kinds and persuasions. Readers of this book are not going to agree with everything in it; but if they are not challenged by it, if they do not ultimately succumb to its wisdom and whimsicality, they are in a very sad state indeed . . . .Johnstone seeks to liberate the imagination, to cultivate in the adult the creative power of the child . . . .Deserves to be widely read...

Theatre: Collaborative Acts

(2003)

Theatre: Collaborative Acts stimulates creative thinking through its interwoven themes of theatre as culture, collaboration, spatial art, and a dynamic fusion of past and present. The central premise of the text is that theatre is entertainment and art. It allows us to escape, relax, and refocus. Theatre also stimulates creative thinking and provokes discussion of artistic, social and ethical questions. Through their study of theatre, students develop lifelong tools to help them enjoy, analyze, ...

Next to Normal

(2010)

Next to Normal is a rock musical with book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey and music by Tom Kitt. Its story concerns a mother who struggles with worsening bipolar disorder and the effect that her illness has on her family. The musical also addresses such issues as grieving a loss, suicide, drug abuse, ethics in modern psychiatry, and suburban life. Next to Normal received several workshop performances before it debuted off-Broadway in 2008, winning the Outer Critics' Circle Award for Outstanding Sc...

Twelfth Night

(2005)

Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play Scene-by-scene plot summaries A key to famous lines and phrases An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play Illustrations from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare books

Truth in Comedy: The Manual of Improvisation

(1994)

Who would have ever thought that learning the finer points of improvisation could be such fun? The "Harold," an innovative improvisational tool, helped Saturday Night Live's Mike Myers and Chris Farley, George Wendt (Norm on "Cheers") and many other actors on the road to TV and film stardom. Now it is described fully in this new book for the benefit of other would-be actors and comics. The "Harold" is a form of competitive improv involving six or seven players. They take a theme suggestion from...

Truth in Comedy: The Manual of Improvisation

The Art of Dramatic Writing

(2007)

The Art of Dramatic Writing is a concise guide to all forms of creative writing, from premise to characters to plot.

The Merchant of Venice

(2009)

The Merchant of Venice is a tragic comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps most remembered for its dramatic scenes, and is best known for Shylock and the famous 'Hath not a Jew eyes' speech. The title character is the merchant Antonio, not the Jewish moneylender Shylock, who is the play's most prominent and mo...

Acting for the Camera

(1997)

Culled from Tony Barr's 40 years' experience as a performer, director and acting teacher in Hollywood, this highly praised handbook provides readers with the practical knowledge they needwhen performing in front of the camera. This updated edition includes plenty of new exercises for honing on-camera skills; additional chapters on imagination and movement; and fresh material on character development, monologues, visual focus, playing comedy and working with directors. Inside tips on the studio s...

The Art of Acting

(2000)

This second collection of Adler's papers precedes the material found in the previous collection (Stella Adler on Ibsen, Strindberg and Chekov, LJ 4/15/99), ending as she begins text analysis. Here Kissel (David Merrick) has taken tapes, transcriptions, notebooks, and other sources to reconstruct an acting course in 22 lessons. What results is Adler at her strongest. Coming from a theatrical family and having studied with Stanislavsky, she became an old-fashioned autocratic teacher determined to ...

The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate

(1995)

In The Empty Space, groundbreaking director Peter Brook draws on a life in love with the stage to explore the issues facing any theatrical performance. Here he describes important developments in theatre from the last century, as well as smaller scale events, from productions by Stanislavsky to the rise of Method Acting, from Brecht's revolutionary alienation technique to the free form Happenings of the 1960s, and from the different styles of such great Shakespearean actors as John Gielgud and ...

The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate

Candida

(2011)

Probably Shaw's most popular play, Candida recounts the love sickness of young poet Eugene Marchbanks for Candida, wife of the Rev. Morell. At first, Morell is amused; but when he begins to doubt his wife's love, he becomes disturbed and angered. The poet becomes the stronger suitor, Morell realizes his weaknesses and Candida, one of the most remarkable women in dramatic literature, gives strength to her husband and teaches Marchbanks how to love. Harris offers a superb adaptation for competitio...

She Stoops to Conquer

(2009)

This edition of a familiar and ever-delightful classic of the stage is intended to satisfy two current demands in the teaching of secondary English. It will make available for school use the most successful and the most important, historically, of Goldsmith's plays. It will thus afford to pupils and teachers a wider field of choice, to suit their various and varying tastes. It will also provide material for the more reasoned study of its period and its type. All who read Macaulay's " Johnson", o...

Acting One

(1997)

Used to teach beginning acting on more campuses than any other text, Acting One contains twenty-eight lessons based on experiential exercises. The text covers basic skills such as talking, listening, tactical interplay, physicalizing, building scenes, and making good choices.

The Creative Spirit

(2007)

Focusing on the collaborative and creative processes that go into productions, Stephanie Arnold introduces students to the theatre through the plays themselves and people who write them, create them, and act in them. A rich context is provided for each play with a discussion of the playwright’s other works, sources for the play, timelines that provide historical and cultural background, and a section on a particular production of the play to give students a sense of experiencing the theatre in...

Zoot Suit and Other Plays

(1992)

This collection contains three of playwright and screenwriter Luis Valdez's most important and recognized plays: Zoot Suit, Bandido! and I Don't Have to Show You No Stinking Badges. The anthology also includes an introduction by noted theater critic Dr. Jorge Huerta of the University of California-San Diego. Luis Valdez, the most recognized and celebrated Hispanic playwright of our times, is the director of the famous farm-worker theater, El Teatro Campesino.

Theatre: Brief Version

(2007)

This lively introduction to theatre offers equal measures of appreciation of theatrical arts and descriptions of the collaborative theatrical crafts. The author's enthusiasm for and knowledge of the current theatre, highlighted by contemporary production shots from around the world, put the students in the front row.

Tartuffe

(2010)

This work includes seven of the plays that accredited Molière as the greatest and best-loved French playwright of all times: "The Pretentious Young Ladies," "The School for Husbands," "The School for Wives," a comedy of infidelity and his first great success, "The Critique of the School for Wives," "The Impromptu of Versailles," "Tartuffe," a highly controversial play in its time, and "Don Juan." Although "Tartuffe" was immediately censured and banned for several years after its appearance on t...

Freeing the Natural Voice: Imagery and Art in the Practice of Voice and Language

(2006)

This book presents a lucid and multi-leveled account of the human voice in the context of performance – expressive theatrical performance and the performance of everyday communication. The logical progression of exercises is designed for professional actors, student actors, teachers of acting, teachers of voice and speech and anyone interested in vocal expression. The emphasis of the work is on the removal of physical and psychological blocks that inhibit the human vocal instrument and its ob...

Freeing the Natural Voice: Imagery and Art in the Practice of Voice and Language

McTeague

(2007)

McTeague is a dentist of limited intellect from a poor miner's family, who has opened a dentist shop on Polk Street in San Francisco. (His first name is never revealed; other characters in the novel call him simply "Mac.") His best friend, Marcus Schouler, brings his cousin, Trina Sieppe, whom he is courting, to McTeague's parlor for dental work. McTeague becomes infatuated with her while working on her teeth, and Marcus graciously steps aside. McTeague successfully woos Trina. Shortly after McT...

Much Ado About Nothing

(2007)

Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy by William Shakespeare about two pairs of lovers, Benedick and Beatrice, and Claudio and Hero. Benedick and Beatrice are engaged in a "merry war"; they both talk a mile a minute and proclaim their scorn for love, marriage, and each other. In contrast, Claudio and Hero are sweet young people who are rendered practically speechless by their love for one another. By means of "noting" (which sounds the same as "nothing," and which is gossip, rumour, and overheari...

The Taming of the Shrew

(2000)

If there has ever been a groundbreaking edition that likewise returns the reader to the original Shakespeare text, it will be THE APPLAUSE FOLIO TEXTS. If there has ever been an accessible version of the Folio, it is this edition, set for the first time in modern fonts. The Folio is the source of all other editions. The Folio text forces us to re-examine the assumptions and prejudices which have encumbered over four hundred years of scholarship and performance. Notes refer the reader to subseque...

Sanford Meisner on Acting

(1987)

Meisner, a member of the Theater Guild and the Group Theater, has devoted most of 50 years to teaching acting and is one of the great unsung resources in American theater. This book is not an acting text, but a journal of a 15-month course taken by 16 adult actors. We follow them as they progress from early exercises through preparation to detailed scene work. Meisner emphasizes emotional truth and acting as the reality of doing. His students find the course difficult, but most improve markedly....

The Live Corpse

(2010)

A play in six acts by Leo Tolstoy.

The Master and Margarita

(2010)

This uncensored translation of Bulgakov's posthumously published masterpiece of black magic and black humor restores its sliest digs and sharpest jabs at Stalin's regime, which suppressed it. Writing in a punning, soaring prose thick with contemporary historical references and political irony, Bulgakov (1891-1940) did not make things easy for future translators. The story itself is demanding: the arrival of the Devil and his entourage in Stalin's Moscow frames a Faustian tale of a suppressed wri...

Actions: The Actor's Thesaurus

(2004)

An essential companion for actors in rehearsal – a thesaurus of actions words to revitalize performance. Actors need actions. They cannot act moods. They need to be doing something with every line. They need verbs. They need an aim to achieve, and an action selected to help them achieve that aim. “Actions” are active verbs. In order to perform a line truthfully, the actor needs to find exactly the right action to suit that particular situation and that particular line. That is where...

The Vagina Monologues

(2007)

"I say vagina because I want people to respond," says playwright Eve Ensler, creator of the hilarious, disturbing soliloquies in The Vagina Monologues, a book based on her one-woman play. And respond they do--with horror, anger, censure, and sparks of wonder and pleasure. Ensler is on a fervent mission to elevate and celebrate this much mumbled-about body part. She asked hundreds of women of all ages a series of questions about their vaginas (What do you call it? How would you dress it?) that pr...

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