Download or read book The Method written by Isaac Butler and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2022-02-01 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Book Critics Circle Award Winner, Nonfiction NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2022 BY THE NEW YORKER, TIME MAGAZINE, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, VOX, SALON, LIT HUB, AND VANITY FAIR “Entertaining and illuminating.”--The New Yorker * “Compulsively readable.”--New York Times * “Delicious, humane, probing.”--Vulture * “The best and most important book about acting I've ever read.”--Nathan Lane The critically acclaimed cultural history of Method acting-an ebullient account of creative discovery and the birth of classic Hollywood. On stage and screen, we know a great performance when we see it. But how do actors draw from their bodies and minds to turn their selves into art? What is the craft of being an authentic fake? More than a century ago, amid tsarist Russia's crushing repression, one of the most talented actors ever, Konstantin Stanislavski, asked these very questions, reached deep into himself, and emerged with an answer. How his “system” remade itself into the Method and forever transformed American theater and film is an unlikely saga that has never before been fully told. Now, critic and theater director Isaac Butler chronicles the history of the Method in a narrative that transports readers from Moscow to New York to Los Angeles, from The Seagull to A Streetcar Named Desire to Raging Bull. He traces how a cohort of American mavericks--including Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg, and the storied Group Theatre--refashioned Stanislavski's ideas for a Depression-plagued nation that had yet to find its place as an artistic powerhouse. The Group's feuds and rivalries would, in turn, shape generations of actors who enabled Hollywood to become the global dream-factory it is today. Some of these performers the Method would uplift; others, it would destroy. Long after its midcentury heyday, the Method lives on as one of the most influential--and misunderstood--ideas in American culture. Studded with marquee names--from Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, and Elia Kazan, to James Baldwin, Ellen Burstyn, and Dustin Hoffman--The Method is a spirited history of ideas and a must-read for any fan of Broadway or American film.
Download or read book On Method Acting written by Edward Dwight Easty and published by Ivy Books. This book was released on 2012-07-11 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Practiced by such actors of stature as Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Julie Harris, Dustin Hoffman, and Ellen Burstyn (not to mention the late James Dean) the Method offers a practical application of the renowned Stanislavsky technique. On Method Acting demystifies the "mysteries" of Method acting -- breaking down the various steps into clear and simple terms, including chapters on: Sense Memory -- the most vital component of Method acting Improvisation -- without it, the most integral part of the Method is lost Animal Exercises -- just one way to combat the mental blocks that prevent actors from grasping a character Creating The Outer Character -- so actors can give the freshness of originality to a role while at the same time living the life of the character On Method Acting is also an indispensable volume for directors, designers, lighting technicians, and anyone in the dramatic arts interested in creating a believable and realistic effect in their productions.
Download or read book Women Method Acting and the Hollywood Film written by Keri Walsh and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-04-26 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women, Method Acting, and the Hollywood Film is the first study dedicated to understanding the work of female Method actors on film. While Method acting on film has typically been associated with the explosive machismo of actors like Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro, this book explores an alternate tradition within the Method—the work that women from the Actors Studio did in Hollywood. Covering the period from the end of the Second World War until the 1970s, this study shows how the women associated with the Actors Studio increasingly used Method acting in ways that were compatible with their burgeoning feminist political commitments and developed a style of feminist Method acting. The book examines the complex intersection of Method acting, sexuality, and gender by analyzing performances such as Kim Hunter’s in A Streetcar Named Desire, Julie Harris’s in The Member of the Wedding, Shelley Winters’s in The Big Knife, Geraldine Page’s in Sweet Bird of Youth, and Jane Fonda’s in Coming Home. Challenging the longstanding assumption that Method acting’s approaches were harmful to women and incompatible with feminism, this book argues that some of Hollywood’s most interesting female actors, and leading feminists, emerged from the Actors Studio in the period between the 1950s and the 1970s. Written for students and scholars of Film Studies, Cultural Studies, Theatre and Performance Studies, and Gender Studies, Women, Method Acting, and the Hollywood Film reshapes the way we think of a central strain in American screen acting, and in doing so, allows women a new stake in that tradition.
Download or read book Acting written by and published by . This book was released on 2014-07-17 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2014 Reprint of 1947 Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. "A wealth of material on the theory and practice of acting ... a book which may be read, re-read and absorbed by everyone who assumes the directing of actors or that most difficult task, the teaching of acting." --Quarterly Journal of Speech. Contains early contributions on the craft by Stanislavski, I. Rapoport, M.A. Chekhov, Vakhtangov, Giatsintova, Pudovkin, Zakhava and others. Also includes 25 illustrations related to the stage and the art of acting. Contents include: Introduction / Lee Strasberg -- The actor's responsibility / Constantin Stanislavski -- Direction and acting / Constantin Stanislavski -- The work of the actor / I. Rapoport -- The creative process / I. Sudakov -- Stanislavski's method of acting / M.A. Chekhov -- Preparing for the role: from the diary of E. Vakhtangov / E. Vakhtangov -- Case history of a role / A.S. Giatsintova -- From the production plan of Othello / Constantin Stanislavski -- Film acting: two phases / V.I. Pudovkin -- Principles of directing / B.E. Zakhava -- To his players at the first rehearsal of The blue bird / Constantin Stanislavski.
Download or read book Method Actors written by Steve Vineberg and published by Schirmer Trade Books. This book was released on 1994 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a history of the style that has pervaded American acting for more than 50 years. The author appraises the fruits of Method training by the psychological truth and candour in the performances of such actors as Marlon Brando, Jason Robards, Rod Steiger and James Dean. He observes how the Method's third generation - Warren Beatty, Al Pacino, and Jack Nicholson, among others - brought a distinctive tone of hip disenchantment to films of the 1960s and 1970s. And he uses Dustin Hoffman's performance in the Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman to show how the Method has continued to evolve.
Download or read book The Method Acting Exercises Handbook written by Lola Cohen and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-12-08 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Method Acting Exercises Handbook is a concise and practical guide to the acting exercises originally devised by Lee Strasberg, one of the Method's foremost practitioners. The Method trains the imagination, concentration, senses and emotions to ‘re-create’ – not ‘imitate’ – logical, believable and truthful behavior on stage and in film. Building on nearly 30 years of teaching internationally and at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York and Los Angeles, Lola Cohen details a series of specific exercises in order to provide clear instruction and guidance to this preeminent form of actor training. By integrating Strasberg's voice with her own tried and tested style of teaching, Cohen demonstrates what can be gained from the exercises, how they can inform and inspire your learning, and how they might be applied to your acting and directing practice. As a companion to The Lee Strasberg Notes (Routledge 2010), a transcription of Strasberg's own teaching, The Method Acting Exercises Handbook offers an unparalleled and updated guide to this world renowned technique.
Download or read book The Method Actors written by Carl Shuker and published by Counterpoint. This book was released on 2005 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The disappearence of a young military historian in Tokyo prompts his sister to search for him, embarking on a journey that will take her to several countries and into the network of young expatriots. Original. A first novel.
Download or read book Black Acting Methods written by Sharrell Luckett and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black Acting Methods seeks to offer alternatives to the Euro-American performance styles that many actors find themselves working with. A wealth of contributions from directors, scholars and actor trainers address afrocentric processes and aesthetics, and interviews with key figures in Black American theatre illuminate their methods. This ground-breaking collection is an essential resource for teachers, students, actors and directors seeking to reclaim, reaffirm or even redefine the role and contributions of Black culture in theatre arts. Chapter 7 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
Download or read book The Original Method Actors written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by . This book was released on 2017-01-26 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes the actors' quotes about their lives and careers *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading It would be no exaggeration to say that James Dean has been more mythologized than any other actor in history, a development due more to his off-screen personality and conduct than the films he actually starred in. Much of Dean's appeal derives from his humble and ordinary origins, and audiences are drawn to the romance of the Indiana farm boy who catapulted to the top of the motion picture industry in a single year - the same year that would see him die. Of course, James Dean remains well-known for being anything but humble and ordinary. As famous as his films are, Dean's story is inextricably tied to his love for racing cars and his death in a high speed car crash. And though Dean was already wildly famous at the time of his death, there is no question that his death only enhanced his fame. One study found evidence of a "James Dean effect," which concluded that a star's popularity benefits if the star dies young instead of living longer and losing luster. By dying young, Dean actually ensured that his name would remain famous, and his appeal has transcended generations. Marlon Brando. Few names in the acting profession evoke such a strong, almost visceral reaction. Over the course of his long, prolific career, he was considered perhaps the greatest actor of the 20th century as well as one of the most complicated and misunderstood. Uniquely able to be both emotionally charged and technically constrained in the same performance, he single-handedly changed the direction of not only the American style of acting, influencing successors such as Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and even Johnny Depp, but the acting profession on a global scale. His iconic interpretations of characters such as Stanley Kowalski (A Streetcar Named Desire), Terry Malloy (On the Waterfront) and Vito Corleone (The Godfather) have been forever burned into the collective memory of film and theatre aficionados, scholars and critics for their immense passion, rage, love, defiance, vulnerability, cruelty and tenderness - basically, the full spectrum of the human condition. With several Oscars and Golden Globes to his name, Brando's contributions remain the gold standard of the acting craft, and the American Film Institute has listed him as the 4th greatest screen legend in history. In the World War II and post-war era, the figure of the male hero who was previously presented as an invulnerable, single-minded, and to a larger degree monolithic and unknowable warrior, began to develop into a more multi-faceted and intriguing character in the most important Hollywood films. This was to signal, and in a sense impel the same change in American society that has always mirrored itself after its cinematic models. Much like the era of Austen and the Bronte sisters, the American hero softened to resemble the older British one, vulnerable and uncertain, but still passionate and determined. In Edward Montgomery Clift, the public not only discovered an unusually gifted actor, but a persistent and stoical anti-authoritarian, an extreme non-conformist in a conformist age and a personal enigma who has remained the target of prying Hollywood reporting since his death. Described as the first "method" actor in Hollywood, he was to co-create and develop this lonely, unwilling and uncertain American hero, filled with deep personal ambiguities, a conflicting will, vulnerable and sensitive. In his eventual arrival to Hollywood following a lengthy period of resistance, he not only embodied this new male model, but inspired the next generation of fascinating characters who didn't "fit in," such as friends Marlon Brando and James Dean. He added to this screen persona a sexual dualism that, while not apparent on the surface, changed the way leading men were perceived by the late 1940s.
Download or read book The Alexander Technique For Actors written by Kelly McEvenue and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-01-14 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This practical book with illustrations links Alexander technique to acting, dancing and singing by the trainer of performers on The Lion King The Alexander Technique is a method of physical relaxation that reduces tension and strain throughout the body. It promotes a beneficial use of movement that is stress-free by learning to free-up the body. It teaches an individual to use their body efficiently in order to avoid damage or loss of control. Kelly McEvenue has been teaching the Alexander Technique to performers for nearly twenty years and is a world expert on the system. In this book she draws on her considerable experience and sets up a series of set-by-step warm-ups and exercises that anybody can follow. The exercises are linked to accurate anatomical drawings, showing where stress is most pronounced in the body. The Foreword is by Patsy Rodenburg, Head of Voice for the Royal National Theatre and author of Methuen titles The Right to Speak and The Actor Speaks.
Download or read book Building A Character written by Constantin Stanislavski and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-04 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Building a Character is one of the three volumes that make up Stanislavski’s The Acting Trilogy. An Actor Prepares explores the inner preparation an actor must undergo in order to explore a role to the full. In this volume, Sir John Gielgud said, this great director “found time to explain a thousand things that have always troubled actors and fascinated students.” Building a Character discusses the external techniques of acting: the use of the body, movement, diction, singing, expression, and control. Creating a Role describes the preparation that precedes actual performance, with extensive discussions of Gogol’s The Inspector General and Shakespeare’s Othello. Sir Paul Scofield called Creating a Role “immeasurably important” for the actor. These three volumes belong on any actor’s short shelf of essential books.
Download or read book Strasberg at the Actors Studio written by Lee Strasberg and published by Theatre Communications Grou. This book was released on 1991 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transcriptions of actual tuition sessions by the originator of Method Acting, tutor to such talents as Paul Newman, Al Pacino, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and Dustin Hoffman.
Download or read book Sanford Meisner on Acting written by Sanford Meisner and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-11-07 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sanford Meisner was one of the best known and beloved teachers of acting in the country. This book follows one of his acting classes for fifteen months, beginning with the most rudimentary exercises and ending with affecting and polished scenes from contemporary American plays. Written in collaboration with Dennis Longwell, it is essential reading for beginning and professional actors alike. Throughout these pages Meisner is a delight—always empathizing with his students and urging them onward, provoking emotion, laughter, and growing technical mastery from his charges. With an introduction by Sydney Pollack, director of Out of Africa and Tootsie, who worked with Meisner for five years. "This book should be read by anyone who wants to act or even appreciate what acting involves. Like Meisner's way of teaching, it is the straight goods."—Arthur Miller "If there is a key to good acting, this one is it, above all others. Actors, young and not so young, will find inspiration and excitement in this book."—Gregory Peck
Download or read book The Moscow Art Theatre written by Nick Worrall and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-08-29 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unprecedented in its comprehensiveness, The Moscow Art Theatre fills a large gap in our knowledge of Stanislavsky and his theatre. Worrall focuses in particular detail on four of The Moscow Art Theatre's best-known productions: * Tolstoy's Tsar Fedor Ioannovich * Gorky's The Lower Depths * Chekov's The Cherry Orchard * Turgenev's A Month in the Country
Download or read book Strasberg s Method as Taught by Lorrie Hull written by S. Loraine Hull and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Dream of Passion written by Lee Strasberg and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1988-10-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The definitive source book on acting.”—Los Angeles Times Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Paul Newman, Dustin Hoffman, Dennis Hopper, Robert DeNiro, Marilyn Monroe, and Joanne Woodward—these are only a few of the many actors training in “Method” acting by the great and legendary Lee Strasberg. This revolutionary theory of acting—developed by Stanislavski and continued by Strasberg—has been a major influence on the art of acting in our time. During his last decade, Strasberg devoted himself to a work that would explain once and for all what The Method was and how it worked, as well as telling the story of its development and of the people involved with it. The result is a masterpiece of wisdom and guidance for anyone involved with the theater in any way. “A must for young actors—for old ones, too, for that matter.”—Paul Newman “An exploration of the creative process that will reward all who are interested in the nature of inspiration.”—Library Journal “An important cultural document.”—Booklist
Download or read book An Actor s Companion written by Seth Barrish and published by Theatre Communications Group. This book was released on 2015-05-25 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I was totally unprepared for the transformation that Seth's technique created in me. . . . I realized that what I thought I knew about acting up to that point was largely misguided . . . but I now had a great, talented, dedicated teacher who generously wanted to share his tools with everyone. There is muscularity, not to mention wisdom and truth to Seth's techniques. He is a wonderful teacher, and I know that having him as my first guide is one of the luckiest things to have happened to me in my career and life. And when I can't get back to class with him, I am so grateful I have this book to turn to."—Anne Hathaway "This book is truly unlike anything else I know—these pieces are haikus on specific elements of performance and character building."—Philip Himberg, executive director, Sundance Theatre Institute A collection of practical acting tips, tools, and exercises, An Actor's Companion is ideal for both the seasoned professionals and actors-in-training. The tips—all simple, direct, and useful—are easy to understand and even easier to apply, in both rehearsal and in performance. Seth Barrish is an actor, teacher, and the co-artistic director of The Barrow Group in New York City. In his thirty-year career, he has directed the award-winning shows My Girlfriend's Boyfriend (Lucille Lortel Award for Best Solo Show, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Solo Show), Sleepwalk With Me (Nightlife Award for Outstanding Comedian in a Major Performance), The Tricky Part (Obie Award, Drama Desk nominations for Best Play and Best Solo Show), Pentecost (Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), Old Wicked Songs (Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award and Garland Award for Best Direction), and Good (Straw Hat Award for Best Direction), among dozens of others.
