Action

This work is a dynamic, practical, straightforward approach to the creative process of actor training. Combining principles of verbal and nonverbal communication with the basic tenets of Stanislavski's approach to acting, it includes a step-by-step guide for reading, analyzing, and preparing a text for performance. It also provides a template for rehearsing a sonnet, a soliloquy, and scenes from plays of Heightened Language ranging from Shakespeare, Moliere, and Congreve, to plays by Ibsen, Shaw, and Lynn Nottage.

Using improvisation, games and exercises alongside a series of tools designed to illuminate and enhance the creative process, the book outlines the specific steps necessary to engage in the basic tenets of acting: overcoming obstacles and activating given circumstances by 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 circumstance with confidence, ease, and a sense of joy.