Essential Acting: A Practical Handbook for Actors, Teachers and Directors from Focal Press is an inspired and reliable toolbox for actors and teachers in the classroom, the rehearsal room, and the workshop. RADA's Brigid Panet has distilled nearly 60 years of acting, directing, and actor training into a unique recipe which brilliantly combines the teachings of Stanislavsky and Laban into an invaluable practical resource.
These exercises are built around the need for simple, achievable techniques that can be applied by actors, teachers, and directors to answer the myriad requirements of actor training. Essential Acting will be a must-have purchase for anyone looking for a comprehensive study guide to the necessary work of the actor.
- How to rehearse
- How to work with a text
- How to audition for drama school
- How to access the truth of feelings and actions
Part One: Acting exercises
1. Notes for the teacher of the acting exercises
2. Making a good start
3. Experiencing the Three Essentials
4. The Magic ‘If’
5. Exercises in immediate response
6. Developing the physical skills of acting
Part Two: Acting is behaving
7. Status*
8. Eye-gaze*
9. Confidence, poise and balance
Part Three: The rehearsal process
10. Meeting the play
11. Bringing the text to life
12. Breathing, speaking and learning lines
13. The actor’s work on a character
Part Four: Directing a play
14. Solving common problems in acting
15. Playing the space
16. For the director
Part Five: An introduction to playing Shakespeare
17. Shakespeare’s language
18. Handling Shakespeare’s language
Part Six: Developing the physical skills of acting: Laban workshops for actors
19 .The Four Elements
20. Flow
21. Space
22. Time
23. Force
24. Laban for the speaking voice
25. The Eight Laban Effort Actions
Appendix: Some suggestions to help with drama-school auditions
Appendix II: Links to videos of exercises