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Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre (Bloomsbury Revelations Ser.)
by Keith JohnstoneKeith Johnstone's involvement with the theatre began when George Devine and Tony Richardson, artistic directors of the Royal Court Theatre, commissioned a play from him. This was in 1956. A few years later he was himself Associate Artistic Director, working as a play-reader and director, in particular helping to run the Writers' Group. The improvisatory techniques and exercises evolved there to foster spontaneity and narrative skills were developed further in the actors' studio then in demonstrations to schools and colleges and ultimately in the founding of a company of performers, called The Theatre Machine. Divided into four sections, 'Status', 'Spontaneity', 'Narrative Skills', and 'Masks and Trance', arranged more or less in the order a group might approach them, the book sets out the specific techniques and exercises which Johnstone has himself found most useful and most stimulating. The result is both an ideas book and a fascinating exploration of the nature of spontaneous creativity.
Impro for Storytellers: Theatresports And The Art Of Making Things Happen
by Keith JohnstoneImpro for Storytellers is the follow-up to Keith Johnstone's classic Impro, one of the best-selling books ever published on improvisation. Impro for Storytellers aims to take jealous and self-obsessed beginners and teach them to play games with good nature and to fail gracefully.
The Improv Dictionary: An A to Z of Improvisational Terms, Techniques, and Tools
by David CharlesThe Improv Dictionary: An A to Z of Improvisational Terms, Techniques, and Tools explores improvisational approaches and concepts drawn from a multitude of movements and schools of thought to enhance spontaneous and collaborative creativity.This accessible resource reveals and interrogates the inherited wisdoms contained in the very words we use to describe modern improv. Each detailed definition goes beyond the obvious clichés and seeks a nuanced and inclusive understanding of how art of the moment can be much more than easy laughs and cheap gags (even when it is being delightfully irreverent and wildly funny). This encyclopedic work pulls from a wide array of practitioners and practices, finding tensions and commonalities from styles as diverse as Theatresports, Comedysportz, the Harold, narrative long-form, Playback Theatre, and Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. Entries include nuanced definitions, helpful examples, detailed explorations of the concepts in practice, and framing quotes from a leading practitioner or inspirational artistic voice.The Improv Dictionary offers valuable insights to novice improvisers taking their first steps in the craft, seasoned performers seeking to unlock the next level of abandon, instructors craving a new comprehensive resource, and scholars working in one of the numerous allied fields that find enrichment through collaborative and guided play.Each significant entry in the book is also keyed to an accompanying improv game or exercise housed at www.improvdr.com, enabling readers to dig deeper into their process.
Improv Wisdom: Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up
by Patricia Ryan MadsonIn an irresistible invitation to lighten up, look around, and live an unscripted life, a master of the art of improvisation explains how to adopt the attitudes and techniques used by generations of musicians and actors. Let’s face it: Life is something we all make up as we go along. No matter how carefully we formulate a “script,” it is bound to change when we interact with people with scripts of their own. Improv Wisdomshows how to apply the maxims of improvisational theater to real-life challenges—whether it’s dealing with a demanding boss, a tired child, or one of life’s never-ending surprises. Patricia Madson distills thirty years of experience into thirteen simple strategies, including “Say Yes,” “Start Anywhere,” “Face the Facts,” and “Make Mistakes, Please,” helping readers to loosen up, think on their feet, and take on everything life has to offer with skill, chutzpah, and a sense of humor.
Improvisation and Social Aesthetics
by Eric Lewis Georgina Born Will StrawAddressing a wide range of improvised art and music forms—from jazz and cinema to dance and literature—this volume's contributors locate improvisation as a key site of mediation between the social and the aesthetic. As a catalyst for social experiment and political practice, improvisation aids in the creation, contestation, and codification of social realities and identities. Among other topics, the contributors discuss the social aesthetics of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, the Feminist Improvising Group, and contemporary Malian music, as well as the virtual sociality of interactive computer music, the significance of "uncreative" improvisation, responses to French New Wave cinema, and the work of figures ranging from bell hooks and Billy Strayhorn to Kenneth Goldsmith. Across its diverse chapters, Improvisation and Social Aesthetics argues that ensemble improvisation is not inherently egalitarian or emancipatory, but offers a potential site for the cultivation of new forms of social relations. It sets out a new conceptualization of the aesthetic as immanently social and political, proposing a new paradigm of improvisation studies that will have reverberations throughout the humanities.Contributors. Lisa Barg, Georgina Born, David Brackett, Nicholas Cook, Marion Froger, Susan Kozel, Eric Lewis, George E. Lewis, Ingrid Monson, Tracey Nicholls, Winfried Siemerling, Will Straw, Zoë Svendsen, Darren Wershler
Improvisation For The Theater: A Handbook of Teaching and Directing Techniques
by Viola Spolin Paul SillsViola Spolin's improvisational techniques changed the very nature and practice of modern theater. The first two editions of Improvisation for the Theater sold more than one hundred thousand copies and inspired actors, directors, teachers, and writers in theater, television, and film. These techniques have also influenced the fields of education, mental health, social work, and psychology.
Improvisation Hypermedia and the Arts since 1945 (Performing Arts Studies #Vol. 4)
by Roger Dean Hazel SmithFirst Published in 1997. The authors’ purpose in this book is to dissect developments in improvisation in the arts since 1945, with a particular emphasis on process and technique. The approach is analytical and theoretical but is also relevant to practitioners and their audience. Their key argument is that improvisation has been of great importance and value in the contemporary arts, particularly because of its potential to develop new forms (often by breaking definitions).
Improvisation the Michael Chekhov Way: Active Exploration of Acting Techniques
by Wil KilroyImprovisation the Michael Chekhov Way: Active Exploration of Acting Techniques provides readers with dozens of improvisational exercises based on the acting techniques of Michael Chekhov. The book features key exercises that will help the actor explore improvisation and expand their imagination through the technique. Exercises that have been successfully taught for decades via the intensive trainings from the National Michael Chekhov Association are now clearly laid out in this book, along with information on how these performance-based techniques can be applied to a script and even provide life benefits. Guidance on how to use the exercises both in a group setting and as an individual is provided, as well as tools for lesson plans for up to a year of actor training. These step-by-step exercises will allow readers to expand their range of expression, discover the joy of creating unique characters, improve stage presence and presentation skills, and find new, creative ways to look at life. Improvisation the Michael Chekhov Way is written to be used by individual actors and practitioners and in group settings such as acting or improvisation courses, and to benefit anyone wishing to enhance their creativity and imagination.
In a Dark Dark House: A Play
by Neil LaButeTwo brothers meet on the grounds of a private psychiatric facility. Drew, has been court-confined for observation and has called his older brother, Terry, to corroborate his claim of childhood sexual abuse by a young man from many summers ago. Drew's request releases barely-hidden animosities between the two: Is he using these repressed memories to save himself while smearing the name of his brother's friend? Through pain and acknowledged betrayal, the brothers come to grips with and begin to understand the legacy of abuse, both inside and outside their family home. In a Dark, Dark House is the latest work from Neil LaBute, American theater's great agent provocateur. The play will have its world Premiere in May 2007, Off Broadway at New York's MCC Theater.
In a Forest, Dark and Deep: A Play
by Neil LabuteBetty and Bobby are sister and brother, but they have little in common. She's a college professor with a prim demeanor, and he's a carpenter with a foul mouth and violent streak. Betty has a history of promiscuity that Bobby won't let her forget, and from their first taunting exchanges there are intimations also of the history between them. Yet on the night when Betty urgently needs help to empty her cabin in the woods--the cabin she's been renting to a male student--she calls on Bobby. In this exhilarating play of secrets and sibling rivalry, which had its premiere in London's West End in 2011, Neil LaBute unflinchingly explores the dark territory beyond, as Bobby sneeringly says, "the lies you tell yourself to get by."
In Absentia
by Morris PanychFour seasons after her husband Tom's disappearance, Colette remains emotionally paralyzed, isolated in a country cottage. She waits in anguish, not knowing whether he is dead or alive, but clinging to hope. <P><P>A young stranger in a jean jacket waves to her from the frozen lake - a sign? She emerges to give him her husband's parka - strangely, the boy has a likeness to Tom.What is the stranger's connection to her geologist husband, kidnapped more than a year before by leftist guerrillas in Colombia? How does this slyly seductive young stranger happen to show up at her home in rural Ontario, thousands of miles away? He seems to know more about Colette than he should, and as he slowly insinuates himself into her life, Colette's attentive sister, Evelyn, and her helpful neighbor Bill become increasingly alarmed.Part mystery, part moving story of vanished love, In Absentia explores the notion of disappearance, articulated in very personal terms. Through the tough, time-shifting action of the play, Colette reflects on her marriage and past love, offering rich associative memories while also uncovering the hidden and inaccessible - that which is made to disappear from view.Guilt and grief, infidelity and infertility, loss and longing are the deeper subjects Panych explores here. At the same time, the play examines the desire to make connections in life - thoughts to deeds, intentions to outcomes - in scenes often enlivened by the playwright's trademark humor.Cast of 3 men and 2 women.
In and Out of the Mind: Greek Images of the Tragic Self
by Ruth PadelRuth Padel explores Greek conceptions of human innerness and the way in which Greek tragedy shaped European notions of mind and self. Arguing that Greek poetic language connects images of consciousness, even male consciousness, with the darkness attributed to Hades and to women, Padel analyzes tragedy's biological and daemonological metaphors for what is within.
In Between Subjects: A Critical Genealogy of Queer Performance
by Amelia JonesThis volume is a study of the connected ideas of "queer" and "gender performance" or "performativity" over the past several decades, providing an ambitious history and crucial examination of these concepts while questioning their very bases. Addressing cultural forms from 1960s–70s sociology, performance art, and drag queen balls to more recent queer voguing performances by Pasifika and Māori people from New Zealand and pop culture television shows such as RuPaul’s Drag Race, the book traces how and why "queer" and "performativity" seem to belong together in so many discussions around identity, popular modes of gender display, and performance art. Drawing on art history and performance studies but also on feminist, queer, and sexuality studies, and postcolonial, indigenous, and critical race theoretical frameworks, it seeks to denaturalize these assumptions by questioning the US-centrism and white-dominance of discourses around queer performance or performativity. The book’s narrative is deliberately recursive, itself articulated in order performatively to demonstrate the specific valence and social context of each concept as it emerged, but also the overlap and interrelation among the terms as they have come to co-constitute one another in popular culture and in performance and visual arts theory, history, and practice. Written from a hybrid art historical and performance studies point of view, this will be essential reading for all those interested in art, performance, and gender, as well as in queer and feminist theory.
In-Between Worlds: Performing [as] Bauls in an Age of Extremism (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)
by Sukanya ChakrabartiThis book examines the performance of Bauls ‘folk’ performers from Bengal, in the context of a rapidly globalizing Indian economy and against the backdrop of extreme nationalistic discourses. Recognizing their scope beyond the musical and cultural realm, Sukanya Chakrabarti engages in discussing the subversive and transformational potency of Bauls and their performances. In-Between Worlds argues that the Bauls through their musical, spiritual, and cultural performances offer ‘joy’ and ‘spirituality,’ thus making space for what Dr. Ambedkar in his famous 1942 speech had identified as ‘reclamation of human personality’. Chakrabarti destabilizes the category of ‘folk’ as a fixed classification or an origin point, and fractures homogeneous historical representations of the Baul as a ‘folk’ performer and a wandering mendicant exposing the complex heterogeneity that characterizes this group. Establishing ‘folk-ness’ as a performance category, and ‘folk festivals’ as sites of performing ‘folk-ness,’ contributing to a heritage industry that thrives on imagined and recreated nostalgia, Chakrabarti examines different sites that produce varied performative identities of Bauls, probing the limits of such categories while simultaneously advocating for polyvocality and multifocality. While this project has grounded itself firmly in performance studies, it has borrowed extensively from fields of postcolonial studies and subaltern histories, literature, ethnography and ethnomusicology, and cosmopolitan studies.
In Concert: Performing Musical Persona
by Philip AuslanderThe conventional way of understanding what musicians do as performers is to treat them as producers of sound; some even argue that it is unnecessary to see musicians in performance as long as one can hear them. But musical performance, counters Philip Auslander, is also a social interaction between musicians and their audiences, appealing as much to the eye as to the ear. In Concert: Performing Musical Persona he addresses not only the visual means by which musicians engage their audiences through costume and physical gesture, but also spectacular aspects of performance such as light shows. Although musicians do not usually enact fictional characters on stage, they nevertheless present themselves to audiences in ways specific to the performance situation. Auslander’s term to denote the musician’s presence before the audience is musical persona. While presence of a musical persona may be most obvious within rock and pop music, the book’s analysis extends to classical music, jazz, blues, country, electronic music, laptop performance, and music made with experimental digital interfaces. The eclectic group of performers discussed include the Beatles, Miles Davis, Keith Urban, Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj, Frank Zappa, B. B. King, Jefferson Airplane, Virgil Fox, Keith Jarrett, Glenn Gould, and Laurie Anderson.
In Defence of Theatre: Aesthetic Practices and Social Interventions
by Kathleen Gallagher Barry FreemanWhy theatre now? Reflecting on the mix of challenges and opportunities that face theatre in communities that are necessarily becoming global in scope and technologically driven, In Defence of Theatre offers a range of passionate reflections on this important question.Kathleen Gallagher and Barry Freeman bring together nineteen playwrights, actors, directors, scholars, and educators who discuss the role that theatre can - and must - play in professional, community, and educational venues. Stepping back from their daily work, they offer scholarly research, artists' reflections, interviews, and creative texts that argue for theatre as a response to the political and cultural challenges emerging in the twenty-first century. Contributors address theatre's contribution to local and global politics of place, its power as an antidote to various modern social ailments, and its pursuit of equality. Of equal concern are the systematic and practical challenges that confront those involved in realizing theatre's full potential.
In Experiments With Rats
by Antonio Morcillo Lopez L. FinchPol Pot, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein and Stalin are a group of lab rats imprisoned in a glass cage. They are veterans of scientific experimentation. They've seen it all. For them, with the passing of time, electric shocks have become a kind of incognizable deity. They don't know how to interpret them, nor do they know what so much pain means. One day, an especially intense session of shocks finishes them off. They die. This allows them to pass to the other side and visit the scientist who has been experimenting with them all this time. They have a few questions. And they want a lot of answers. Winner of the Spanish Society of Authors and Publishers (SGAE) Theater Prize 2007.
In The Heights: The Complete Book And Lyrics Of The Broadway Musical
by Quiara Hudes Lin-Manuel Miranda(Applause Libretto Library). Music and Lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Book by Quiara Alegria Hudes, Conceived by Lin-Manuel Miranda In the Heights is an exciting musical about life in Washington Heights, a tight-knit community where the coffee from the corner bodega is light and sweet, the windows are always open, and the breeze carries the rhythm of three generations of music. During its acclaimed Off-Broadway and Broadway runs, In the Heights became an audience phenomenon and a critical success. It's easy to see why: with an amazing cast, a gripping story, and incredible dancing, In the Heights is an authentic and exhilarating journey into one of Manhattan's most vibrant communities. And with its universal themes of family, community, and self-discovery, In the Heights can be enjoyed by people of all ages and backgrounds. Among the musical's many accolades are two Drama Desk Awards, a Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album, and a nomination for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Find out what it takes to make a living, what it costs to have a dream, and what it means to be home... In the Heights .
In The Heights: Finding Home **The origin story behind the feelgood film of the summer**
by Lin-Manuel Miranda Quiara Alegria Hudes Jeremy McCarterLin-Manuel Miranda's new book gives readers an extraordinary inside look at In the Heights, his breakout Broadway debut, written with Quiara Alegría Hudes, now a Hollywood blockbuster.WHAT FANS ARE SAYING... "This book is so beautiful I want to cry." ~ "I genuinely think I've needed this for years." ~ "Reading this book made my love for both the musical and movie versions of In the Heights grow even more."In 2008, In the Heights, a new musical from up-and-coming young artists, electrified Broadway. The show's vibrant mix of Latin music and hip-hop captured life in Washington Heights, the Latino neighborhood in upper Manhattan. It won four Tony Awards and became an international hit, delighting audiences around the world. For the film version, director Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians) brought the story home, filming its spectacular dance numbers on location in Washington Heights. That's where Usnavi, Nina, and their neighbors chase their dreams and ask a universal question: Where do I belong?In the Heights: Finding Home reunites Miranda with Jeremy McCarter, co-author of Hamilton: The Revolution, and Quiara Alegría Hudes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning librettist of the Broadway musical and screenwriter of the film. They do more than trace the making of an unlikely Broadway smash and a major motion picture: They give readers an intimate look at the decades-long creative life of In the Heights.Like Hamilton: The Revolution, the book offers untold stories, perceptive essays, and the lyrics to Miranda's songs-complete with his funny, heartfelt annotations. It also features newly commissioned portraits and never-before-seen photos from backstage, the movie set, and productions around the world.This is the story of characters who search for a home-and the artists who created one.
In The Heights: Finding Home **The must-have gift for all Lin-Manuel Miranda fans**
by Lin-Manuel Miranda Quiara Alegria Hudes Jeremy McCarterThe eagerly awaited follow-up to the #1 New York Times bestseller Hamilton: The Revolution, Lin-Manuel Miranda's new book gives readers an extraordinary inside look at In the Heights, his breakout Broadway debut, written with Quiara Alegría Hudes, soon to be a Hollywood blockbuster.In 2008, In the Heights, a new musical from up-and-coming young artists, electrified Broadway. The show's vibrant mix of Latin music and hip-hop captured life in Washington Heights, the Latino neighborhood in upper Manhattan. It won four Tony Awards and became an international hit, delighting audiences around the world. For the film version, director Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians) brought the story home, filming its spectacular dance numbers on location in Washington Heights. That's where Usnavi, Nina, and their neighbors chase their dreams and ask a universal question: Where do I belong?In the Heights: Finding Home reunites Miranda with Jeremy McCarter, co-author of Hamilton: The Revolution, and Quiara Alegría Hudes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning librettist of the Broadway musical and screenwriter of the film. They do more than trace the making of an unlikely Broadway smash and a major motion picture: They give readers an intimate look at the decades-long creative life of In the Heights.Like Hamilton: The Revolution, the book offers untold stories, perceptive essays, and the lyrics to Miranda's songs-complete with his funny, heartfelt annotations. It also features newly commissioned portraits and never-before-seen photos from backstage, the movie set, and productions around the world.This is the story of characters who search for a home-and the artists who created one.(P)2021 Penguin Audio
In Love With A Fool
by Ana Roma“Did it ever cross your mind to fall in love for the same person you swore to join with someone else?” That is exactly what happened to Ana Clara, the main character of this story. Ana Clara is in the same class as a boy she doesn’t dare to talk to after finding out she is completely, madly in love with him. The worst of all is that, even knowing he might be her prince charming, Ana Clara had already decided to find another princess to fill his heart. After learning that her talent to “find” and “match” soul mates wasn’t real, she decided to destroy the relationship and try to win the heart of the idiot with whom she fell in love with.
In Order Of Appearance
by Gardner MckayDrama / 7 m., 2 f. or 5 m., 2 f. / Interior / Tom Vickery has a secret. Or did. Twenty years ago he wrote a play that his agent, Morris Bonecream, told him was too personally embarrassing to produce. Tom set fire to him. Bonecream sued Tom for arson. Tom disappeared. He is presumed dead, but in reality is living in the Maine woods bottling cranberry brandy and married to Gemma Jones, a woman who knows nothing of his past. Suddenly, Bonecream appears; Tom's play is a huge hit in London under an Englishman's name, Dunlop Sablehand. Bonecream needs Tom's script as evidence to get his commission from the plagiarist. Gemma reads the play and leaves Tom. A character from the play, Shelley Vickery, turns up. She straightens Tom out. The hired man falls in love with her. Gemma comes back to Tom. Bonecream finds God, or someone like him.
In Other Los Angeleses: Multicentric Performance Art
by Meiling ChengThis is a study of contemporary Los Angeles through the lens of performance art, an intermedia visual art that incorporates theatrical elements in presentation. The book proposes to examine the significant roles that performance art has played in shaping, transforming, and delineating the multicultural ecology of Los Angeles.
In Piazza San Domenico
by Steve GalluccioSteve Galluccio's newest stage triumph, In Piazza San Domenico, is a comedy of errors that takes place in a bustling neighbourhood of 1952 Naples.This two-act play recounts the story of how one broken engagement ripples throughout friends and family, affecting all of their respective love lives in different ways. The young and beautifully earthy Carmelina faints in the arms of the town philanderer, Tonino, setting off a wave of malicious gossip that seems to infect everyone in town with second thoughts about their current partners-and inexplicable desires for new ones-as often as not consummated on that shadowed spot of carpet behind the statue of San Francesco in the church on the town square. Finally, as if the very gods are angry with these salacious goings-on, an earthquake hits the town, sending the characters into the piazza and keeping them there for the night with a series of ominous aftershocks. As the sun rises, misunderstandings are resolved, the truth is revealed, and hardened hearts yield to the eternally verdant desires for life.In a world and a time hovering between the "traditional" values and the emancipated new thinking, Italian theatrical archetypes with their roots in Roman comedies and the Commedia dell'arte evolve into the recognizable stereotypes of mid-twentieth-century society that were to become hallmarks of the whimsical Sophia Loren/Marcello Mastroianni films of the early 1960s.Of this play, Galluccio has said: "Humour is a powerful tool that can get us through anything ... the human spirit and its sense of survival is bigger than whatever society can throw at us."
In The Pines: Columbia River Book 3
by Kendra ElliotClues to a hidden treasure. Clues to a family secret. Both lead to murder in a twisting novel of suspense by Amazon Charts and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Kendra Elliot. A national treasure hunt with a $2 million prize has driven obsessed fortune seekers to overrun the small town of Eagle’s Nest, Oregon. The hunt’s cryptic clues and the lure of wealth have exposed the desperate side of human greed: theft, fights, trespassing—and even the motive to kill. Police chief Truman Daly craves peace in his town but has a murder on his hands instead. Now the big prize isn’t the only thing hiding in the pines. So is a killer. When a young boy walks into the local café and claims his mother and baby sister have been missing for weeks, FBI special agent Mercy Kilpatrick investigates and exposes a disturbing twist in his story. Deep family secrets and lies that started sixty years ago have burst into the present, bringing with them deadly consequences. Mercy’s and Truman’s investigations lead down a path of murder, revenge, and buried secrets to uncover two intertwined mysteries as dark as an Oregon forest.