(Applause Acting Series). It is virtually impossible to discuss modern acting or actor training without first mentioning the Russian thoerist and director Konstantin Stanislavsky. Complete in one volume, Mel Gordon explores the actor training systems of Stanislavsky and his two most important disciples, Evgeni Vakhtangov and Michael Chekhov, tracing the major teachings and refinements over the first 50 years of use by actors. Gordon reconstructs the actual exercises taught at the Moscow Art Theatre and various Russian acting studios, and he clears away the myths and confusion about the...

(Applause Books). 35 scenes from Shakespeare are presented in newly-edited texts, with notes which clarify meanings, topical references, puns, ambiguities, etc. A brief description of characters and situation prefaces each scene, and is followed by a commentary which discusses its major acting challenges and opportunities. Each scene has been chosen for its independent life requiring only the simplest of stage properties and the barest of spaces.

(Applause Acting Series). In the same way that Shakespeare himself continued to meditate and transform his own ideas and the shape they took, Marowitz gives us license to continue that meditation in productions extrapolated from Shakespeare's work. Shakespeare becomes the greatest of all catalysts who stimulates a constant re-formulation of the fundamental questions of philosophy, history and meaning. Marowitz introduces us to Shakespeare as an active contemporary collaborator who strives with us to yield a vibrant contemporary theatre.

(Applause Acting Series). The art of acting in restoration comedy, the buoyant, often bowdy romps which celebrated the reopening of the English theatres after Cromwell's dour reign, is the subject of Simon Callow's bold investigation. There is cause again to celebrate as Callow, one of Britain's foremost actors, aims to restore the form to all its original voluptuous vigor. Callow shows the way to attain clarity and hilarity in some of the most delightful roles ever conceived for the theatre.

(Applause Acting Series). Over 75 monologues for women from the contemporary stage, written by these and other major dramatists: David Mamet * Brian Friel * Steve Tesich * Harold Pinter * Alan Ayckbourn * Timberlake Wertenbaker * Neil Simon * John Patrick Shanley * Jane Anderson * Elizabeth Swados * Ariel Dorfman * Craig Lucas.

(Applause Acting Series). This book, by Jerome Rockwood and endorsed by actors such as Bruce Willis and Burgess Meredith, has been praised as the best acting textbook on the market today. It covers auditioning, blocking, relaxing, improvisation, standard stage speech, dialects and accents, movement in period plays, and much more.

(Applause Books). Seventeen men are caught in the limelight of defining moments that range from poignant to crazily funny. Among this vivid cast are a priest sliding towards heresy, a self-styled aristocrat, a hustler looking for security, an enraged abandoned lover, and an overwrought porno director.

Playwrights include: Claudette Alexander-Thomason, Amiri Baraka, William Branch, Ed Bullins, China Clark, Tom Cole, J.E. Franklin, P.J. Gibson, William Hairston, Paul Carter Harrison, Bill Harris, Laurence Holder, Walter Jones, Joseph Lizardi, Winston Lovett, Malik and Cassandra Medley.

(Applause Books). Here are the exercises which began as radical departures from standard actor training etiquette and which stand now as classic means through which the performer discovers his or her true power of transformation. This expanded edition offers a new generation of theater artists the gospel according to Richard Schechner, the guru whose principles and influence have influenced a quarter century of theater.

(Applause Books). This book isn't a critical examination of high comedy. Rather, it's a collection of suggestions for the middlemen: the actors who have to catch the comic spark from the playwright and pass it on to the audience. The effort involved must be imperceptible: one has to acquire the cleverness, the articulacy, the febrility of the characters and then make the whole laborious exercise seem like swimming through silk...The characters in high comedies don't find verbal sophistication difficult or unfamiliar; they enjoy it as you might enjoy slang.