The Method

The Method PDF Author: Isaac Butler
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1635574781
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
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.

The Method

The Method PDF Author: Isaac Butler
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1635574781
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 545

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Method Actors

Method Actors PDF Author: Steve Vineberg
Publisher: Schirmer Trade Books
ISBN: 9780028726878
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
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.

Acting

Acting PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781614276692
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
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.

Women, Method Acting, and the Hollywood Film

Women, Method Acting, and the Hollywood Film PDF Author: Keri Walsh
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000378683
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
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.

Black Acting Methods

Black Acting Methods PDF Author: Sharrell Luckett
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317441222
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
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.

The Original Method Actors

The Original Method Actors PDF Author: Charles River Charles River Editors
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781542769297
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
*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.

The Method Actors

The Method Actors PDF Author: Carl Shuker
Publisher: Counterpoint
ISBN: 9781593760656
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Book Description
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.

The Method Acting Exercises Handbook

The Method Acting Exercises Handbook PDF Author: Lola Cohen
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1315471485
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
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.

Strasberg's Method as Taught by Lorrie Hull

Strasberg's Method as Taught by Lorrie Hull PDF Author: S. Loraine Hull
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780971040113
Category : Acting
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


The Alexander Technique For Actors

The Alexander Technique For Actors PDF Author: Kelly McEvenue
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474279120
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
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.