Improvisation Starters

Fill Your Performance with Spontaneity and Energy Improvisation is an essential and invaluable technique for the actor's repertoire: It asks you to think beyond a script--and its memorized lines, movements, and facial expressions--to deliver a performance filled with honesty, insight, nuance, and verisimilitude. Improvisation Starters Revised and Expanded provides more than 1,000 brand-new scene scenarios that will help you: • Depict conflict by focusing on differing beliefs, motivations, and needs • Use contrasts to show the clash of personalities and emotions • Creatively incorporate props and specific lines of dialogue within an improvised scene • Explore character relationships with various locations • Take on the role of inanimate objects and animals From the classroom to the community theater group--and even in business, language, and technology classes--improvisation is the perfect tool for thinking critically, communicating clearly, building self-confidence, and developing interpersonal skills. With this revised edition of Improvisation Starters, you'll bring new vitality to the stage or set--and have fun in the process!

Most beginning actors assume that rehearsing a play or scene involves taking home the script, memorizing lines, and rehearsing scenes over and over until everything—timing, movement, facial expression—is perfect. But that's only partially correct. One missing element in that approach is improvisation, an invaluable technique that can be used in acting classes and in rehearsals for school, amateur and professional productions. Most teachers and directors realize that value of improvisation as a regular part of their classes or rehearsals, but many find it difficult to come up with fresh ideas on a daily basis. The nine hundred improvisation ideas in this book should provide enough material to last for years. What the book includes can be applied to many theater situations. For example, there are many improvisation starters for character conflicts—teen/parent, peer relationships, love relationships, co-workers, doctor/patient, brother/sister, and more; solo improvisations; physical positions (for one or two players); lines of dialogue; and reactions to environment. The author also has included a section suggesting a variety of improvisations for the production of Romeo and Juliet.

In 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 Wisdom shows 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.

This book is perfect "€" jam-packed with games and lists, it's also the most user-friendly book we've ever seen! Who knows what you'll love more? Maybe it will be the clean layout that specifies space prep minutes, player prep minutes, performance minutes, and number of players for every single game. Or maybe it will be the appendices, where each of the 71 games is cross-referenced by not only these details just mentioned, but also dramatic skills and National Theatre Standards by grade! Perhaps you'll best love the CD-Rom which includes printable PDF files of every list in the book. You can even print these lists directly onto labels or pages for student use. Besides directions and examples, every single game also has tips on side coaching and evaluation and critique. It just doesn't get better than this! This mother lode of rich activities will be mined by drama teachers in search of memory jogs and new inspirations for years to come!

An Actor's Task provides a framework for studying the dual arts of acting: inhabiting a character both physically and psychologically. Actors at all levels can use this book to explore, develop, and review the sensory tools and training that enable them to be the best versions of themselves and, ultimately, to bring that understanding of "self" to their art. Innovative new exercises and selected classics--updated for today's students--comprise more than 100 exercises. Introductions to each exercise explain its aims and benefits. Clear step-by-step prompts provide guidance. Debriefing sections engage actors in reflection on what they have experienced and learned. This inspired text is equally suited to classroom use and individual study.