eBook - ePub

The Active Text

Name: The Active Text
ISBN: 9781780015583

Unlocking Plays Through Physical Theatre

Dymphna Callery,

224 pages
English
ePUB (mobile friendly)
Available on iOS & Android

eBook - ePub

The Active Text

Unlocking Plays Through Physical Theatre

Dymphna Callery,

About this book

Many theatre practitioners think of physical theatre as one thing and text-based theatre as another. In this book, Dymphna Callery, author of Through the Body: A Practical Guide to Physical Theatre, shows how exercises and rehearsal techniques associated with physical and devised theatre can be applied to scripted plays. Working 'through the body' enables performers to discover what really makes a play work.

Drawing on key practitioners, including Jacques Lecoq, Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook and Simon McBurney, The Active Text offers a complete approach to working with a scripted play, leading the reader through a process of active exploration and experimentation that includes:

Uncovering a play's internal dynamics
Using improvisation and theatre games
Exploiting the languages of the body
Getting inside the words that are spoken (as well as those that aren't!)
Discovering image structures
Understanding the impact on the audience

Throughout the book, the author draws on a core selection of well-known texts (from Sophocles and Shakespeare to Brecht, Arthur Miller, Steven Berkoff and Sarah Kane), showing how an active approach to text can challenge assumptions about even the most familiar of plays.

Packed with theatre games, improvisation exercises and rehearsal techniques, The Active Text is an inspirational guide for performers, directors, students and teachers. It will revitalise work in the rehearsal room, workshop or classroom – anywhere that dramatic text needs to be brought to life.

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Yes, you can access The Active Text by Dymphna Callery in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Media & Performing Arts & Acting & Auditioning. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.