Milestones in Actor Training

Paul Allain, Frank Camilleri

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040435670
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

Milestones in Actor Training focuses on key developments across time in how actors prepare for performance.

Designed for weekly use on actor training and acting courses, the ten chosen milestones cover a wide range, culturally, historically, and geographically; from psychological realist acting in conventional plot-driven drama, through Commedia dell'Arte to the broader church of physical acting that overlaps with devising, mime, circus, contemporary dance, and other body-based genres, including Japanese N? theatre. The book's principal concern is the theatre actor in text-based drama, sonic, or movement structures, though the final milestone encompasses acting for film and new media. This volume concentrates mainly on conceptions of acting as emergent or as reformulated in the West, with the majority coming from the late nineteenth century onwards.

Milestones are a range of accessible textbooks, breaking down the need-to-know moments in the social, cultural, political, and artistic development of foundational subject areas.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Zeami, Nō, and Cross-cultural Training Histories
• 2 Commedia dell’Arte: Training in the Troupe
• 3 Stanislavsky and the Rock
• 4 French Foundations of Physicality
• 5 Brecht and the ‘Street Scene’
• 6 Grotowski and After: Embracing the Physical
• 7 Voice Training: The Wolfsohn–Hart Approach
• 8 Women in/and Actor Training
• 9 Intercultural Training: Barba and Bogart
• 10 Technology and the Emergence of Performance Capture
• Conclusion
• MAT Timeline
• Glossary of Key Terms
• Index