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.

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 Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance is an outstanding collection of specially written essays that charts the emergence, development, and diversity of African American Theatre and Performance—from the nineteenth-century African Grove Theatre to Afrofuturism. Alongside chapters from scholars are contributions from theatre makers, including producers, theatre managers, choreographers, directors, designers, and critics. This ambitious Companion includes: A "Timeline of African American theatre and performance." Part I "Seeing ourselves onstage" explores the important experience of Black theatrical self-representation. Analyses of diverse topics including historical dramas, Broadway musicals, and experimental theatre allow readers to discover expansive articulations of Blackness. Part II "Institution building" highlights institutions that have nurtured Black people both on stage and behind the scenes. Topics include Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), festivals, and black actor training. Part III "Theatre and social change" surveys key moments when Black people harnessed the power of theatre to affirm community realities and posit new representations for themselves and the nation as a whole. Topics include Du Bois and African Muslims, women of the Black Arts Movement, Afro-Latinx theatre, youth theatre, and operatic sustenance for an Afro future. Part IV "Expanding the traditional stage" examines Black performance traditions that privilege Black worldviews, sense-making, rituals, and innovation in everyday life. This section explores performances that prefer the space of the kitchen, classroom, club, or field. This book engages a wide audience of scholars, students, and theatre practitioners with its unprecedented breadth. More than anything, these invaluable insights not only offer a window onto the processes of producing work, but also the labour and economic issues that have shaped and enabled African American theatre. Chapter 20 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.

Acting: The Basics 3rd Edition is a dynamic response to recent societal and entertainment industry changes, focusing on inclusion, diversity and equity, and the actor's trajectory from training to rehearsal to performance on stage and screen, with hands-on tools and global perspectives. The book offers vital ways of building a practical acting toolkit, through breath, body, voice, emotions, imagination and spirit. We begin with a socio-cultural look at actor as magician, storyteller, healer and social changer. Throughout, there are insights from Black, Indigenous, First Nations, South/East Asian, intercultural and feminist practitioners, together with methods focusing on disability and accessibility, intimacy directives, mindfulness and intersectionality. Key 'canonical' figures still feature (e.g., Stanislavsky, Meisner, Brecht and Suzuki) with re-visioned perspective. Scattered throughout are post-COVID insights, plus expanded sections on screen acting (including self-tapes) and Shakespeare. This book is useful for beginner or expert, as it's always helpful getting back to basics. Because the author is both an actor and an actor trainer, the tools are steeped in user-friendly application. At the same time, transferable skills (e.g., dynamic listening and empathy) are shown as relevant to everyone. With a glossary of terms and useful online suggestions (including blogs, videos and podcasts), this is ideal for anyone learn anew about the practice and history of acting, or to take their acting and teaching into new terrain.

Michael Chekhov and Sanford Meisner: Collisions and Convergence in Actor Training offers a comprehensive analysis of the Sanford Meisner Acting Technique in comparison to the Michael Chekhov Acting Technique. This compilation reveals the connections as well as the contradictions between these two very different approaches, while highlighting meaningful bridges and offering in-depth essays from a variety of sources, including master teachers with years of experience and new and rising stars in the field. The authors provide philosophical arguments on actor training, innovative approaches to methodology, and explorations into integration, as well as practical methods of application for the classroom or rehearsal room, or scaffolded into a curriculum. Michael Chekhov and Sanford Meisner: Collisions and Convergence in Actor Training is an excellent resource for professors teaching Introductory, Intermediate or Advanced Acting Technique as well as acting program directors and department chairs seeking new, impactful research on actor training.

Ernie McClintock and the Jazz Actors Family is a critical biography examining the life and work of Ernie McClintock, the founder of the Jazz Acting Method and 1997 recipient of the Living Legend Award from the National Black Theatre Festival, whose inclusive contributions to acting and actor training have largely remained on the fringes of scholarship and practice. Based on original archival research and interviews with McClintock’s students and peers, this book traces his life from his childhood in Chicago to Harlem in the 1960s at the height of the Black Arts Movement, to Richmond, Virginia in 2003, paying particular attention to his Black Power–influenced, culturally specific acting theory and versatile Black theatrical productions. As a biographical study, this book establishes McClintock as a leading figure of the Black Theatre Movement, proven by the Jazz Acting technique, his critically acclaimed productions, and his leadership positions in organizations such as the Black Theatre Alliance. Ernie McClintock and the Jazz Actors Family explores how the Jazz Acting technique was applied in productions such as N.R. Davidson’s El Hajj Malik, Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain, Cheryl West’s Before It Hits Home, Endesha Mae Holland’s From the Mississippi Delta, and many collectively-authored pieces. The book also investigates why he has been excluded from dominant theatre histories, especially considering how, as a gay Black man, he persistently defied the status quo, questioning practices of administrators of theatres and mainstream theatrical standards. Ernie McClintock and the Jazz Actors Family is situated at the intersection of Black acting theory, Black Arts Movement history, and Black queer studies, and is an illuminating study of an important figure for actors, acting teachers, acting students, and cultural historians. This is an essential resource for readers who are seeking histories and approaches outside of a white, straight, Eurocentric framework.

Directing Desire explores the rise of consent-based and trauma-informed approaches to staging sexually and sensually charged scenes for theater in the contemporary U.S., known as intimacy choreography. From 2015 to 2020, intimacy choreography transformed from a grassroots movement in experimental and regional theaters into a best practice accepted in Hollywood and on Broadway. Today, intimacy choreographers have become a veritable "intimacy industry" in the cultural sphere, sparking attention from Rolling Stone to The New York Times to the sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live. This book analyzes the forces that have led to intimacy choreography’s meteoric rise and asks what implications the field has for theater practice more broadly. Building a theoretical framework for intimacy directing, Directing Desire also strives to reorient the conversation in the field so that artists understand not only best practices in consent but also intersectional frameworks that expand and rework consent.

Stages of Reckoning is a crucial conversation about how racialized bodies and power intersect within actor training spaces. This book provokes embodied and intellectual discomfort for the reader to take risks with their ideologies, identities, and practices and to make new pedagogical choices for students with racialized identities. Centering the voices of actor trainers of color to acknowledge their personal experience and professional pedagogy as theory, this volume illuminates actionable ideas for text work, casting, voice, consent practices, and movement while offering decolonial approaches to current Eurocentric methods. These offerings invite the reader to create spaces where students can bring more of themselves, their communities, and their stories into their training and as fodder for performance making that will lead to a more just world. This book is for people in high/secondary schools, higher education, and private training studios who wish to teach and direct actors of color in ways that more fully honor their multiple identities.

This book confronts and analyzes the systemic racism that confronts actors of color in the USA through interviews with leading performers in the nation’s theatrical epicentre of Chicago. Each chapter deals with a different central question, from how these actors approach roles and the obstacles that they face, to the ways in which the industry can change to better enable actors of color. By bringing together these actors and sharing the ways in which they have functioned within the white theatre world, we can appreciate how theatre needs to embrace their identities so that all voices are heard, understood, and valued. The stories of these actors will reflect the systemic racism of the past and present with the hope of remaking the future. This is an important book for students, teachers, and professionals who engage in theatre work, helping them to understand the lived experiences of actors of color through those actors’ own words.

While there are many books that attempt to teach people how to act, there are few that show aspiring actors what it takes to succeed as a working professional. The Professional Actor’s Handbook: From Casting Call to Curtain Call provides struggling artists—stage and screen actors, dancers, singers—with strategies that will help them successfully negotiate every stage of their careers. This second edition provides vital updates to reflect the current industry: Post-pandemic shifts in the industry Inclusive language Additional resources specific to various affinity groups Video auditions and self-tapes, including strategies for online auditions Julio Agustin and Kathleen Potts address a myriad of topics such as resumes, headshots, rep books, audition nerves, and marketing plans. Other strategies address how to network, how to finance your early career, and even how to organize a home studio. Featuring sample resumes, insights from industry experts, and a new chapter by audition coach Casey Miko on how to “Generate an Extraordinary Video Submission,” this book offers invaluable industry guidance. Along with audition manuals and repertoire binders, The Professional Actor’s Handbook is a vital reference that belongs on every actor’s bookshelf, from recent college graduates to seasoned professionals.