Milestones in actor training

Abstract

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 Nō 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.