Synopsis:
If you want to be an Actor: You’ll need to develop your abilities in both your Inner Emotions and your Outer Techniques. “Acting means Doing!!” is all about acquiring and using the Techniques that will get you onto the stage, and help you give a wonderful performance out there in front of an attentive audience – and has been written for you, whether you follow the challenging theatre philosophies of Stanislavski, Boleslavsky, or Meyerhold – or of Stella Adler, Uta Hagen, Bobby Lewis, Lee Strasberg, Charles McGaw, or Sanford Meisner, or any other of the fine teachers whose theories are centered on the Inner Life of the character. And if you haven’t yet looked into one of these, or a similar view on tapping your emotions, you must. I studied under Strasberg and McGaw, absolutely respecting their teachings – and I’ve read the works of the others, all of whom correctly have us searching our scripts, and our hearts, for the inner truths that may be called Actions, or Beats, or Objectives, Super Objectives, Obstacles, Intents, Wants, Resolutions, Motivations, Sense Memory, and the like. But they don’t always show you how to deliver those emotional truths to every corner of the theatre, while this book offers the practical Techniques of the Craft of Acting - of Doing - which will give you dozens and dozens of tools, to shape that inner life and present it affectively and effectively to an audience. These techniques will help you translate your role from the page onto the stage, with easily-understood guidelines on: preparing for an audition; accomplishing the most at every rehearsal; the three parts of delivering a laugh line; the sure sequences of a transition; the literal courtship of your audience from opening curtain through final curtain call; holding for applause and laughter and low-flying airplanes; and reaching the cherished goal of creating a living, breathing character, visible and audible, walking and talking and using props – and, as the old theatre maxim warns, not tripping over the coffee table. In order to accomplish these stunning feats, and much, much more, you’ve come to the right book, because Acting indeed means ‘Doing,’ as we’ve known for several thousand years – since the word itself comes to us from the Latin “actus” – to Do. Welcome. Let’s start Doing.
About the Author:
Jim Cavanaugh is Emeritus Professor of Theatre Arts at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts, where for 23 years he taught Acting and Directing, and seminars on contemporary theatre – and directed 38 productions. He also founded and produced the Mount Holyoke College Summer Theatre, where he directed 46 plays, and acted in 28 under other directors. Jim studied directing with Lee Strasberg at the American Theatre Wing in New York, and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Goodman Memorial Theatre and School of Drama, of the Art Institute of Chicago, which was awarded him with High Honors in Directing. On Broadway, he acted in one play and stage managed two musicals and, one year, the Tony Awards. He directed two plays off-Broadway. In community theatres in Rochester (MN), in Omaha, and in Heidelberg, Germany, he directed a total of 70 plays. He was elected president of the North Central Theatre Association, Vice-President of the National Theatre Conference, and one of the earliest to be honored as a ‘Fellow’ by the American Community Theatre Association (now the American Association of Community Theatres), on whose Board of Directors he served a long stint, and was a frequent adjudicator of performances at their state and regional theatre festivals. Earlier, in professional summer theatres from Sacramento to Chicago to Rangeley, Maine, Jim acted, directed, stage managed, and designed lighting. At NBC in New York, he directed three programs for the Radio Workshop. Translation/adaptations by Jim of three plays by Anton Chekhov have been produced off-Broadway and at regional, community and college theatres across the country. Jim reviewed many theatre manuscripts for Schirmer Books, and for that publisher helped complete the final work of the Dean of Broadway Musical Directors, Lehman Engel, “Getting the Show On.” He began his theatre work at age fourteen with the Augusta (GA) Players, a community theatre for which his first assignment was to sit for several hours each day over a hot-plate in the orchestra pit (because that’s where the only household wall plug was located) stirring a double-boiler containing the evil-smelling “sizing” which was then mixed with pigment paint, allowing it to adhere to the canvas scenery. The odors that clung irrevocably to his clothing and his skin removed forever any illusions about the glamour of a life in the theatre.
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