Acting means Doing !!

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.