The Purpose of Playing: Modern Acting Theories in Perspective (Theater: Theory/Text/Performance)

About this book

The Purpose of Playing providesthe first in-depth introduction to modern critical acting enabling students teachers and professionals to comprehend the different aesthetic possibilities available to todays actors. The book presents a comparative survey of the major approaches to Western acting since the nineteenth century their historical evolution and their relationship to one another. Author Robert Gordon explores six categories of acting: realistic approaches to characterization (Stanislavski Vakhtangov Strasberg Chekhov); the actor as a scenographic instrument (Appia Craig Meyerhold); improvisation and games (Copeau Saint-Denis Laban Lecoq); political theater (Brecht Boal); exploration of the self and other (Artaud Grotowski); and performance as cultural exchange (Brook Barba). The synthesis of these principal theories of dramatic performance in a single text offers practitioners the knowledge they need to contextualize their own practice within the wider field of performance while encouraging theorists and scholars to be more sensitive to the material realities of artistic practice. This analysis of major movements and figures from the early nineteenth century to the present is clear thorough and penetrating and its scope across periods countries and styles is impressive. --Xerxes Mehta University of Maryland-Baltimore County Robert Gordon is Reader in Drama Goldsmiths College University of London.