BiblioVault - Books about Movement (Acting)

Beyond the Mask

Gordon Craig, Movement, and the Actor

Irene Eynat-Confino

Southern Illinois University Press, 1987

Eynat-Confino goes beyond the usual consideration of Craig’s purported theories of the actor, scenery, and the scene painter to get at the heart of Craig’s idea of theater.

She draws not only on the research of contemporary Craig scholars but on material hitherto unavailable—his writings and daybooks and the writings of friends. She ties Craig’s encounter with Isadora Duncan to a decisive modification in his notion of movement. To have an instrument more controllable than the actor, he invented the über-marionette, a giant puppet. Craig also invented the “Scene,” a kinetic stage, the “screens” that brought him worldwide fame were simply an adaptation of this concept.

Eynat-Confino argues that a scenario Craig wrote in 1905, here published for the first time, reveals a theosophical system like that of Blake, a system that was the main force motivating Craig’s artistic quest. In her final chapter, she carefully examines the psychological, aesthetic, and circumstantial factors that kept Craig from completing his work to bring “friendliness—humor—love—ease—peace” to the world.

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Making Believe

Screen Performance and Special Effects in Popular Cinema

Bode, Lisa

Rutgers University Press, 2017

In the past twenty years, we have seen the rise of digital effects cinema in which the human performer is entangled with animation, collaged with other performers, or inserted into perilous or fantastic situations and scenery. Making Believe sheds new light on these developments by historicizing screen performance within the context of visual and special effects cinema and technological change in Hollywood filmmaking, through the silent, early sound, and current digital eras.

Making Believe incorporates North American film reviews and editorials, actor and crew interviews, trade and fan magazine commentary, actor training manuals, and film production publicity materials to discuss the shifts in screen acting practice and philosophy around transfiguring makeup, doubles, motion capture, and acting to absent places or characters. Along the way it considers how performers and visual and special effects crew work together, and struggle with the industry, critics, and each other to define the aesthetic value of their work, in an industrial system of technological reproduction. Bode opens our eyes to the performing illusions we love and the tensions we experience in wanting to believe in spite of our knowledge that it is all make believe in the end.

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Physical Expression and the Performing Artist

Moving Beyond the Plateau

Jerald Schwiebert

University of Michigan Press, 2011

All performers know that "tuning up the body" is necessary to maximize performance. A person's mannerisms, habitual patterns of movement, and posture can block the capacity for expression, often without the performer even noticing. Physical Expression and the Performing Artist offers an organized approach to movement for actors, conductors, dancers, singers, musicians---for performers of any kind.

Capturing the energy of the popular workshops presented by master movement teacher Jerald Schwiebert, the book draws from the wisdom of hatha yoga, tai chi, and Pilates as well as from the teachings of Stanislavski, Structural Integration (Rolfing), Alexander, Feldenkrais, and Laban to provide a fresh and accessible approach to movement. More than 300 anatomical drawings help readers pinpoint specific muscles, joints, and actions as they explore the capacity of the performer's physical instrument, the components of dynamic movement, and the anatomy of expression. The book's many detailed exercises bring awareness of habitual and inefficient movement and introduce the steps necessary for more efficient movement patterns in all parts of the body. This book will prove indispensable in movement courses and as a resource guide for professionals seeking to take their performances to the next level.

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