LibGuides UFV: Theatre & Musical Theatre: Essentials of Acting

Essentials of Acting

Acting and Actor Training Resources
Acting courses include classical and contemporary acting, history, practice and a wide range of actor training methodologies. [From Website]
Monologue e-books from EBSCO

Acting: Make It Your Business
Call Number: E-book
Award-winning casting director Paul Russell puts the power to land jobs and thrive in any medium--stage, film, television, or the Internet--directly into the hands of the actor. This blunt and practical guide offers a wealth of advice on auditioning, marketing, and networking, combining traditional techniques with those best suited for the digital age. Well-known actors and powerful agents and managers make cameos throughout, offering newcomers and working professionals alike a clear-eyed, uncensored perspective on survival and advancement within the entertainment industry. [From Publisher]
Acting and Being: explorations in embodied performance
Call Number: PN 2061 H47 2016
Through individual, partnered and collective explorations, actors uncover a character's essence and level of consciousness, their energy center and body language, and their archetype and relationship to universal themes. Magic (to pretend, as if), Metaphor (to compare, as like) and Myth (to pattern after, as in) provide the foundation for generating transformative, empathetic and expansive artistic expression. Explorations can be adapted to character work, scene study and production, including original/devised work and established text, to illuminate singular and surprising work through collaborative creativity that is inventive, inclusive and alive. [From Publisher]

Theatre of the Oppressed by Augusto Boal
Call Number: E-book
Augusto Boal saw theatre as a mirror to the world, one that we can reach into to change our reality. This book, The Theatre of the Oppressed, is the foundation to 'Forum Theatre', a popular radical form practised across the world. Boal's techniques allowed the people to reclaim theatre, providing forums through which they could imagine and enact social and political change. Rejecting the Aristotelian ethic, which he believed allowed the State to remain unchallenged, he broke down the wall between actors and audience, the two sides coming together, the audience becoming the 'spect-actors'. Written in 1973, while in exile from the Brazilian government after the military coup-d'etat, this is a work of subversion and liberation, which shows that only the oppressed are able to free themselves. [From Publisher]
Stanislavski in Practice
Stanislavski in Practice is an unparalleled step-by-step guide to Stanislavski's system. Author Nick O'Brien makes this cornerstone of acting accessible to teachers and students alike through the use of practical exercises that allow students to develop their skills. [From Publisher]
The empty space by Peter Brook
Call Number: PN 1655 B74 2008
From director and cofounder of the Royal Shakespeare Company Peter Brook, The Empty Space is a timeless analysis of theatre from the most influential stage director of the twentieth century. [From Publisher]
The Energetic Performer: An Integrated Approach to Acting for Stage and Screen
Call Number: E-book
This illustrated manual shows how to use the body to produce rich, varied and truthful performances. The approach, rooted in the Michael Chekhov Technique, integrates ancient Qigong knowledge with somatic psychology and western actor training methods to identify the links between physical shape, emotion and feeling in performance. Supporting and illustrating the text, extensive practical exercises developed through actor training classes provide techniques to tune and adapt the body in preparation for creative work. [From Publisher]

Accent Training

American accent for Canadian actors
Call Number: PN 2071 F6 S74 2008 CD Chilliwack
Accents and dialects for stage and screen : an instruction manual for 24 accents and dialects commonly used by English-speaking actors
Call Number: PN 2071 F6 M45 2009
Dialects for the Stage
Call Number: PN 2071 F6 M33 2006
Dialect work is one of the actor's most challenging tasks. Need to know a Russian accent? Playing a German countess or a Midwestern farmhand? These and more accents - from Yiddish to French Canadian - are clearly explained in Evangeline Machlin's classic work. Now available in a book-and-CD format, Evangeline Machlin's Dialects for the Stage is based on a method of dialect acquisition she developed during her years working with students at Boston University's Division of Theatre. During her long career, Evangeline Machlin trained such actors as Steve McQueen, Lee Grant, Suzanne Pleshette, Joanne Woodward, and Faye Dunaway.

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Streaming Videos

More Acting Streaming Videos

Digital Theatre + This link opens in a new window
A vast collection of live theatre performances, stagecraft, lighting and interviews along with accompanying teaching materials. Permitted Uses for this Database
Films on Demand: Master Academic Collection This link opens in a new window
Streaming video collection of over 20,000 titles in a variety of academic subject areas. Includes archival footage/newsreels on certain topics.
Permitted Uses for this Database
Theatre in Video This link opens in a new window
More than 250 plays and video documentaries online. Includes interviews with directors, designers, writers and actors. Can be searched or browsed by genre, artist, time period, place and more. Focus on the twentieth century.
Coverage: 1936 to 2005.
Permitted Uses for this Database
Criterion On Demand This link opens in a new window
Streaming collection of nearly 2000 different classic, new release, literary adaptation, documentary, animated, foreign and independent feature films. Look here for films that are due to be withdrawn..
Please email copyright@ufv.ca to ask about student film nights.
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Permitted Uses for this Database

Associations and Organizations

American Theatre Wing
"ATW focuses today on programs and activities which help students, audiences and members of the theatrical community itself to learn more about what makes theatre tick from the people who make it so vital."
Broadway League
The official website of the Broadway theatre industry
Canada Council for the Arts
Canada’s national arts agency providing grants, endowments and prizes to Canadian artists and supporting research and arts promotion.
Canadian Institute for Theatre Technology
Canadian association of design and production professionals in the performing arts.
Canadian Theatre Critics Association
Listing of members and their publications concerning Canadian theatre.
Playwrights Guild of Canada
Includes index of members and searchable catalogue of Canadian plays.
Professional Association of Canadian Theatres
Provides leadership, national representation, programs and services to member companies.
Theatre BC
News, events, awards, etc.

Theatre & Musical Theatre

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Essentials of Acting

Accent Training

Search UFV's databases and library catalogue all at once

Streaming Videos

Associations and Organizations