A Beginner’s Guide to Devising Theatre
by Jess Thorpe & Tashi Gore
A Beginner’s Guide to Devising Theatre, written by the artistic directors of the award-winning young people’s performance company Junction 25, is aimed at those new to devising or wanting to further develop their skills. It explores creative ways to create original theatre from a contemporary stimulus. It offers a structure within which to approach the creative process, including ideas on finding a starting point, generating material, composition and design; it offers practical ideas for use in rehearsal; and it presents a grounding in terminology that will support a confident and informed approach to production.
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Creating Worlds: How to Make Immersive Theatre
by Jason Warren
A practical guide to creating successful immersive theatre productions, by an experienced theatre-maker and practitioner.
Placing the audience at the heart of a production – not as passive bystanders but as active participants – is the impetus behind the hugely varied work of leading immersive theatre companies such as Punchdrunk, OneOhOne and Hobo Theatre. Done well, it can generate powerful, gut-level emotional effects that will long outlast the production itself.
Creating Worlds offers a step-by-step breakdown of the entire journey towards making an immersive theatre production, and covers everything you need to consider.
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Devised and Collaborative Theatre: A Practical Guide
by Tina Bicat & Chris Baldwin (foreword by Clive Barker)
This text is written for all companies, student and professional, who are interested in non-text-based theatre and aims to shine a practical light on the passionate business of the devising process. Suggestions and advice include getting started and developing trust and communication within the devising company, how to research and use the results to stimulate ideas and discussion in the rehearsal period, and encouraging, channelling and developing ideas in the rehearsal room. Discovering and incorporating the unexpected in rehearsal and how to stop talking, start playing and develop the performance for an audience is also explored. In addition, backstage and design work, complete with sample checklists, raising money and organising budgets is also covered.
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East Meets West Recommendation
Devising in Process
by Alex Mermikides & Jackie Smart
Devising in Process examines the creative processes of eight theatre companies making devising-based performances. Companies covered include: The People Show, Station House Opera, Shunt, The Red Room, Faulty Optic Theatre of Animation, theatre O, Gecko and Third Angel.
The authors were granted unusual access to the rehearsal room, enabling them to provide unique insights into how ideas evolve and develop, how strategies and methods are applied and how roles and relationships are structured.
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Devising Theatre: A Practical and Theoretical Handbook
by Alison Oddey
Devising Theatre is a practical handbook that combines a critical analysis of contemporary devised theatre practice with descriptions of selected companies, and suggestions for any group devising theatre from scratch. It is the first book to propose a general theory of devised theatre.
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Devising Theatre with Stan’s Cafe
by Mark Crossley & James Yarker
Since it was founded in 1991, Birmingham-based theatre company Stan’s Cafe has garnered an international reputation for artistic innovation, and prolific, eclectic performance projects. Embracing site-specific, immersive, durational, non-text-based as well as scripted work, Stan’s Cafe’s portfolio defies simple categorisation.
Running through all their work however is a collaborative devising process that champions a playful experimentation with form. Devising Theatre with Stan’s Cafe reveals and reflects on their theatre-making process, providing an illuminating and accessible account of their work and the approaches, techniques and philosophies which underpin and inspire it.
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East Meets West Recommendation
Dorothy Heathcote on Education and Drama: Essential writings
by Cecily O’Neill
Dorothy Heathcote MBE was a unique educator whose practice had a vital influence on the international development of Drama in Education. For more than half a century she inspired generations of teachers and educators all over the world by her original and authentic approach to teaching and learning.
This new collection of the essential writings of Dorothy Heathcote traces the development of her practice over her long professional life. It combines the most important and influential articles from the first edition with more recent pieces to show the significant development in Heathcote’s thinking and practice.
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Drama Games for Devising
By Jessica Swale
Jessica Swale provides invaluable insight and experience in a series of exercises and games designed to free up creativity and release the imagination.
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Drama Games for Rehearsal
by Jessica Swale
This dip-in, flick-through, quick-fire resource book offers dozens of ideas and exercises to energise and inspire a bold, creative rehearsal process for any play, of any period or genre.
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Encountering Ensemble
by John Britton
Encountering Ensemble is a text for students, teachers, researchers and practitioners who wish to develop a deeper understanding of the history, conceptual foundations and practicalities of the world of ensemble theatre. It is the first book to draw together definitions and practitioner examples, making it a cutting edge work on the subject.
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Ensemble Theatre Making: A Practical Guide
by Rose Burnett Bonczek & David Storck
Ensemble Theatre Making: A Practical Guide is the first comprehensive diagnostic handbook for building, caring for, and maintaining an ensemble. Successful ensembles don’t happen by chance; they must be created, nurtured, and maintained through specific actions. Achieving common goals in rehearsal and performance requires group trust, commitment and sacrifice. Ensemble Theatre Making is a step-by-step guide to these processes.
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The Frantic Assembly Book of Devising Theatre
by Scott Graham & Steven Hoggett
As Frantic Assembly move into their twentieth year of producing innovative and adventurous theatre, this well-loved book demystifies the process of devising theatre in an unusually candid way. Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett offer an intimate and invaluable insight into their evolution and success, in the hope that sharing their experiences of devising theatre will encourage and inspire students and fellow practitioners.
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East Meets West Recommendation
Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre
by Keith Johnstone
In this landmark work Keith Johnstone provides a revelatory guide to rediscovering and unlocking the imagination.
Admired for its clarity and zest, Impro lays bare the techniques and exercises used to foster spontaneity and narrative skill for actors. These techniques and exercises were evolved in the actors’ studio, when he was Associate Director of the Royal Court and then in demonstrations to schools and colleges and ultimately in the founding of a company of performers called The Theatre Machine.
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East Meets West Recommendation
Impro for Storytellers
by Keith Johnstone
Since the sixties, Keith Johnstone has led the work on improvisation in theatre, schools and universities.
His unique ideas, set out in the classic text, Impro, have now been taken up by practitioners the world over. Impro for Storytellers builds on and extends the seminal earlier work. Keith’s techniques specialise in releasing an individual’s potential within the context of group work.
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Improvisation in Drama
by Anthony Frost, Ralph Yarrow
Improvisation in Drama was the first book to offer a unified view of work central to most drama training.
This new edition includes extended coverage of practitioners to include Boal, Meisner, Michael Chekhov and Jonathan Fox; updated assessments of Keith Johnstone, Eugenio Barba, Dario Fo, Jerzy Grotowski and Jacques Lecoq; extended coverage of women practitioners, non-western theatre, developments in “long form” improvisation and live-action role play; and more practical examples with fuller descriptions.
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The Improvisation Game: Discovering the Secrets of Spontaneous Performance
by Chris Johnstone
This is a fascinating and provocative investigation – with exercises and techniques – into the wellsprings of improvisation in theatre, dance and music by the author of House of Games.
Eight years ago, Chris Johnstone wrote House of Games, in which he looked at how improvised games could provide the fuel for drama. That book hit a chord and, several thousand copies later, is still very much in print. In his new book, Johnstone wants us to consider improvisation not as a step towards something else but as an end in itself. And so he embarks on a journey through the wacky – but actually deeply serious – world of improvisation in theatre, dance, music or any mix of these.
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Improvisation for the Theater
by Viola Spolin
This work has inspired the work of countless actors, directors, and writers in theatre, television and film.
Spolin’s improvisational techniques have changed the very nature and practice of modern theatre. This third edition updates the more than 200 now-classic exercises and adds 30 new ones. It adds 30 traditional theatre games that are frequently used as warm-ups.
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Making Contemporary Theatre: International Rehearsal Processes
by Jen Harvie & Andy Lavender
Making Contemporary Theatre reveals how some of the most significant international contemporary theatre is actually made. Eleven different writer-observers describe, contextualise and analyse the theatre-making practices of eleven different companies and directors, including Japan’s Gekidan Kaitaisha and the Quebecois director Robert Lepage.
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Making Site-Specific Theatre and Performance: A Handbook
by Phil Smith
This practical, accessible and far-reaching guide to making site-specific theatre and performance emphasises the diversity of approaches to the practice, and explores key principles of space and site. Phil Smith draws on a wide range of interdisciplinary and international performance examples, and uses an innovative variety of exercises, to show students and aspiring performance-makers how to find a site and generate a performance beyond the theatre building.
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A Practical Guide to Ensemble Devising
by Davis Robinson
This comprehensive handbook introduces techniques and exercises for devising theatre as an ensemble. Its clear style makes it an ideal book for students new to devising, while its wide scope provides fresh ideas for more experienced actors.
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Telling the Truth: How to Make Verbatim Theatre
by Robin Belfield
A practical guide to creating and producing verbatim theatre, by an experienced theatre-maker and practitioner. Verbatim theatre is fashioned from words actually spoken by real people in real situations, and reproduced by actors in performance.
An increasingly influential form of theatre, it has a unique ability to present stories from unfamiliar sources and bring unheard voices to the stage.
Verbatim theatre is perhaps the most objective way of dramatising real life; its authenticity helps audiences to understand the world we live in, whether through testimony, eye-witness accounts or autobiography. Telling the Truth offers a step-by-step breakdown of the entire process of making your own verbatim-theatre production, covering everything you need to consider.
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Theatre Games: A New Approach to Drama Training
by Clive Barker
Theatre games are a method of training actors (and devising theatre) that was developed in the 20th century by leading practitioners including Clive Barker, who trained actors at Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop in its heyday.
He developed his “theatre games” system over 20 years and proved its effectiveness for teachers, students and actors alike. His famous book combines his philosophy and approach to games, describes how to play them and the acting skills which can develop out of them.
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East Meets West Recommendation
Then What Happens?: Storytelling and Adapting for the Theatre
by Mike Alfreds
A practical investigation into story-theatre and the art of telling stories through theatre, by the renowned director who founded Shared Experience Theatre Company.
In Then What Happens?, Mike Alfreds makes the case for putting story and storytelling back at the heart of theatre. He explores the whole process of adapting for the stage, and investigates the particular techniques – many of them highly sophisticated – that actors require when performing ‘story-theatre’.
The book includes over two hundred exercises, improvisations and workshops dealing with the practical aspects of story-theatre, such as building an ensemble, creating a physical vocabulary, and transforming written narrative into drama.
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East Meets West Recommendation
Why Is That So Funny?: A Practical Exploration of Physical Comedy
by John Wright
Comedy is recognised as one of the most problematic areas of performance. For that reason, it is rarely written about in any systematic way.
John Wright was original founder of Trestle Theatre before establishing his current company, the acclaimed Told By An Idiot. He therefore brings a wide range of experience of physical comedy to this, his first book, a unique exploration of comedy and of comedic techniques.
The first part of the book is about the various kinds of laughter that can be provoked by performance. The meat of the book consists of games and exercises devised to demonstrate and investigate the whole range of comic possibilities open to a performer. The result is a deeply but satisfyingly provocative book, in which every assertion in this most subjective of fields is put to the practical test.
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Writing in Collaborative Theatre-Making
by Sarah Sigal
This engaging text explores the role of the writer and the text in collaborative practice through the work of contemporary writers and companies working in Britain, offering students and aspiring writers and directors effective practical strategies for collaborative work.
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