REQUIRED READING

AUDITION by MICHAEL SHURTLEFF

Michael Shurtleff has been casting director for Broadway shows like Chicago and Becket and for films like The Graduate and Jesus Christ Superstar. His legendary course on auditioning has launched hundreds of successful careers. Now in this book he tells the all-important HOW for all aspiring actors, from the beginning student of acting to the proven talent trying out for that chance-in-a-million role!

As a teacher, Audition has been most helpful to me as it has provided objective certainty to an area filled with far too many subjective judgements. In other words, Shurtleff has helped define the skills and tasks necessary to train actors in a manner that will help them transition successfully from the educational venue to the professional market. He has given us clear, active objectives to teach toward.

In Audition, Shurtleff articulates what constitutes good, effective acting. Once that becomes defined clearly, then success becomes not a nebulous ideal, but rather a concrete proposition.

RESPECT FOR ACTING by UTA HAGEN

Legendary actress and teacher Uta Hagen knew that an actor's finest work was often achieved for love rather than for money. She lived this philosophy alongside her husband, Herbert Berghof, at HB Studio, their acting school in New York. It was there that they created a workplace and spiritual home for actors such as Robert DeNiro, Jack Lemmon, Anne Bancroft, and Bette Midler.

Respect for Acting is Hagen's blueprint for the actor, her design for "enlightened stage acting." This classic book has helped generations of actors hone their craft, and its advice is as useful now as it was when it was first published. Hagen draws on her own struggle with the techniques of acting as well as her decades of teaching experience to break down the areas in which actors can work and search for realities in themselves that serve the character and the play. This approach helps actors to be specific in their actions in order to communicate an artistic statement.

SUGGESTED READING

ACTING IN FILM by MICHAEL CAINE


As a teacher, Caine is as straightforward as he is as an actor. You watch his performances and you're seeing an actor who understands that less is more. You read this book and you're listening to an instructor who understands the same thing. Every anecdote he tells about films he's been in and stars he's worked with is not just namedropping, it's ALWAYS relevant to whatever helpful point he's making about the craft of film acting. And to him it is very much a craft, not an art. The art takes care of itself; it happens mysteriously, but it can only happen if you nail the craft first. No arty-flighty book about acting theory or the Method, this is a working-class, meat-and-potatoes manual that anyone can relate to, much like its author.

The Actor's Encyclopedia of Casting Directors: Conversations with Over 100 Casting Directors on How to Get the Job

I do praise Karen Kondazian's, The Actor's Encyclopedia of Casting Directors. It's a highly practical, intelligently written work that will be an asset to any working actor or newcpmer who hopes to find work. The information dispened in the Q&A format will help you prepare for any auditon wheter it be for the particular casting director profiled or someone else you may be reading for. A quick note; not one day after reading the book I stepped into an elavator and came face to face with one of the casters profiled in the book, I'd actiually read for this person two years before but for the life of me couldn't remember her name. Then, miracle of miracles I somehow saw her face and name from the book, and was quickly able to make a proper introduction. I use the book regularly before auditons to refresh my memory as to what each casting directors' likes and dislikes are.

The Book: An Actor's Guide to Chicago

The Book is the bible for Chicago actors, directors and theatre producers. It includes how-to stories on getting started or advancing your career, plus listings of theatres, agents and casting directors, photographers--every tool you need to be a professional actor in Chicago.

This book has all of the information you need to break into the business in chicago. It provided a great roadmap to plan your career, unbiased advice, and hits every aspect of the business you could imagine. A worthy buy for those new to Chicago or just starting their career.

An Actor Prepares by Constantin Stanislavski

The first volume of Stanislavski's enduring trilogy on the art of acting defines the "System", a means of mastering the craft of acting and of stimulating the actor's individual creativeness and imagination.

So much mystery and veneration surrounds the writings of the great Russian teacher and director Stanislavski that perhaps the greatest surprise awaiting a first-time reader of An Actor Prepares is how conversational, commonsensical, and even at times funny this legendary book is. After many productions with the Moscow Arts Company, Stanislavski sought a way to introduce his new style of acting to the world outside of his rehearsal hall. The resulting book is a "mock diary" of an actor describing a series of exercises and rehearsals in which he participates. He details his own emotional and intellectual reactions to each effort, and how his superficial tricks and mannerisms begin to disappear as he increasingly gives over his conscious ego to a faith in the creative power of his subconscious. Rarely has any writer on the theater achieved the sort of lucid and inspired analysis of the acting process as Stanislavski does here, and his introduction of such now-standard concepts as "the unbroken line," "the magic if," and the idea of emotional memory has laid the groundwork for much of the great acting of the 20th century. While much excess and nonsense was to follow in the steps of Stanislavski's writings, his original texts remain invaluable, and surprisingly accessible, to any actor or student of drama. --John Longenbaugh