Customer Reviews

The best introduction to actor training in a single volume! - By: ddpops, 05 Aug 2001
In 'Twentieth Century Actor Training' Alison Hodge manages to draw together the different methods of fourteen of this century's greatest theatre practitioners, from Stanislavski to Wlodzimierz Staniewski. This book is a must for all students of theatre studies or any other performance related studies. The book comprises of fourteen chapters, all by different authors. Each chapter is broken down into three basic sections, a potted history of the life of each practitioner, a breakdown of the key elements that they usedin actor training, including many examples, & finally a history of how these principles were usedin performance. The text is divided into manageable sections with several photographs of historical productions some helping to explain & demonstrate the methodin practice (such as Meyerhold's 'biomechanics'). Considering the content & breadth of this book I consider it extremely good value & well worth adding to the bookcase of anybody who is interestedin this 'unique phenomenon'.