This Week's Books Are All About Acting

[wolffyluna]

* Stage acting techniques by John Hester* and * Acting for life : a textbook on acting* by Jack Frakes

I was looking into learning more about acting techniques, to podfic better. Both of these books were useful, but-- okay, bad analogy time: you know how you can pick up a book about water colour painting, and get exact instructions on how to replicate a particular painting, and sure, you're painting won't be the exact same as the one in the book, but you can describe a technique that gives a consistent result. But, you very much could not do that with a book about how to write poetry. Sure, there's technique, but it's not so ~mechanical. You have to Feel It In Your Heart, and also have someone watch you and go "...nope. try again." Acting appears to be more on the poetry side of things.

Overall, I preferred Frakes' book. Hester has a tendency to go a bit high falutin "the true actor must serve the truth, and to do that they must maintain their physical instrument" while Frakes is a bit more grounded. Also, there's some interesting stuff on blocking and performing for tv vs stage.