Lessons for the stage

This practical manual for teaching acting is really a drama course or two in a book, and can be used by veteran teachers, new teachers, actors from junior high through college, and little theater groups. Written by an award-winning high school drama teacher with over twenty-five years of experience, it contains both an introductory course and an advanced course, in a lesson-by-lesson format, as well as sections on scene study and relaxation/warm-up exercises which are basic to both. These separate courses are sequential and cumulative but complement each other and are adaptable to any group. Each lesson - twenty-nine in the beginning course, and forty in the advanced - includes lists of materials needed, step-by-step procedures, and outlines of the objectives, all tempered with the practical advice of a wise and compassionate teacher. Sample charts, diagrams, forms, and worksheets are here, too. Theater games found in the introductory course may be used as warm-ups, or, in fact, entire classes, in either of the two courses. But apart from teaching acting techniques; blocking; stage areas; creating characters; improvisation; and all the skills of the stage, Mr. Schlusberg never loses sight of the fact that theater is meant to encourage growth. With subtlety and deftness he shows how acting training can increase awareness of character, environment, senses, and emotions in developing more fulfilled human beings.