ABSTRACT

Worried about short rehearsal time? Think that fluffing your lines will be the end of your career? Are you afraid you'll be typecast? Is there such a thing as acting too much? How should a stage actor adjust performance for a camera? And how should an actor behave backstage?

The Actor's Survival Handbook gives you answers to all these questions and many more. Written with verve and humor, this utterly essential tool speaks to every actor's deepest concerns. Drawing upon their years of experience on stage, backstage, and with the camera, Patrick Tucker and Christine Ozanne offer forthright advice on topics from breathing to props, commitment to learning lines, audience response to simply landing the job in the first place. The book is rich with examples - both technical and inspirational. And because a director and an actor won't always agree, the two writers sometimes even offer alternative responses to a dilemma, giving the reader both an actor's take and a director's take on a particular point.

Like Patrick Tucker's Secrets of Screen Acting, this new book is written with wit and passion, conveying the authors' powerful conviction that success is within every actor's grasp.

chapter |3 pages

Acting: What Is It?

chapter |2 pages

Agents

chapter |2 pages

Amateur Dramatics

chapter |2 pages

Anecdotes and Jokes

chapter |2 pages

Attitude

chapter |2 pages

Audience

chapter |3 pages

Auditions

chapter |3 pages

Battle of the Sexes

chapter |2 pages

Be Yourself (Plus!)

chapter |3 pages

Believability

chapter |2 pages

Blowing Your Nose

chapter |2 pages

Breaking Up (Corpsing)

chapter |3 pages

Business (Biz)

chapter |2 pages

Casting Directors

chapter |4 pages

Comedy and Farce

chapter |4 pages

Commercial Casting Sessions

chapter |2 pages

Commitment

chapter |2 pages

Conservatories and Drama Schools

chapter |2 pages

Consistency

chapter |3 pages

Costumes, Wigs, and Shoes

chapter |3 pages

Crew

chapter |2 pages

Designers

chapter |2 pages

Dialects and Accents

chapter |3 pages

Directors

chapter |2 pages

Discussions

chapter |2 pages

Don't Ask for Permission

chapter |3 pages

Don't Give Up

chapter |2 pages

Drugs

chapter |2 pages

Editing and Acting

chapter |3 pages

Example: Al and Bob's First Meeting

chapter |3 pages

Example: Anna Christie and Her Dad

chapter |4 pages

Example: Broadway versus Hollywood

chapter |2 pages

Example: Brother and Sister Act

chapter |4 pages

Example: Kate and Corpsing

chapter |4 pages

Example: Lady Bracknell's Handbag

chapter |3 pages

Example: Mr. and Mrs. Noah Fight

chapter |3 pages

Example: Mr. Horner Is Exactly That

chapter |4 pages

Example: Noël Coward on the Phone

chapter |2 pages

Example: Olivia's Ends

chapter |4 pages

Example: Plunging in the Deep End

chapter |3 pages

Example: Princely Business

chapter |4 pages

Example: Signs of the Times

chapter |3 pages

Example: The Silence of the Lads

chapter |3 pages

Example: Valuable Verbals

chapter |3 pages

Example: You, Thee—and the Gold

chapter |3 pages

Eye-to-Eye Contact

chapter |3 pages

Fellow Actors

chapter |2 pages

Film versus Television

chapter |3 pages

Forgetting Lines

chapter |2 pages

Further Training

chapter |2 pages

Gear Changes

chapter |3 pages

Getting Work

chapter |2 pages

Good and Bad Taste

chapter |2 pages

Hierarchy

chapter |2 pages

Homework

chapter |2 pages

Illness

chapter |3 pages

Improvisation

chapter |2 pages

Instinct versus Intellect

chapter |2 pages

Interviews

chapter |2 pages

It's Not What It Used To Be

chapter |2 pages

Jobs Requiring Acting Skills

chapter |2 pages

Journey

chapter |2 pages

Know Your Image

chapter |3 pages

Laughter

chapter |3 pages

Learning Lines

chapter |2 pages

Less Is More?

chapter |2 pages

Let the Words Do the Work

chapter |1 pages

Medieval Acting

chapter |2 pages

Melodrama Acting

chapter |3 pages

Method Acting

chapter |2 pages

Mistakes

chapter |2 pages

Modern Contemporary Acting

chapter |2 pages

Money Is Probably the Answer

chapter |4 pages

Movement and Gestures

chapter |2 pages

Multicamera versus Single Camera

chapter |2 pages

Never Say No

chapter |2 pages

No Training

chapter |4 pages

Notes

chapter |2 pages

Open Auditions

chapter |2 pages

Opposites

chapter |3 pages

Outside-in versus Inside-out

chapter |2 pages

Over the Top

chapter |2 pages

Pauses

chapter |2 pages

Performing

chapter |3 pages

Photographs

chapter |2 pages

Problems

chapter |2 pages

Producers

chapter |2 pages

Projection

chapter |2 pages

Properties (Props)

chapter |2 pages

Pulling Focus

chapter |2 pages

Punctuality

chapter |2 pages

Qualifications

chapter |3 pages

Radio Acting

chapter |3 pages

Readings

chapter |3 pages

Rehearsals (Long, Short, or None)

chapter |3 pages

Rehearsing

chapter |3 pages

Rejection

chapter |2 pages

Restoration Acting

chapter |2 pages

Resumes

chapter |3 pages

Role-Play

chapter |3 pages

Screen Acting

chapter |3 pages

Screen Cheating

chapter |2 pages

Screen Reactions

chapter |2 pages

Screen Vocal Levels

chapter |2 pages

Sex and Violence

chapter |2 pages

Shakespeare Acting

chapter |3 pages

Shakespeare: First Folio

chapter |3 pages

Shakespeare: Prose or Poetry

chapter |3 pages

Shakespeare: Simple or Complicated

chapter |3 pages

Shakespeare: Verse

chapter |3 pages

Shakespeare: What You Call People

chapter |2 pages

Shakespeare: Wordplay

chapter |2 pages

Shooting and Acting

chapter |3 pages

Stars

chapter |2 pages

Starting Off

chapter |2 pages

Step-by-Step

chapter |2 pages

Style

chapter |2 pages

Teaching Acting

chapter |2 pages

Technical and Dress Rehearsals

chapter |2 pages

Technique

chapter |2 pages

Ten-Second Rule

chapter |4 pages

Text

chapter |3 pages

The Team

chapter |2 pages

Thinking

chapter |2 pages

Training

chapter |4 pages

Truth

chapter |2 pages

Typecasting

chapter |2 pages

University Courses

chapter |2 pages

Versatility

chapter |2 pages

Voice

chapter |2 pages

Whatever Works

chapter |3 pages

You (Your Other Life)

chapter |3 pages

Biographies