ABSTRACT

Building Embodiment: Integrating Acting, Voice, and Movement to Illuminate Poetic Text offers a collection of strategic and practical approaches to understanding, analyzing, and embodying a range of heightened text styles, including Greek tragedy, Shakespeare, and Restoration/comedy of manners.

These essays offer insights from celebrated teachers across the disciplines of acting, voice, and movement and are designed to help actors and instructors find deeper vocal and physical connections to poetic text. Although each dramatic genre offers a unique set of challenges, Building Embodiment highlights instances where techniques can be integrated, revealing how the synthesis of body, brain, and word results in a fuller sense of character experiencing for both the actor and the audience.

This book bridges the gap between academic and professional application and invites the student and professional actor into a richer experience of character and story.

chapter |3 pages

Introduction

part 1|76 pages

Acting

chapter 1|12 pages

The Natural Elements

chapter 3|9 pages

Tackling Heightened Text

chapter 4|12 pages

(3″ × 5″) × 40

A Journey to Embodiment

chapter 5|8 pages

The Words

Golden Keys to the Inner Life of the Character

part 2|84 pages

Teaching

chapter 8|13 pages

Sculpting and Imaging the Text

An Equitable and Inclusive Approach to Speaking Heightened Language

chapter 9|14 pages

The Sound in the Silence; the Movement in the Stillness

Discovering Embodiment in Presence

chapter 10|9 pages

Grace, Gravitas, and Grounding – Approaching Greek Tragedy

Through a New Translation of Hecuba

chapter 11|12 pages

Animating the Ancients

A Scaffolded Approach to Physicalizing Greek Theatre

chapter 13|12 pages

“O, Villain, Villain, Smiling, Damned Villain”

Hamlet and the Rhetoric of Repetition

chapter 14|11 pages

Agamemnon's Homecoming

Using Active Analysis to Explore Ancient Theatre

chapter |1 pages

Conclusion