The Actor's Brain

The Actor's Brain PDF

Author: Sean Spence

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2009-07-02

Total Pages: 462

ISBN-13: 0198526660

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Is free will just an illusion? What is it in the brain that allows us to pursue our own actions and objectives? What is it about this organ that permits seemingly purposeful behaviour, giving us the impression we are free? This book takes a journey into the brain to examine what is about known voluntary behaviour, and why it can go wrong.

The Actor, Image, and Action

The Actor, Image, and Action PDF

Author: Rhonda Blair

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2007-11-30

Total Pages: 153

ISBN-13: 1135976244

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Rhonda Blair examines the physiological relationship between bodily action and emotional experience, in the first full-length study of actor training using the insights of cognitive neuroscience and their crucial importance to an actor’s engagement with a role.

Acting with Both Sides of Your Brain

Acting with Both Sides of Your Brain PDF

Author: Ramon Delgado

Publisher: New York : Holt, Rinehart, and Winston

Published: 1986

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 9780030001048

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"Research on right and left hemisphere brain functions provides a metaphor and possibly even a physical explanation for the dual nature of the performing experience. Investigations by psychologists and neurologists suggest that the creative, non-verbal functions of the right hemisphere of the brain are equally important to our balance as whole personalities as is the dominant left hemisphere of the brain, long believed to direct logical and verbal functions. If the dominant left hemisphere can be temporarily overridden, we gain access to the creative right functions and a healthy balance occurs. It is this balance between the two hemispheres which creates the double awareness that the audience has of the performer as both actor and character. It is the balance which permits actors the simultaneous experience of emotional release and emotional control. Further study convinced the author the right-brain/left-brain approach was indeed a useful way of organizing the development of the creative processes."--Publisher description.

Mirrors in the Brain

Mirrors in the Brain PDF

Author: Giacomo Rizzolatti

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 019921798X

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When we witness a great actor, musician, or sportsperson performing, we share something of their experience. It become clear just how this sharing of experience is realised within the human brain. This text provides an accessible overview of mirror neurons, written by the man who first discovered them.

Changing Direction: A Practical Approach to Directing Actors in Film and Theatre

Changing Direction: A Practical Approach to Directing Actors in Film and Theatre PDF

Author: Lenore DeKoven

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2006-02-07

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 1136068937

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This approach, honed after years of on-set experience and from teaching at UCLA, NYU, and Columbia, and endorsed by many in the industry, including director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and producer/actor Edward Asner, aims to provide a helpful reference and resource for directors and actors alike. It combines underlying theory with dozens of exercises designed to reveal the actor's craft. There is material on constructing the throughline; analyzing the script; character needs; the casting and rehearsal processes; film vs. theater procedures as well as the actor and the camera. Distilling difficult concepts and a complex task to their simplest form, the author explains how to accurately capture and portray human behavior. The author's discussion of creative problems she has encountered or anticipated after years of experience, and her suggested solutions and exercises, are immediately useful. Additionally, hear what the actors have to say in excerpts from interviews with such acclaimed actors as Meryl Streep, Denzel Washington, Glenn Close, Robert Redford, Christopher Walken, Julianne Moore, and Michael Douglas (to name a few) who discuss their work with directors, what inspires them, and what they really want from the director.

At Left Brain Turn Right

At Left Brain Turn Right PDF

Author: Anthony Meindl

Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub

Published: 2012-01

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9780615534862

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."..shows you how to silence the noise of your left brain, ignite your creative side, and live the life you've always imagined"--P. [4] of cover.

My Character Wouldn't Do that

My Character Wouldn't Do that PDF

Author: Donna Soto-Morettini

Publisher:

Published:

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 9781350230385

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"Starting from the idea that the main hindrance to a great acting performance is self-consciousness on the part of the performer, My Character Wouldn't do That examines the ways in which some of our traditional and contemporary approaches to acting put us into a 'mind space' that can encourage self-consciousness. Examining evidence from a range of contemporary cognitive sciences, the book approaches acting and actor training in an entirely different way. Based on the latest research into brain activity and human behaviour, the book covers areas that standard acting texts do (character, emotion, memory, imagination, making active choices) but reconceives each of these elements through the lens of that contemporary research. The book is the first to look closely at what contemporary research tells us about: personality/character and how environment shapes us; how memory works and how actors can work with (rather than against) their memory in preparing for performance; why actors must use different kinds of brain states and imagination in the various stages of preparation, rehearsal, and performance; how actors can frame active choices in a way that refocuses the source of thought and action; why actors should distinguish the stages of preparation and the kinds of thinking / imagination that works at each stage."--

Flicker

Flicker PDF

Author: Jeffrey M. Zacks

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 0199982872

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How is it that a patch of flickering light on a wall can produce experiences that engage our imaginations and can feel totally real? From the vertigo of a skydive to the emotional charge of an unexpected victory or defeat, movies give us some of our most vivid experiences and most lasting memories. They reshape our emotions and worldviews--but why? In Flicker, Jeff Zacks delves into the history of cinema and the latest research to explain what happens between your ears when you sit down in the theatre and the lights go out. Some of the questions Flicker answers: Why do we flinch when Rocky takes a punch in Sylvester Stallone's movies, duck when the jet careens towards the tower in Airplane, and tap our toes to the dance numbers in Chicago or Moulin Rouge? Why do so many of us cry at the movies? What's the difference between remembering what happened in a movie and what happened in real life--and can we always tell the difference? To answer these questions and more, Flicker gives us an engaging, fast-paced look at what happens in your head when you watch a movie.

A New Brain

A New Brain PDF

Author: William Finn

Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 84

ISBN-13: 0573627134

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By the Tony-award winning authors of Falsettos, here is an energetic, sardonic, often comical musical about a composer during a medical emergency. Gordon collapses into his lunch and awakes in the hospital surrounded by his maritime-enthusiast lover, his mother, a co-worker, the doctor and the nurses. Reluctantly, he had been composing a song for a children's television show that features a frog - Mr. Bungee - and the spector of this large green character and the unfinished work haunts him throughout his medical ordeal. What was thought to be a tumor turns out to be something more operable and Gordon recovers, grateful for a chance to compose the songs he yearns to produce.

The Musical Brain: And Other Stories

The Musical Brain: And Other Stories PDF

Author: César Aira

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

Published: 2015-03-03

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 081122418X

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A delirious collection of short stories from the Latin American master of micro-fiction. A delirious collection of short stories from the Latin American master of microfiction, César Aira–the author of at least eighty novels, most of them barely one hundred pages long–The Musical Brain & Other Stories comprises twenty tales about oddballs, freaks, and loonies. Aira, with his fuga hacia adelante or "flight forward" into the unknown, gives us imponderables to ponder and bizarre and seemingly out-of-context plot lines, as well as thoughtful and passionate takes on everyday reality. The title story, first published in the New Yorker, is the creme de la creme of this exhilarating collection.