Clearly presented techniques, practice, and pointers for aspiring and working actors.
Kava presents a learning-by-doing actors’ guide to improvisation, play analysis, and performance.
Subtitled “All-purpose recipes for the actor,” this well-organized primer, delivered in conversational segments, was inspired by what has been many a home cook’s bible since 1931:Joy of Cooking. The author is a playwright and veteran actor of stage, television, and film who has taught acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Barnard College, and other universities. Here, she draws upon her training in the Meisner technique under famed acting teacher Sanford Meisner to clarify “the fundamentals” of the Meisner exercises and discuss “how they could be directly applied” to professional work. Chapters encompass individual, partner, and collaborative work, arranged under three headings: “Improvisation,” “The Spoon River Exercise,” and “Acting in a Play and a Scene.” Part I, consisting of five chapters, begins with “Repetition: The Language of Improvisation,” an exercise that, Kava writes, may be the “most significant innovation to Stanislavski’s core technique.” It includes three levels of practice with a duration of one to two weeks and a fourth level to practice “ad infinitum” as a career-long “second language.” Subsequent chapters progress through “The Independent Activity,” “The Objective and The Emotional Preparation,” “Relationships,” and “The Full Improvisation.” Part II uses text from Edgar Lee Masters’ classic Spoon River Anthology (1915) in an 11-step exercise covering such subjects as choice of text to emotional preparation for interpretation through performance and improvisation. In Part III, the author breaks down the process for performance with a multifaceted approach to analysis, table reads, rehearsals, and improvisation—using her own published version of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (2019) and Shakespeare’s Othello as examples. Throughout the book are tips, answers to actors’ potential questions, and definitions of terms designed for visual and contextual clarity. The exercises and processes are further clarified in illustrations presented in a simple, cartoon-strip format. This “recipe book” ends with an inspirational personal note to actors from the author.
Clearly presented techniques, practice, and pointers for aspiring and working actors.Pub Date: May 19, 2023
ISBN: 9798379201784
Page Count: 158
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A beautifully produced, engaging homage.
Celebrating a beloved artist.
Published to coincide with a major exhibition of works by British-born artist David Hockney (b. 1937) at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, this lushly illustrated volume offers a detailed overview of the artist’s life and work, along with chapters focused on his various styles and subject matter, a chronology, and a glossary of the many techniques he employed in his art, including camera lucida, computer, and video. Contributors of essays include noted art historians and curators, such as Norman Rosenthal, who edited the volume; Simon Schama; Anne Lyles; James Cahill; and François Michaud. Growing up in the north of England, Hockney was drawn to the light and sparkle that he found in Hollywood movies. When he finally arrived in Los Angeles, the sunlit landscapes inspired him, and his new sense of artistic freedom concurred with sexual freedom: As a gay man, he felt liberated from the constraints that had weighed on him in Britain, even in the “relative Bohemia” of the Royal College of Art. Essayists reflect on his artistic interests, such as landscapes, portraiture, flowers, and the opera—for which he created boldly exuberant sets—as well as on his influences and experimentation. Michaud examines the impact on Hockney of a visit to Paris in the 1970s, where he became familiar with Henri Matisse and his contemporaries from museum exhibitions. In the 1990s, visiting his mother and friends in Yorkshire, Hockney painted both outdoors and in the studio, experimenting with various media—including the photocopier and fax machine—as he worked to render the woodsy landscape. As a companion to the exhibition, the volume offers stunning reproductions of Hockney’s prolific works. Enormously popular with museumgoers, Hockney, Rosenthal exults, “transforms the ordinary and the everyday into the remarkable.”
A beautifully produced, engaging homage.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780500029527
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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