by Paul Harvard
'Musical theatre has the potential to be extraordinary. As a genre, it brims with possibility. Often dismissed as a frivolous style of entertainment, the musical can actually be the most powerful and affecting of theatrical forms.'
So begins Paul Harvard's impassioned and invaluable guide for actors and students of musical theatre. But he quickly diagnoses a problem with much of the acting he sees in drama schools, where he teaches, and on the professional stage, where he has worked. Self-consciousness creeps in, singing and dancing take precedence, so that when performers open their mouths to sing, the acting stops.
Acting Through Song directly addresses this challenge. Harvard takes the techniques of modern actor training including the theories of Stanislavsky, Brecht, Meisner and Laban, amongst others and applies them to the fundamental component of musical theatre: singing.
With dozens of exercises to put these theories into practice, and numerous examples from a broad range of musicals, the result is a comprehensive and rigorous acting course for those training in musical theatre or already performing, whether amateur or professional, to realise their potential and act better.
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