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Drawing on a combined expertise in improvisational theatre and psychiatry, author team Dan O'Connor and Dr. Jeff Katzman show readers how improv skills are the perfect antidote to loneliness and isolation. I know what you're thinking: Hold on...improv? Like getting on a stage in front of an audience? What if that's not my thing? Don't worry: this isn't a book about becoming an improv theater expert, and it's not really a book about performing. It's a book about loneliness--about our feelings o...

The Routledge Circus Studies Reader offers an absorbing critical introduction to this diverse and emerging field. It brings together the work of over 30 scholars in this discipline, including Janet Davis, Helen Stoddart and Peta Tait, to highlight and address the field’s key historical, critical and theoretical issues. It is organised into three accessible sections, Perspectives, Precedents and Presents, which approach historical aspects, current issues, and the future of circus performance. T...

Provides workshop activities and dramatic sketches for student actors.

The Human Touch is a book focused on the creative processes at work in British contemporary improvisational theatre and how these processes draw on the humanity of the participants: their cognitive abilities, their lives, and their relationships to each other. Vulnerability is a main feature of both the book and of improvisational theatre, both part of the hurdles that improvisers face and a creative tool. Through a study of improvisation and vulnerability, the book teaches us both what makes...

Using Open Scenes as a "way in" to scripted material, this book establishes a foundational actor training methodology that can be applied to the performance of film or television acting, commercials, and theatrical realism. Unlike other methodologies, this unique approach is devoid of casting considerations or imposed identity, providing actors opportunities that do not rely on nor are restricted by age, gender, race, ethnicity, regional accent, body type, identity, or other defining or delimi...

The first ever all-female BBC radio 2 sketch showThree top actresses show off their comedic talents in the very first all-women sketch show written for BBC Radio 2. In these six episodes, Lynda Bellingham, Gwyneth Strong and Joanna Monro present a feast of skits and music with a distinctly feminist flavour.Highlights include the 'Classic Serial' strand, featuring strangely familiar titles such as Madame Ovary, Lady Chatterbox's Lover and Donna Karenina; and 'The History of Feminism', in which we...

Improv masters Josie Lawrence and Jim Sweeney perform hilarious off-the-cuff sketches based entirely on audience suggestionsNo script, no props and living by their wit - in this side-splitting series, two of the funniest stars of The Comedy Store Players and Whose Line Is It Anyway? join together to create sketches from ideas shouted out by a live studio audience.Making it up as they go along, Josie Lawrence and Jim Sweeney riff on topics ranging from a room full of kittens to something you migh...

The Principles of Comedy Improv is an authoritative handbook for beginners and experts alike. More than just entertainment, improv’s tenets enable you to change every moment of your life. Your guide is Tom Blank, who crystallizes two decades of experience to convey improv in unparalleled scope, depth, and fun.

It takes guts to be a comedian and it takes smarts to make a living off it. In this insider's guide, former Onion editor Joe Randazzo delivers a funny and insightful blueprint for those looking to turn their sense of humour into a vocation. Explaining how it works and how to break in, Joe provides tips and guidance, outlines successful career paths and solicits advice and stories from the likes of Judd Apatow, Jack Handey, Joan Rivers, Tim & Eric and more. From writing for TV to doing standup or...