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Improvisation Starters |
Author: Philip Bernardi
Published: 1992-04-15 |
List price: $12.99
Our price: $10.39
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As of: November 23rd, 2008 03:44:31 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Theater Teacher's Life Preserver
As a high school theater arts teacher, this is one of my best resource books. This is the book I grab when we've completed our lesson and there is only 5 to 15 minute left to class. Grab a couple of volunteer actors and give them a conflict from this book and they're off. The scenes provide the basic elements of improv and acting. This is not a book on how to learn improv. However, it is a great book that provides good setups necessary for good acting and improv scenes.
Simply the Best!
This book has a HUGE variety of improvisation starters which not only provide a scenario, but also provide the actors with an objective toward which to work. This has really helped my students focus their work and stay on track with their improvisations. The only thing that would make this book better is if there were some scenes set up for more than two actors, which would make it more useful for larger group/class sizes (it takes an awfully long time to get through a class full of students two at a time!), but some of the two person scenes can be adjusted to allow for four actors instead, so I would not rule out this book simply for that reason. This is a great resource for anyone teaching improvisation!
An excellent foundation for improvisation...
Philip Bernardi's "Improvisation Starters" is a fantastic collection of scenes, moments, and games that will provide an excellent foundation for improvisational work, rehearsal, and performance. A must have for actors, teachers, and improvisors.
 Misses The Point
If you're thinking of buying this book in preparation for comedy improv classes, you're off track. You'll learn in the first weeks of your class that you discover what your scene's about as it unfolds, not a second before. That's what's funny about comedy improv, watching players discover in the moment what the scene's about. And the game is usually something little, something accidental, like everyone's wearing too much jewelry on the job. That's it.
You and your partner figure out as you go what the game is in the scene based on the information you uncover, step by step.
I keep cringing when I think about kids buying this book because instead of learning to explore character, activity, emotion, dialogue and stage picture as a way to build a throughline from scratch, they're being handed pre-packaged "plots" which burden the player with required attitudes and, saps the life and comedy right out of everything.
The only way these scenarios may work is if you teach the kids to take the opposite point of view to what's expected. "It's 3AM and you were expected home from your prom three hours ago. That's my boy!"
 Improvisation Non Starters
This wasn't very useful to me. It contains merely lists of possible conflicts and conversations one might base an improvisation around. The ideas arn't particularly imaginative and are nothing I or my students couldn't come up with ourselves.
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