Style for Actors: A Handbook for Moving Beyond Realism

Style for Actors is an award-winning handbook and the definitive guide to roles in historical drama. Anyone who has ever struggled with capes, fans, swords, doublets and crinolines should make this third edition their constant companion.

The past is a foreign country, and this outstanding book is concerned with exploring it from the actor’s point of view. Specific guides to each major period give readers a clear map to discover a range from Greek, Elizabethan, Restoration and Georgian theatre to more contemporary stylings, including Futurism, Surrealism and Postmodernism. New material in this edition covers Commedia dell’arte and non-Western forms of theatre, theatrical fusion and developments in musicals and Shakespeare. The book’s references, images, resource lists and examples have all been updated to support today’s diverse performers.

Robert Barton takes great care to present the actor with the roles and genres that will most commonly confront them. Containing a huge resource of nearly 150 exercises, suggestions for scene study and applications not only for theatrical performance but also for stylistic challenges in the reader’s own offstage life, this book is an invaluable resource for students and practitioners of acting and drama.

Robert Barton is the author of Acting: Onstage and Off, and Acting Reframes, co-author of Voice: Onstage and Off, Movement: Onstage and Off, Theatre in Your Life and Life Themes, editor and adaptor of The Craft of Comedy. His seminal essay ＂Creative Acting＂ appears in Creativity in Theatre. His works aim to help readers move beyond acting in theatre to use it to more effectively act their own lives.