The Actor's Mindset


Book Description

The Actor's Mindset: Acting as a Craft, Discipline, and Businessuniquely prepares actors to live a full, successful life as a performing artist. While most acting books focus on either the art or the business of entertainment, Archibald looks at the entire picture of what it means to be an actor, focusing on the foundations of both the artist and the entrepreneur to guarantee a complete and fully functioning approach to a career. The Actor's Mindset is divided into three distinct parts: "The Craft," "The Discipline," and "The Business." Archibald's unique experience as both an actor and a coach gives him an unparalleled perspective on the current industry landscape. While classic method texts still circulate, and there are actors who have written books that address craft, none have Archibald's depth of knowledge and experience in coaching, nor approach the art from a professional standpoint instead of solely a teaching one. The success of Craig's approach is exemplified by the success of his clients, a roster that includes Constance Wu, John Slattery, and two-time Academy Award Nominee Dan Futterman.




The Actor's Business Plan


Book Description

The Actor's Business Plan is a self-directed practical guide for actors graduating from formal training programs, as well as for those already in the business whose careers need to move ahead more successfully. Using the familiar language of acting training, the book offers a method for the achievement of dreams through a five-year life and career plan giving positive steps to develop a happy life as an actor and as a person. It assists performers to flourish using the same kind of business/career planning that is a necessary part of life for entrepreneurs and business people. This introduction to the acting industry provides essential knowledge not only for how the business actually works, but also describes what casting directors, agents, and managers do, demystifies the role of unions, discusses how much things cost, and offers advice on branding and marketing strategies. It differs from other such handbooks in that it addresses the everyday issues of life, money, and jobs that so frequently destroy an actor's career before it is even begun. While addressing NYC and LA, the guide also gives a regional breakdown for those actors who may wish to begin careers or to settle in other cities. It is loaded with personal stories, and interviews with actors, casting directors, and agents from throughout the US. The Actor's Business Plan is the answer to the common complaint by students that they were not taught how to negotiate the show business world while at school. It is the perfect antidote for this problem and can easily fit into a ten or a thirteen-week class syllabus. Offering support as a personal career coach, empowering the actor to take concrete steps towards their life and career dreams, The Actor's Business Plan: A Career Guide for the Acting Life is a must-have book for actors who are determined to be a part of the professional world .




Mindset


Book Description

From the renowned psychologist who introduced the world to “growth mindset” comes this updated edition of the million-copy bestseller—featuring transformative insights into redefining success, building lifelong resilience, and supercharging self-improvement. “Through clever research studies and engaging writing, Dweck illuminates how our beliefs about our capabilities exert tremendous influence on how we learn and which paths we take in life.”—Bill Gates, GatesNotes “It’s not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest.” After decades of research, world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., discovered a simple but groundbreaking idea: the power of mindset. In this brilliant book, she shows how success in school, work, sports, the arts, and almost every area of human endeavor can be dramatically influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities. People with a fixed mindset—those who believe that abilities are fixed—are less likely to flourish than those with a growth mindset—those who believe that abilities can be developed. Mindset reveals how great parents, teachers, managers, and athletes can put this idea to use to foster outstanding accomplishment. In this edition, Dweck offers new insights into her now famous and broadly embraced concept. She introduces a phenomenon she calls false growth mindset and guides people toward adopting a deeper, truer growth mindset. She also expands the mindset concept beyond the individual, applying it to the cultures of groups and organizations. With the right mindset, you can motivate those you lead, teach, and love—to transform their lives and your own.




Psychology Tools for Actors


Book Description

Do you want to have a successful acting career? Discover proven psychology techniques that will transform the way you approach all aspects of your acting work. One of the most challenging aspects of being an actor is how little control you have over your working life. If you are like most actors, you don’t know where your next acting job will come from, nor how much money you will be paid for it. However, you do have control over your mindset. In Psychology Tools for Actors, I introduce you to ten psychological tools that will help you take your acting career to the next level by working on your mindset. These tools address five aspects of your life as an actor: learning lines, going to auditions, nurturing your self-confidence, building your resilience, and developing your craft. Each chapter focuses on one of these areas and includes two psychological techniques to help you nurture a positive and empowering mindset about that aspect. By the time you finish Psychology Tools for Actors, you will have ten powerful techniques under your belt that you can use to build a successful and sustainable acting career. Read this book and discover: · How to make the memorization process easier · How to boost your self-confidence before auditions · How to deal with rejections without sinking into despair · How to get better at your craft · Practical tools you can use straight away Short enough to read in an hour, yet jam-packed with practical advice, Psychology Tools for Actors will help you take control of your mindset, so you can navigate the ups and downs of life as an actor with ease and grace. This book is the first in the Psychology for Actors Series, and provides brief insights into those longer books. Alexa Ispas holds a PhD in psychology from the University of Edinburgh. The books in her Psychology for Actors Series provide actors with proven psychology techniques to thrive and build a successful career.




Excellence for Actors


Book Description

Do you want to achieve your full potential as an actor? Discover how to apply “deliberate practice”–a type of practice used by top performers around the world–to turn your weaknesses into strengths. We all know that becoming a great actor requires hard work, but what specific actions will help you get better? Perhaps you have spent years taking acting classes without any noticeable improvement. Or maybe your acting did improve for a while, but you don’t know how to make further progress. This lack of clarity is likely to lead to dissatisfaction and a decline in your enthusiasm for the craft. After all, nobody goes into acting aiming for mediocrity. If this sounds familiar, psychology can help. For many years, psychologists have been studying the process by which those dedicated to their craft achieve mastery. The biggest reveal of this exploration has been “deliberate practice,” a process through which you can turn your weaknesses into strengths. The impact of deliberate practice has been demonstrated by a wide variety of top performers, including athletes, musicians, and chess masters. Excellence for Actors is the first book to explore the application of deliberate practice to acting. Reading this book will provide you with a new level of clarity about how to reach your full potential. As you will learn, achieving excellence is not just about hard work, but also about taking the right actions with the right amount of dedication. Read this book and discover: · How to achieve mastery over any aspect of your craft · How to turn your weaknesses into strengths · How to avoid mediocrity and achieve excellence · The mistakes actors make when trying to improve · Practical tools you can use straight away Short enough to read in an afternoon, yet jam-packed with practical advice, Excellence for Actors will give you the clarity you need to reach your full potential. Alexa Ispas holds a PhD in psychology from the University of Edinburgh. The books in her Psychology for Actors Series provide actors with proven psychology techniques to thrive and build a successful career.




In Defense of Pluralism


Book Description

Providing an empirically grounded perspective on policy disagreements, Éric Montpetit highlights significant distortions in the media coverage of policy-making. This book will be of interest to policy-making scholars and professionals, as well as to professionals in communication and journalism looking for material to reflect upon in their work.




Why Do Actors Train?


Book Description

How are we to understand the actor's work as a fully embodied process? 'Embodied cognition' is a branch of contemporary philosophy which attempts to frame human understanding as fully embodied interaction with the environment. Engaging with ideas of contemporary significance from neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, and philosophy, Why Do Actors Train? challenges the outmoded dualistic notions of body and mind that permeate common conceptions of how actors work. Theories of embodiment are drawn up to shed important light on the ways and reasons actors do what they do. Through detailed, step-by-step analyses of specific actor-training exercises, the author examines the tools that actors use to bring life and meaning to the stage. This book provides theatre practitioners and scholars alike with a new lens to re-examine the craft of acting, offering a framework to understand the art form as one that is fundamentally grounded in embodied experience.




Lessons in Creativity from Musical Theatre Characters


Book Description

Lessons in Creativity from Musical Theatre Characters marries art and science with a new and exciting collaboration between one of the world’s leading creativity scholars and an internationally renowned musical theatre composer. This book will help readers tap into their creativity and unleash their own creative potential as they start their careers. Blending cutting-edge research, juicy anecdotes, lived experience, hands-on activities, and gentle advice, authors James C. Kaufman and Dana P. Rowe take readers on a journey to explore and enhance their own creativity. Each chapter addresses a key aspect of creativity, from how to overcome blocks to understanding one’s personal strengths all through the lens of Musical Theatre characters along with insights from those within the industry. Kaufman and Rowe shatter creativity myths (such as the tormented artist or having one big break) that may be harming the reader’s potential growth. Probing questions, fun quizzes, and engaging exercises will help the reader reflect on the material and develop strategies for their next step. All throughout, the readers can learn from the tales of Sweeney Todd, Maria Von Trapp, Alexander Hamilton, Christine Daaé, and countless others to inspire their own creativity. This book is ideal for aspiring theatre professionals, students of performing arts, and theatre and creativity scholars.




Knowers and Knowledge in East-West Philosophy


Book Description

This volume offers arguments from eastern and western philosophical traditions to enrich and diversify our present conceptions of knowledge. The contributors extend contemporary Western epistemology in novel directions, through investigating and questioning entrenched conceptions of knowledge. The cross-tradition engagement with the neurosciences, psychology, and anthropological studies is an important feature of the volume’s methodological approach that helps broaden our epistemological horizons. It presents a collection of perspectives on epistemic agency by engaging philosophical traditions east and west, including Japanese, Buddhist, Confucian, Daoist, and Anglo-analytic.




The Actors of Postnational Rule-Making


Book Description

Despite its centrality to academic discussions of power and influence, there is little consensus in legal scholarship over what constitutes an actor in rule-making. This book explores the range of actors involved in rule-making within European Union law and Public International law, and focuses especially on actors that are often overlooked by formative and doctrinal approaches. Drawing together contributions from many scholars in various fields the book examines such issues as the accommodation of new actors in the process of postnational rule-making, the visibility or covertness of actors within the process, and the role of social acceptance and legitimacy in postnational rule-making. In its endeavour to render and examine the work and effect of actors often side-lined in the study of postnational rule-making, this book will be of great use and interest to students and scholars of EU law, international law and socio-legal studies.