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Acting the Song: Performance Skills for the Musical Theatre. By Tracey Moore, with Allison Bergman. New York: Allworth P, 2008; pp. ix + 309. $24.95 paper.
Acting in Musical Theatre: A Comprehensive Course. By Joe Deer and Rocco Dal Vera, foreword by Lynn Ahrens. New York: Routledge, 2008; pp. xxxi + 448. $105.00 cloth, $30.95 paper.
Two new books on musical theatre, Acting the Song: Performance Skills for the Musical Theatre by Tracey Moore, with Allison Bergman, and Acting in Musical Theatre: A Comprehensive Course by Joe Deer and Rocco Dal Vera, offer a long-awaited, codified approach to musical theatre training. Each text applies Stanislavski-based acting techniques and terminology, discusses the use of music analysis as a tool for creating dynamic musical performances, and recognizes the challenges faced by musical theatre actors to produce truthful performances when the given circumstances of the world of the play are anything but naturalistic. Although the books cover similar material, each approaches the topic from a distinct point of view and is aimed at a slightly different audience. Acting the Song is directed toward "those who teach others about musical theatre" (vii), while Acting in Musical Theatre is directed toward a wider audience, including beginning performers, those with years of professional performance experience, and those who teach musical theatre performance.
Moore's Acting the Song is divided into three sections. Section 1, "The Elements," discusses the actor's voice, body, and acting in three respective chapters, offering the teacher a vocabulary to use with his or her students and useful exercises through which to explore these elements. Section 2, "The Classroom," is divided into four chapters that offer roadmaps for planning and facilitating the beginning, intermediate, and advanced musical theatre workshop (a series of classes taught over the course of a semester), as well as the musical theatre master class (which meets less often, the instructor serving more as coach than teacher). Each chapter states goals for that particular level workshop, walks the teacher through the structure of the workshop, offers suggested in-class exercises to help students grasp given concepts, and presents assignments and worksheets aimed at...