Deer, J. & Dal Vera, R. (Ed).(2008). Acting in Musical Theatre: A Comprehensive Course.

Routledge.

Resumen

Acting in Musical Theatre es un libro que busca servir de guía para entender el teatro
musical, principalmente desde el punto de vista actoral, dando una serie de pautas necesarias
para hacer un trabajo adecuado a las capacidades personales del actor y a su desempeño dentro
de una producción de este tipo. Joe Deer y Rocco Dal Vera, directores, coreógrafos y maestros
expertos en la materia, comparten sus saberes a partir de la experiencia y crean un tipo de
esquema dividido en secciones y capítulos donde se incluyen las bases para una buena actuación;
análisis de textos, estructura y personaje; a lo que podría enfrentarse; consejos y ejercicios para
prepararse; la creación del personaje actoral, fisica y musicalmente; la vida profesional; entre
muchas otras cosas. El prólogo se encuentra a cargo de Lynn Ahrens, quien desde su experiencia
como escritora de musicales, asevera que los contenidos en este texto contribuirán al desarrollo
artístico de muchos actores.

How do you recognize good acting? We know it when we see it, or, even more likely, excellent acting is so
transparent that we are unaware we are seeing it at all and simply become involved in the character's
experience without thinking about the acting. When watching anything that it's done excellently, one
doesn't notice the technique. It looks so natural it is easy to believe anyone could do it. A winning golf
swing is effortless poetry in motion (and looks simple until you try it), but it is poetry that can be learned.
There are principles and techniques involved and those can be studied and incorporated into the seamless,
graceful whole. This is also true for acting. And just as you can't become a championship athlete without
dedicated concentration on the fundamental skills of the sport, you won't fulfill you potential as an artist
without mastering the fundamental elements of your craft. (p. 02)

In rehersal, you are a character in the play, not the director: Questions of interpretation are best left to
the teacher or director and the actor who is working. Fellow actors need to be careful not to intrude on that
 relationship. These are many interpretations for every role and an infinite range of posibilities for playing
any moment. Comments on interpretation from too many sources can confuse an actor, and may send the
role off in a direction that is contrary to what the director wants. Further, if you are focusing on a colleage's
work in that way, you personal need to explain what you are doing (especially when it seems you haven't
been accurately received). (p.03)

… Remember, the goal of these various encounters with the text in to allow the words to move you just by
speaking them. When you are touched by the text, it is much easies to find the character's experience, and it
doesn't feel like you have to generate feeling or need to fill the line. Feeling comes from the words
themselves.(p. 91)

“Every story can be viewed as a constant struggle for power, status and control” (p. 204).

Returning to our metaphor of taking a journey, we know that following a map often requires us to identify
the target destination and back up from there to find our way to it from our present location. The same thing
occurs as you examine a script and score. If we know a song occurs at a specific moment, then there must
be reasons it was pressured to happen where it does. If we can identify those reasons, we can build the
performance so the eruption into song is a necessary part of the overall journey. Nothing is worse than
getting to a song moment and being forced to start singing when there really isn't pressure to do so.(p.214)

The challenge for actors is that, unlike in real life, theatrical moments are rehearsed, planned and
sometimes choregraphed. In musicals, we have heightened periods of expression during songs where the
way we use the body is often expanded beyond the casually pedestrian movement od daily life to something
more evocative and emotionally specific... audiences only perceive our experience through our vocal and
physical behavior. For the musical actor that physical behavior means the use of gesture and body shape:
some of the most powerful tools we have to share our inner life with an audience. (p. 248)