SINGING AND ACTING HANDBOOK

This collaborative effort by Oxford don and musical director de Mallet Burgess and acclaimed international musical director, composer, and teacher Skilbeck is the result of the authors' efforts to develop practical and effective exercises to merge music and drama in the study and performance of musical theater, opera, operetta, vaudeville, and cabaret. Following an introductory section establishing the constituent elements of music, drama, and the workshop process through which the techniques can be incorporated, the authors delineate over 100 exercises for fundamentals: rhythm, pulse, and time; music, text, and score; and character, emotion, and sound. Instructions for each workshop-tested exercise are prefaced by its title, goal, methodology, risk factor, and necessary resources. This wonderful compendium of exercises clearly supports the authors' basic tenet that musical theater is greater than the sum of its usually segregated parts. Certain to become a standard in this discipline. -Barry X. Miller, Austin P.L. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.