Style: Acting in High Comedy

By Maria Aitken

Book Overview

This book isn't a critical examination of high comedy. Rather, it's a collection of suggestions for the middlemen: the actors who have to catch the comic spark from the playwright and pass it on to the audience. The effort involved must be imperceptible: one has to acquire the cleverness, the articulacy, the febrility of the characters - and then make the whole laborious exercise seem like swimming through silk...The characters in high comedies don't find verbal sophistication difficult or unfamiliar; they enjoy it as you might enjoy slang.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1557832145
• ISBN13: 9781557832146
• Release Date: February 2000
• Publisher: Applause Books
• Length: 162 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.3" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

The Keys to Comedy!

If anyone is wondering about Maria Aiken's comedic genius, just watch A Fish Called Wanda again (she plays the wife). Her acting career on stage is legendary, and she has directed in the style of High Comedy all over the place, and to great renown. Read this book and you will know why. Based on her teaching experience (which includes The Juilliard School among many illustrious others), this book is a useful guide to the skills that will put a High degree of polish on your verbal stage comedy pyrotechnics, from Shakespeare to Coward. It should be on every working stage actor's shelf. It is on the reading list for the course that I teach in Shakespearean acting at Princeton. I have been known to hand copies to cast members here in NYC as well! Read it and weep... with laughter!