A colorful, spirited gem for aspiring actors or groups looking to improve teamwork.
A book provides guidelines for learning the art of improvisation.
Debut author Schindler is a founding member of Chicago City Limits, New York City’s longest-running improv comedy show, and Soter (You Should Get a Cat, 2016, etc.) is a producer and performer for Manhattan’s Sunday Night Improv. Together in this how-to manual, the duo seeks to make learning improvisation creative and fun. Beginning with a brief history (improv has Chicago roots), the work quickly jumps into the nuts and bolts of slapstick “comedy of the moment.” Instead of scripts, improv performers are given prompts—from the troupe, a partner, or even the audience—and they must learn to act naturally and off the cuff. Chapters begin with footnoted quotes, mostly from actors—like John Cleese of Monty Python’s Flying Circus—and then key concepts are explained for the novice. While it may seem ironic to have rules for spontaneous acting, the authors’ tenets are meant to help newcomers learn to work in sync with other actors. For example, in the guideline “accept all offers,” if an acting partner presents an imaginary cup of coffee, an improviser should take it and develop that idea instead of asking for tea and stopping the flow of the scene. Exercises and games are also included; for example, in “Silent Partner,” one team member must stay quiet, communicating only with body language and facial expressions. Packed with action photos from the authors’ careers (some contain famous faces, like Robin Williams’), the easy-flowing layout is eye-catching. Memorable analogies are used to explain key concepts; for example, building a scene is compared to constructing a house, brick by brick. Most intriguingly, the buoyant chapters end with examples from the authors’ own seasoned careers, such as the times they achieved “group mind,” which caused them to perform seamlessly with their partners. Quirky and lighthearted (at the end of the introduction, the authors proclaim, “Read on, MacDuff”), this lively romp through the improv world is accessible for both high school and adult readers.
A colorful, spirited gem for aspiring actors or groups looking to improve teamwork.Pub Date: Dec. 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-5115-4453-5
Page Count: 150
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Noted jazz and pop record producer Thiele offers a chatty autobiography. Aided by record-business colleague Golden, Thiele traces his career from his start as a ``pubescent, novice jazz record producer'' in the 1940s through the '50s, when he headed Coral, Dot, and Roulette Records, and the '60s, when he worked for ABC and ran the famous Impulse! jazz label. At Coral, Thiele championed the work of ``hillbilly'' singer Buddy Holly, although the only sessions he produced with Holly were marred by saccharine strings. The producer specialized in more mainstream popsters like the irrepressibly perky Teresa Brewer (who later became his fourth wife) and the bubble-machine muzak-meister Lawrence Welk. At Dot, Thiele was instrumental in recording Jack Kerouac's famous beat- generation ramblings to jazz accompaniment (recordings that Dot's president found ``pornographic''), while also overseeing a steady stream of pop hits. He then moved to the Mafia-controlled Roulette label, where he observed the ``silk-suited, pinky-ringed'' entourage who frequented the label's offices. Incredibly, however, Thiele remembers the famously hard-nosed Morris Levy, who ran the label and was eventually convicted of extortion, as ``one of the kindest, most warm-hearted, and classiest music men I have ever known.'' At ABC/Impulse!, Thiele oversaw the classic recordings of John Coltrane, although he is the first to admit that Coltrane essentially produced his own sessions. Like many producers of the day, Thiele participated in the ownership of publishing rights to some of the songs he recorded; he makes no apology for this practice, which he calls ``entirely appropriate and without any ethical conflicts.'' A pleasant, if not exactly riveting, memoir that will be of most interest to those with a thirst for cocktail-hour stories of the record biz. (25 halftones, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-508629-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
A well-researched but dull account of the hungry, unkempt days of early television. Written by film director Ritchie (The Candidate, etc.), the book shows the chaotic beginnings that justified the once widely held belief that this gimmicky new technology had no future. A fuzzy picture was first telecast on a bulky monitor with a tiny screen in the 1920s by Philo T. Farsworth, a high school student in rural Utah. But it would be another 20 years before television was taken seriously in America. Ritchie chronicles many of TV's historic firsts. In 1927, for example, future president Herbert Hoover was the first public official to speak in front of a ``televisor'' in Washington D.C., while his wife appeared from New York. They were followed by a comedian in black-face who called his routine ``a new line of jokes in negro dialect.'' Television's first commercial was illegal, but this did not stop broadcasters from soliciting commercials. NBC earned seven dollars in 1937 for simply showing the face of a Bulova watch. Many of the early (live) commercials were more than artistic disasters: A newly invented ``automatic'' Gillette safety razor would not open on camera, and the hostess of a Tenderleaf tea commercial mistakenly lauded the quality of Lipton tea. The first television newscasts were also tentative affairs. News was considered the exclusive domain of radio, of which television was then a poor cousin; CBS's first newscast featured Lowell Thomas talking in front of a stack of sponsor Sonoco's oil cans. The BBC was technologically ahead of US companies, but it abruptly stopped transmission (in the middle of a Mickey Mouse cartoon) when WW II broke out. A historical video would be better than written narrative for this material. The 77 black-and-white photos provided here hold the nonspecialist's attention, while the text rarely does.
Pub Date: Oct. 30, 1994
ISBN: 0-87951-546-5
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
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