actor Archives - Sam Post

October 26, 2012October 26, 2012

TEAM for Actors: A Holistic Approach to Embodied Acting

Laura Bond’s book, TEAM for Actors A Holistic Approach to Embodied Acting, has just been published.

I’m proud to have a copy on my shelf — and I’m totally honored and excited to have two of my plays included in it (Appendix C: Scenes by Sam Post for Practice).

Thank you, Laura. Break a leg with this book!

Laura and I have become email friends and I hope to meet her in person one of these days. She’s awesome.

I’m not an actor, but it’s obvious that her book is fresh, innovative, and comprehensive — a valuable

and unique contribution to field. I have no doubt students in schools far and wide will create themselves in these pages for years to come.

TEAM for Actors She’s Chair of the Drama Department at the University of North Carolina, Asheville. She is an Equity actor, theatre director, international workshop instructor, and teacher of acting since 1992. TEAM for Actors gives you reliable tools for successful acting and helps resolve a common gap between the mind and body so you can create a dynamic, holistic performance. Based on Laura Bond’s twenty years of teaching acting and somatic emotion-regulation techniques, TEAM for Actors provides tangible methods for integrating the thoughts, emotions, and actions of expressive behavior into acting. The book incorporates scientific research, traditional acting approaches, and aspects of the Alba Emoting technique, a reliable method for embodying emotions and actions of expression. With Bond’s guidance, you can easily move from theoretical concepts into practical application. She illustrates the TEAM’s use through true stories, practical examples, and original exercises derived from years of experimentation. Team for Actors Website Team for Actors Blog Team for Actors at Createspace UNC-A Faculty Website Team for Actors at Amazon.com

January 28, 2011

Sarah Palin, the actor who forgets her lines

If we could forget about the politics and see it purely as theatre, then Sarah Palin’s problem becomes obvious.

She forgets her lines.

She needs more rehearsal.

It seems obvious that she memorizes answers to certain questions and then freezes up and gets lost. But it’s live, so she has no choice but to blast through to the end.

I’m sure she does much better in rehearsal.

I can almost picture it. Bristol holds the script. Our Tea Party hero starts. She gets off to a good start. Slides in a zinger. And then… she forgets. You can’t hold it against her. She’s had very little time with the script.

She asks for help.

“Line!”

“Sputnik,” says the daughter.

“Sputnik,” says the former governor. “WFT.”

“WTF, Mom.”

And so it goes.

Alas, the task calls for improv, and this is not her fortÃ©.

When the camera finally rolls, with no book in hand (unless it’s on her hand), she starts out fine. She looks great. And then forgets a line. She panics, cobbles together a few random keywords from the script, and then, after a moment, detours into some familiar territory. Anything. Pulling it together for a strong, coherent finish (on a completely different subject).

November 5, 2009

Hype for my new book of plays

This is the cover of a book I’m publishing. Consider this the pre-publication publicity hype.

These days, with print-on-demand, self-publishing can be remarkably easy, and cheap.

It’s also possible, of course, to pay editors and graphic artists, etc.

But it’s nearly free if you do your own editing, typesetting, and design — and upload the files yourself.

Of course, then you get book covers that look like…this.

In a few days, this book will be available on Createspace.com, Amazon.com, the local bookstore (Literary Bookpost), the store at The Looking Glass Artist Collective, and from the trunk of my car.

The media blitz will be minimal — but so was the risk.

It didn’t cost me anything but missed sleep.

I seriously doubt any traditional publisher would have been interested in the least. The cost is high and the market is small.

If nobody buys it — so what? It’s stored on a computer and printed only when somebody wants a copy (except for the ones I buy, that will be in the trunk of my car).

If people do buy it, good for me. I make a few dollars profit per book (instead of the tiny royalty a hypothetical traditional publisher would hypothetically pay, if they would hypothetically publish it ).

If anybody wants to read the plays for free — they’re all here, on the website. Lots of people do every day. There’s nothing new in the book other than the more portable form and a little more editorial scrutiny.

This is just to state the obvious: publishing is really changing.