Exploring Television Acting

The first collection of its kind to bring together scholarly and practitioner perspectives, this book analyses the experiences, skills and techniques of actors when working on television. Featuring eleven chapters by internationally distinguished researchers and actor trainers, this collection examines the acting processes and resulting performances of some of the most acclaimed television actors. Topics include: studio and location realism; actor training for television; actor well-being in the television industry; performance in reality television and British and Irish actors in contemporary US television and film. The book also contains case studies examining the work of Emmy-award-winning actor Viola Davis and the iconic character of Gene Hunt in Life on Mars (BBC, 2006-2007).

Table of Contents:
Exploring Television Acting: An Introduction Tom Cantrell and Christopher Hogg Television Acting: Histories and Inheritances 1 Performing Sherlock: A Study in Studio and Location Realism Richard Hewett 2 'Visible' and 'Invisible' Performance: Framing Performance in 1970s Television Douglas McNaughton 3 'No-nonsense Rozzer': Philip Glenister/Gene Hunt, Life on Mars and the Particularity of Television Acting Stephen Lacey Television Acting: Approaches and Perspectives 4 'The Organic and the Technical': a Psychophysical Approach to Television Acting Tom Cantrell 5 Viola Davis: A Context for Her Craft and Success in Series Television Cynthia Baron 6 'I'm going in there GC style': Performance and Performative Contracts within a Crossover of Reality Television Environments Louise Cope 7 Truth and 'Truthiness' in Acting the Real Derek Paget Television Acting: Training and Industry 8 Exploring Actor Training for Television Trevor Rawlins 9 Accent on Talent: The Valorization of British Actors on American Quality Television Christine Becker 10 Exploring the Casting of British and Irish Actors in Contemporary US Television and Film Simone Knox 11 Well-being and the Television Actor: Challenges and Coping Strategies Christopher Hogg and Charlotte Lucy Smith

About the Author :
Dr Tom Cantrell is Senior Lecturer and Deputy Head of the Department of Theatre, Film and Television at the University of York, UK. He has published on modern British drama on stage and screen, documentary theatre and acting processes. Dr Christopher Hogg is Senior Lecturer in Television Theory at the University of Westminster, UK. He has published on a wide range of topics, including work on British television drama, television acting and international television format adaptation.

Review :
A refreshing contribution to an overlooked area of scholarship and offers an authoritative new approach to exploring television acting … This book provides an invigorating, and much needed, deviation from the academic tradition of prioritising direction and editing when analysing screen acting. This volume articulates in scholarly and practical ways what distinguishes television acting from theater and film acting … Training programs and film schools will benefit from these unique perspectives and the rich bibliographic resources the editors provide. Summing Up: Recommended. This fascinating volume interrogates the multiple ways that the televisual medium impacts actors' work and lives. Taken together, the essays expose the full complexity of the system in which television actors work, from actor training and techniques, through casting and directing, to performances as captured and framed by camera operators and editors. By delving into this book, the reader will appreciate how actors adjust their art to the pressured world of television employment. This is a seriously interesting read with a great format, which puts the state of television, and the changing nature of the job of television acting, brilliantly into context. As an actor its fascinating to have such detailed commentary on the business that I'm part of, from so many different perspectives. The essays in this ambitious collection show how rich, and hitherto neglected, the topic of acting on television is. Pioneering original scholarship analyses how actors are trained and prepared, how they work in television and the ways they contribute to meaning. This book unlocks an exciting aspect of the field.