BOOK OF THE MONTH

Actions: The Actors' Thesaurus

Marina Caldarone and Maggie Lloyd-Williams


Actors need actions. Actors cannot ‘act’ adjectives, they need verbs. Verbs are an aim to achieve, an action to perform.

ACTIONS: The Actors' Thesaurus is a vital companion for actors in rehearsal—a thesaurus of action words to revitalize performance.
‘Actions’ are active verbs. ‘I tempt you.’ ‘You taunt me.’ In order to perform an action truthfully--and therefore convincingly-- an actor needs to find exactly the right action to suit that particular situation and that particular line. That is where this book comes in….

ACTIONS is a thesaurus of active verbs that the actor can use to refine performance until s/he hits exactly the right one to help make the action come alive. ACTIONS: The Actors’ Thesaurus by Marina Caldarone & Maggie Lloyd-Williams has gathered together the (formerly) dogged-eared photocopied lists of action verbs from greenrooms and rehearsal rooms and put them together in this pocket-sized thesaurus. All with a view to helping actors get to the heart of meaning and to a great performance. This thesaurus of action words is indispensable in developing mood, line readings, and acting choices for each and every line.