The Alchemical Actor – Performing the Great Work: Imagining Alchemical Theatre offers an imagination for an alchemical theatre inspired by the directives of Antonin Artaud.

"This book offers an imagination for new theatre inspired by the directives of Antonin Artaud. The alchemical four elements - earth, water, air and fire and four alchemical stages - nigredo, albedo, citrino and rubedo perform initiatory steps in the practice of alchemical transformational consciousness"--

The eponymous alchemist of Ben Jonson's quick-fire comedy is a fraud: he cannot make gold, but he does make brilliant theatre. The Alchemist is a masterpiece of wit and form about the self-delusions of greed and the theatricality of deception. This guide will be useful to a diverse assembly of students and scholars, offering fresh new ways into this challenging and fascinating play.

Alchemy in Contemporary Art analyzes how twentieth-century artists, beginning with French Surrealists of the 1920s, have appropriated concepts and imagery from the western alchemical tradition. Examining artistic production from ca. 1920 to the present, with an emphasis on artistic on the 1970s to 2000, the author discusses the work of familiar as well as lesser known artists to provide a critical, theorized overview of the alchemical tradition in 20th-century art.

THE greatest of English dramatists except Shakespeare, the first literary dictator and poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose, satire, and criticism who most potently of all the men of his time affected the subsequent course of English letters: such was Ben Jonson, and as such his strong personality assumes an interest to us almost unparalleled, at least in his age. Ben Jonson came of the stock that was centuries after to give to the world Thomas Carlyle; for Jonson's grandfather was of Annandale, over the Solway, whence he migrated to England. Jonson's father lost his estate under Queen Mary, "having been cast into prison and forfeited." He entered the church, but died a month before his illustrious son was born, leaving his widow and child in poverty. Jonson's birthplace was Westminster, and the time of his birth early in 1573. He was thus nearly ten years Shakespeare's junior, and less well off, if a trifle better born. But Jonson did not profit even by this slight advantage. His mother married beneath her, a wright or bricklayer, and Jonson was for a time apprenticed to the trade.

This book rediscovers a spiritual way of preparing the actor towards experiencing that ineffable artistic creativity defined by Konstantin Stanislavski as the creative state. Filtered through the lens of his unaddressed Christian Orthodox background, as well as his yogic or Hindu interest, the practical work followed the odyssey of the artist, from being oneself towards becoming the character, being structured in three major horizontal stages and developed on another three vertical, interconnected levels. Throughout the book, Gabriela Curpan aims to question both the cartesian approach to acting and the realist-psychological line, generally viewed as the only features of Stanislavski’s work. This book will be of great interest to theatre and performance academics as well as practitioners in the fields of acting and directing.

In this third volume in The Actor of the Future series, Dawn Langman continues to explore the integration of Steiner’s research into speech, drama and eurythmy with Michael Chekhov’s acting methodology. Her advanced applications of all the basic processes allow the art of the actor and speaker to evolve beyond the ‘soul and body’ paradigm – still broadly accepted in contemporary culture – to include dimensions of the spirit. The book contains a seminal analysis of comedy and tragedy, showing how an understanding of their esoteric roots – sprung from the Eleusis mysteries of ancient Greece – deepen our appreciation and our ability to implement the practical suggestions made by Steiner and Chekhov to differentiate the fundamental styles. A comprehensive exploration of the vowels in relation to planetary beings lays the foundation for many layers of artistic deepening and application. ‘Dawn Langman gifts us with yet another magnificent contribution to her book series developing an integrated acting technique based on the indications of Rudolf Steiner and Michael Chekhov, in which actors become the work of art. Venturing even further into the deeper alchemical mysteries of the work, Langman leads us into an imagination of future theatre that includes a genuine experience of the I AM, the origin of comedy and tragedy, Dante’s Paradiso as example of how we can experience the planetary spheres in word and gesture, and much more, inspiring the unfoldment of actors of the future.’ – Dr Jane Gilmer, actress and teacher, author of The Alchemical Actor (2021) and former Assistant Professor of Drama, VPA, National Institute of Education, Singapore ‘In this present volume, Dawn Langman continues her in-depth exploration of the integration of Michael Chekhov’s system of psycho-physical awareness with Rudolf Steiner’s indications for creative speech and eurythmy. In so doing, she genuinely models both teachers’ emphasis on experimentation and exploration absent the dogmatism sometimes associated with such work. The careful, conscious communication of her own advanced exercises created to develop this new methodology will be most effective when worked in conjunction with her previous books, The Art of Acting, The Art of Speech and The Actor of the Future, Vols. 1 & 2. Taken as a whole, Langman reveals the degree of empathy and responsiveness possible not only between human beings, but with all the manifold community of beings “between earth and heaven.”’ – Dr Diane Carracciolo, Associate Professor of Educational Theatre, Adelphi University, USA