John Abbott, author of The Improvisation Book, explains how theatre directors at every level can use improvisation in the rehearsal room. Foreword by Mark Rylance.'Improvisation can be used as part of the creative process of rehearsing a play. It can be a fabulous tool for exploration and discovery. It can strengthen the actor's commitment to their character. And it can create an environment of confidence and spontaneity.'Packed with useful exercises and i...

Napoleon, finding his proffers of peace rejected by England with contumely and scorn, and declined by Austria, now prepared, with his wonted energy, to repel the assaults of the allies. As he sat in his cabinet at the Tuileries, the thunders of their unrelenting onset came rolling in upon his ear from all the frontiers of France...

About the year of our Lord 997, Adelbert, Bishop of Prague, with two companions, set out on a missionary tour to the shores of the Baltic. The savage inhabitants killed him. Still Christianity gradually gained ground. As the ages rolled on, idolatry disappeared, and nominal Christianity took its place. The people were poor, ignorant, widely dispersed, and but partially civilized. During weary centuries, as generations came and went, nothing in that region occurred of interest to the world ...

In the year 1740, Charles the Sixth, emperor of Austria, died. He left a daughter twenty-three years of age, Maria Theresa, to inherit the crown of that powerful empire. She had been married about four years to Francis, duke of Lorraine. The day after the death of Charles, Maria Theresa ascended the throne. The treasury of Austria was empty. A general feeling of discontent pervaded the kingdom.

We all live a double life: the external life which the world sees, and the internal life of hopes and fears, joys and griefs, temptations and sins, which the world sees not, and of which it knows but little. None lead this double life more emphatically than those who are seated upon thrones. Though this historic sketch contains allusions to all the most important events in the reign of Louis the Fourteenth, it has been the main object of the writer to develop the inner life of the palace; ...

A little more than a hundred years ago, a poor man, by the name of Crockett, embarked on board an emigrant-ship, in Ireland, for the New World. He was in the humblest station in life. But very little is known respecting his uneventful career excepting its tragical close...

There are but few persons, in the United States, who have not heard the name of the renowned pirate, Captain Kidd. There are also but few to be found who have any intelligent conception of his wild and guilty career. The banks of the Hudson, the islands scattered through the Sound which skirts the southern New-England coast, and the wild rivers and craggy harbors which fringe the rugged shores of Maine, are all rich with legends of the exploits and hiding-places of this notorious buccaneer...

On the 11th of November, 1620, the storm-battered Mayflower, with its band of one hundred and one Pilgrims, first caught sight of the barren sand-hills of Cape Cod. The shore presented a cheerless scene even for those weary of a more than four months voyage upon a cold and tempestuous sea. But, dismal as the prospect was, after struggling for a short time to make their way farther south, embarrassed by a leaky ship and by perilous shoals appearing every where around them, they were glad to...

About four hundred years ago there was a small kingdom, spreading over the cliffs and ravines of the eastern extremity of the Pyrenees, called Navarre. Its population, of about five hundred thousand, consisted of a very simple, frugal, and industrious people. Those who lived upon the shore washed by the stormy waves of the Bay of Biscay gratified their love of excitement and of adventure by braving the perils of the sea...

A practical guide to conducting improvisation sessions, for teachers, directors and workshop leaders.***Comes with a full set of improvisation cards to use in any improvisation sessionThe Improvisation Book takes you step-by-step, session-by-session through a graded series of improvisation exercises. Starting with the very first class, it adds a new element at each stage until even the most inhibited students have gained a full vocabulary of improvisationa...

The little fleet of three small vessels, with which Columbus left Palos in Spain, in search of a new world, had been sixty-seven days at sea. They had traversed nearly three thousand miles of ocean, and yet there was nothing but a wide expanse of waters spread out before them. The despairing crew were loud in their murmurs, demanding that the expedition should be abandoned and that the ships should return to Spain...

The island of Corsica, in the Mediterranean Sea, sixty miles from the coast of Tuscany, is about half as large as the State of Massachusetts. In the year 1767 this island was one of the provinces of Italy. There was then residing, in the small town of Corté, in Corsica, a young lawyer nineteen years of age. He was the descendant of an illustrious race, which could be traced back, through a succession of distinguished men, far into the dark ages. Charles Bonaparte, the young man of whom we ...