Applying novel research techniques to the largest digitized database of literature on acting in the world, this book and its companion volume, Training Actors, explores and explains the complex and competing ideas about acting.

An accessible and authoritative compendium of key concepts in acting, this book reveals how the craft has been understood by the world’s leading practitioners and theorists.

What is ‘truthful’ acting? Am I ‘freeing the voice’ and being ‘authentic’ in my performance? The idioms of acting can both delight and confound. While enthusiastic theatregoers and aspiring actors may be attracted to studio slang, theorists and practitioners of the craft will argue fiercely over the meaning and use of professional terms, while academics dispute the very philosophical basis of concepts such as ‘emotion’ and ‘imagination’, ‘believability’ and ‘character’. Acting: Keywords and Concepts is for readers from all these communities of interest and it provides a practical and reliable evidence-based account of the most significant ideas about acting in circulation today.

It is the first book in the field to use innovative computational analysis to produce a comprehensive critical investigation of concepts and terms from a vast corpus of over 1,000 books on acting. By mining the world’s largest digitized database of literary sources on the craft, it provides the most complete and wide-ranging account of the ideas and ideals that define the craft of acting.

Organized in digestible sections with pithy ‘keyword’ sub­headings, this book makes key concepts easily referenceable and reveals the politics and ideologies at play in both dominant and niche acting schools and traditions, indicating how ideas and practices have developed over time as well as where acting theory and practice is heading.

Acting: Keywords and Concepts will prove an indispensable companion to anyone interested in the craft of acting and the meaning of its key ideas.

"The methodology that the author uses is nothing short of astonishing – we often speak of interdisciplinary connections and work with other disciplines, and this is one of the most developed and important connections with another discipline that I have ever seen." - Stefan Aquilina, University of Malta