Books about Improvisation from Amazon.com

The best-loved and most-admired of all America’s television cooks today, Lidia Bastianich, now gives us her most generous, instructive, and creative cookbook. The emphasis here is on cooking for the family, and her book is filled with unusually delicious basic recipes for everyday eating Italian-style, as well as imaginative ideas for variations and improvisations.

Here are more than 200 fabulous new dishes that will appeal both to Lidia’s loyal following, who have come to rely on her wonderfully detailed recipes, and to the more adventurous cook ready to experiment.

• She welcomes us to the table with tasty bites from the sea (including home-cured tuna and mackerel), seasonal salads, and vegetable surprises (Egg-Battered Zucchini Roll-Ups, Sweet Onion Gratinate).

• She reveals the secret of simple make-ahead soup bases, delicious on their own and easy to embellish for a scrumptious soup that can make a meal.

• She opens up the wonderful world of pasta, playing with different shapes, mixing and matching, and creating sauces while the pasta boils; she teaches us to make fresh egg pastas, experimenting with healthful ingredients–whole wheat, chestnut, buckwheat, and barley. And she makes us understand the subtle arts of polenta- and risotto-making as never before.

• She shares her love of vegetables, skillet-cooking some to intensify their flavor, layering some with yesterday’s bread for a lasagna-like gratin, blanketing a scallop of meat with sautéed vegetables, and finishing seasonal greens with the perfect little sauce.

• She introduces us to some lesser-known cuts of meats for main courses (shoulders, butts, and tongue) and underused, delicious fish (skate and monkfish), as well as to her family’s favorite recipes for chicken and a beautiful balsamic-glazed roast turkey.

• And she explores with us the many ways fruits and crusts (pie, strudel, cake, and toasted bread) marry and produce delectable homey desserts to end the meal.

Lidia’s warm presence is felt on every page of this book, explaining the whys and wherefores of what she is doing, and the brilliant photographs take us right into her home, showing her rolling out pasta with her grandchildren, bringing in the summer harvest, and sitting around the food-laden family table. As she makes every meal a celebration, she invites us to do the same, giving us confidence and joy in the act of cooking..
Price: $19.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This book is about the inner sources of spontaneous creation. It is about where art in the widest sense comes from. It is about why we create and what we learn when we do. It is about the flow of unhindered creative energy: the joy of making art in all its varied forms.

Free Play is directed toward people in any field who want to contact, honor, and strengthen their own creative powers. It integrates material from a wide variety of sources among the arts, sciences, and spiritual traditions of humanity. Filled with unusual quotes, amusing and illuminating anecdotes, and original metaphors, it reveals how inspiration arises within us, how that inspiration may be blocked, derailed or obscured by certain unavoidable facts of life, and how finally it can be liberated - how we can be liberated - to speak or sing, write or paint, dance or play, with our own authentic voice.

The whole enterprise of improvisation in life and art, of recovering free play and awakening creativity, is about being true to ourselves and our visions. It brings us into direct, active contact with boundless creative energies that we may not even know we had..
Price: $5.14 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The 'Harold', an innovative improvisational tool, helped many actors on the road to TV and film stardom, including George Wendt (Norm on Cheers). Now it is described fully in this new book for would-be actors and comics. The 'Harold' is a form of competitive improv involving 6 or 7 players. They take a theme suggestion from the audience and 'free associate' on the theme into a series of rapid-fire one-liners that build into totally unpredictable skits with hilarious results. The 'Harold' is a fun way to 'loosen up' and learn to think quickly, build continuity, develop characterisations and sharpen humour..
Price: $10.59 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Working under the mandate "Get up and make some art!," "Kaleidoscope" features interactive and energising creativity prompts, projects, and inspiring ideas contributed by publishers and subscribers of well-known art zines. Readers will find inspiring articles, as well as cut-and-fold boxes, personality tests, doodle exercises, paper dolls, and more, so that they learn to try new things and approach art from a fresh perspective..
Price: $2.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Impro ought to be required reading not only for theatre people generally but also for teachers, educators, and students of all kinds and persuasions Readers of this book are not going to agree with everything in it; but if they are not challenged by it, if they do not ultimately succumb to its wisdom and whimsicality, they are in a very sad state indeed . . . .Johnstone seeks to liberate the imagination, to cultivate in the adult the creative power of the child . . . .Deserves to be widely read and tested in the classroom and rehearsal hall . . .Full of excellent good sense, actual observations and inspired assertions -- CHOICE: Books for College Libraries..
Price: $18.56 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"Anyone who can dial a telephone can learn to play popular piano quickly and easily."

So says Norman Monath, author of How to Play Popular Piano in 10 Easy Lessons His no-frills, no-drills method will have you playing simple tunes within 30 minutes -- even if you don't know one note from another.

The secret? Learning the basic chords and how to adapt them. With lots of clearly illustrated chord examples, keyboard diagrams and practice pieces ranging from "Silent Night" to "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head," Monath teaches you:

* the basic structure of music

* how to alter the basic chords for creative accompaniment

* how to read tunes from sheet music

* how to improvise

* how to play by ear

* how to create your own playing style -- whether you lean toward pop, blues, jazz or rock

For everyone from rank beginner to experienced virtuoso, this step-by-step, uncomplicated guidebook makes learning to play popular piano the easy and enjoyable experience it should be..
Price: $7.25 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Viewpoints is a technique of improvisation that grew out of the postmodern dance world. It was first articulated by choreographer Mary Overlie, who broke down the two dominant issues performers deal with-space and time-into six categories. Since that time, directors Anne Bogart and Tina Landau have expanded her notions and adapted them for actors to function together spontaneously and intuitively and to generate bold, theatrical work.

The Viewpoints are a set of names given to certain principles of movement through time and space-they constitute a language for talking about what happens on stage. Coupling this with Composition, which is the practice of selecting and arranging the separate components of theatrical language into a cohesive work of art, provides theatre artists with an important new tool for creating and understanding their art form.

Primarily intended for the many theatre artists who, in the last several years, have become intrigued with Viewpoints yet have had no single source to refer to in their investigations. It can also be used by anyone with a general interest in collaboration and the creative process, whether in art, business or daily life.

Anne Bogart is Artistic Director of the SITI Company, which she founded with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. She is the recipient of two OBIE Awards and a Bessie Award, and is an associate professor at Columbia University. Her recent works include Alice's Adventures; Bobrauschenbergamerica; Small Lives, Big Dreams; Marathon Dancing; and The Baltimore Waltz.

Tina Landau, noted director and playwright, whose original work includes Space (Time magazine 10 Best), Dream True (with composer Ricky Ian Gordon) and Floyd Collins (with composer Adam Guettel), which received the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Musical, an OBIE Award and seven Drama Desk nominations. She has been an ensemble member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company since 1997.

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Price: $10.14 [Notify me when price goes down.]

There are more than 100 performance-tested theatre games in this unusually comprehensive collection. They were compiled after more than 15 years of workshops and study sessions. Included are a wide range of proven activities to assist in teaching specialised skills. The book is divided into 20 sections from Relaxation to Thinking Outside the Box. This is a flexible workbook designed to help instructors and participants mould and adapt many ideas to fit their needs..
Price: $10.23 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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Price: $12.45 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This work has inspired the work of countless actors, directors, and writers in theatre, television and film. Spolin's improvisational techniques have changed the very nature and practice of modern theatre. This third edition updates the more than 200 now-classic exercises and adds 30 new ones. It adds 30 traditional theatre games that are frequently used as warm-ups. It includes Spolin's explanations of key concepts crucial to her programme, and collects "The Sayings of Viola Spolin" and adds a glossary of phrases for teachers and directors, with Spolin's definitions of their meaning and value. Most significantly, though, this edition makes available "The Lone Actor". In this section, Spolin offers games for individuals to play when they are alone. It is an important piece that should expand Spolin's teachings and influence to an entirely new audience..
Price: $14.34 [Notify me when price goes down.]