Aimed at the beginning acting student, this book takes a commonsense approach to the craft, building on basic techniques in the first part and then going on to cover two distinct types of theater; comedy and Shakespearean verse. Kuritz introduces basic acting techniques through a series of simple exercises. the section on verse analyzes accent and rhythm with examples of dialog, while the comedy chapter lists 15 examples of comic situations, along with definitions and examples of comic figures of speech. Warm-up exercises, comic dialect guidelines, and a general stage terminology contribute to the usefulness of the book. Recommended for theater arts collections in public, high school and college libraries.