You may not know 81-year-old actor Allan Rich by his name or credits, which began accruing during TV's golden age. But there's no doubt this fine character actor has done a remarkable job penning A Leap From the Method: An Organic Approach to Acting. It is not only a highly readable accounting of the acting techniques Rich has utilized and taught for decades, but an often hilarious, engaging memoir that details his circuitous route to the ranks of consistently working actors.
Born Benjamin Norman Schultz, Rich walks us through his own artistic growth from theory to practice—and shows how easy it is to get it all wrong. His "leap from the Method" largely refers to his leap from Stanislavsky's teachings, which have confused and vexed acting students for generations. While he sympathizes with Stanislavsky's oft stated frustration in trying to create a clearly delineated approach to acting, Rich ultimately adopted his own method—one that's simple, direct, and teachable.
Rich eschews the obtuseness and complexity of many acting theories, focusing instead on using text and imagination to get to the character. He explains how to find the essence of a character's behavior, how an actor can use his or her own fantasies to understand how a character might behave in any given moment. And he uses his own life and challenges, offstage and on, to make his points. Politely, Rich dismisses "private moments in public" as having nothing to do with real acting—as psychotherapy inappropriately delivered by an acting teacher—as well as those ubiquitous classroom "repetition" exercises. Ditto affective memory exercises, which he feels disconnects actors from their ability to create a true, believable reality.
Rich chronicles how, early in his career, he found himself on "the wrong path," believing he was following the Method when, in the name of realism, he nearly suffocated a fellow actor with a pillow in a scene. Rather than applaud Rich's brilliant technique, the other actor slapped him. It's one of many moments and recollections in the book that hit home.
My only quarrel, a minor one, comes near the end, when Rich invites friends and former students to offer their views of his work as an acting coach. This is unnecessary. Everything that precedes it suggests you're in the capable hands of a master.
>
Reviewed by Paul Haber
There's an old adage that goes "Good titles sell books." The title of Arthur Bartow's Training of the American Actor will not help its sales; it's a bland name for an engaging compendium of some of the most enduring acting techniques taught in this country. For someone new to acting and unfamiliar with the most celebrated acting theories put into practice every day by professional actors, it provides a clear side-by-side comparison of the theories of Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, Michael Chekhov, Uta Hagen, David Mamet, and Jerzy Grotowski, among others.
Of course, it's a tricky business for actors to figure out which technique will be the one to bring them to a place of readiness when they step on stage or in front of a camera. I know a talented actor who spent two years rigorously studying the technique of Sanford Meisner only to abandon it because it wasn't working for him; other actors, of course, swear by Meisner. Such is the delicate nature of finding a technique—and a teacher who can impart it as its originator intended. In this sense, Training of the American Actor is thorough and fulfilling.
Bartow, though, begins the book with an anecdote from when he was running the drama department at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. He recalls dining with an incoming student's father, who hoped to discover which of the school's acting programs would best help his child get a job upon graduation. Bartow demurred, saying that all the programs, while taking different paths, led to the same goal: training good actors. I suspect the father found that answer unsatisfactory. Before shelling out thousands of dollars on his kid's education, he reasonably wanted some reassurance. If only the great acting teachers included in this book had also devoted their brilliance to developing a clear course of study for booking work, all our lives might be quite different.
>
Reviewed by Paul Haber
Interviewing doesn't come naturally to many actors. We want the job, we want to impress or please our auditor or interviewer—and it's this very mindset that prevents us from either booking the job or being remembered favorably when the next one comes along. Why are we so self-conscious when meeting a new agent? Why do we blow a callback by trying to ingratiate ourselves with the director?
Stephen Book's The Actor Takes a Meeting addresses these questions head-on, rooting out the mistakes actors make in pursuit of work. Using actual interviews with members of his acting class and offering corrective exercises to improve their interviewing skills, Book pinpoints all the places we go awry: being overeager, using false flattery, seeking approval, asking permission, talking ourselves up or down, wanting something from the interviewer so much that we forget to be who we are and instead try to make him or her like us. All of these spell death to the interview, Book says.
When we show that we want something from the interviewer, he explains, it puts that person in a position of ultimate power, with the actor as nothing but a groveling supplicant hoping to find favor. What could be less attractive? Book seeks to adjust this equation, teaching actors how to behave as equals with their interviewers.
I don't agree with every suggestion he makes, but Book so beautifully articulates the psychology behind the interview process that I heartily recommend his book to every actor I know—and to anyone else who interviews often but wonders why his or her success rate is so darn low.
>
Reviewed by by Paul Haber
I recommend you buy this book immediately! New York actor, teacher, and coach Susan Batson (of the Black Nexxus acting school, with an additional branch in L.A.) presents a fascinating alternative paradigm for acting. She draws heavily from her own mentors—Herbert Berghof, Uta Hagen, Harold Clurman, and others—but gives the methods of those 20th-century masters a bold new spin.
Batson writes that every character has three basic dimensions: Public Persona, Need, and Tragic Flaw. "In order to really act," she explains, "you must identify and explore these dimensions in yourself." Then she demonstrates, using specific (imaginary) classroom episodes and exercises, how to do just that—how to dig deep into your own experiences, dreams, and psyche to conjure the most profound connection to the scripted character, and then how to, as she succinctly puts it, "drop into" the character.
Need, similar to an objective but deeper, hides beneath a character's constructed Public Persona. When Need "jams up" against Public Persona, Tragic Flaw is revealed. Batson shows how to figure all that out and apply it.
She also itemizes six qualities that constitute the actor's "instrument"—physicality, intelligence, imagination, emotion, sensory faculties, and empathy—and shows how to use them in combination with introspection, script breakdown, and other techniques, to create truthful characters.
Written simply and clearly, Batson's book includes highlights of pertinent theatre history, deep insights into human behavior, fresh and accessible takes on familiar exercises like affective memory, and more. Divided into five parts ("The Need, Public Persona, and Tragic Flaw," "The Actor," "The Character," "The Script," and "The Life"), this is a well-organized, clearly thought-out handbook that should be part of every actor's home library.
Just one weird thing: Batson gives over a huge hunk of a chapter to a testimonial written by Juliette Binoche. Not necessary.
>Reviewed by Jean Schiffman
Craig Wallace has obvious clarity about what makes an audition click. After working as a development executive, producer, head of talent development, and talent agent, he can clearly spot good acting. What's uncertain is whether he can teach it. Strike that—whether he can teach it in about 100 pages.
Some of the initial lessons in The Best of You seem to come squarely across the casting director's table—phrased not from an acting perspective but from a results-oriented position. Some actors will be able to translate the suggestions into usable acting lessons; others will not. For example, Wallace's list of sample "active, playable choices" reads like a list of results—"angry," "cocky," "happy," "sad"—denoting general attitudes, moods, or traits rather than specific, actable choices. In the first chapter, he states, "It is essential that the people you are reading for are learning something about you every second that you are in the room." Taken literally, such a suggestion could send someone into spasms of activity.
Fortunately, after the basic acting lessons are over, the book begins to earn its price. It's filled with simple tips and sensible advice, and Wallace's insight comes through. A veteran of casting rooms, he encourages actors to relax, take their space and time, and bring personal creativity to a process that can sometimes seem cold and automated. Straightforward tips like "Eyes up"—pointing out the crucial moments in a reading when actors should keep their eyes off the page—are exceedingly useful and could immediately improve an actor's audition technique. If the book is lean on substance (such as paragraph-long chapters and empty space for readers to record their thoughts), its ideas nicely blend common sense and encouragement.
As those who've attempted to learn to sail or knit through the pages of a book know, it's hard to teach a craft in writing. Wallace stumbles into some of the same pitfalls as other "how to" writers, but if you're looking for a light, quick read on audition technique, The Best of You won't disappoint.
>
Reviewed by Jackie Apodaca
Master teacher Lee Strasberg is gone, but his Method—drawn from Stanislavsky's techniques and given Strasberg's own carefully considered, idiosyncratic spin—has influenced generations of actors, especially Americans. With a legacy like that, there's room on the market for one more book, written by a Strasberg disciple, that demystifies the approach for emerging actors and for a new crop of acting teachers.
Longtime New York actor, teacher, and director Ed Kovens' workbook-style manual does the job quite nicely in some ways. Kovens, who studied with Strasberg from 1957 to 1982 (when Strasberg died) and also taught classes for him, is good at explaining typical Method classroom exercises—so often misunderstood—in down-to-earth ways. He cites examples from his own experiences as Strasberg's student and explains how he adapts some of the exercises in his own classes. He also shows how to apply them to performance while staying in the moment.
Kovens is practical, too: If affective memory and all else fails and the scene requires tears, pull a hair out of your nose, he suggests, only half jokingly. And one size does not fit all, he assures us: Many great actors do not use sense memory, and many who say they don't in fact do so unconsciously.
That said, Kovens does tend to go off on a few irrelevant rants. Worse, this self-published book is a mess, full of misspellings (including famous actors' names) and typos. It's also overloaded with assorted, playful font styles; it overuses caps and underlines; the typesetting is sloppy; there are too many standalone quotes that fail to enhance the text; and whole sections are repetitive. Although divided into four cleverly titled parts—"Didactical," "Practical," "Tactical," and "Asides"—it's nevertheless confusingly organized within each part. Too bad, because there are gems to be discovered within the poorly edited mishmosh.
>
Reviewed by Jean Schiffman