Synopsis

Ask any great actor how it happened and you will hear about a great acting teacher.

The Great Acting Teachers and Their Methods explores the acting theories and teaching methods of the great teachers of acting - among them Stanislavski, Adler, Meyerhold, Strasberg, Meisner, Brecht, Grotowski and Suzuki.

Each chapter includes a sample class, which gives the reader a feel for how the different teachers accomplished their objectives, and thereby equip the reader to choose among them.

And in addition, this book takes a look at some of the premier actor training institutions in the United States and assesses what is being taught there today.

Al Ralston - The Coast Book Review Service

It is 1951 and a small British film opens in a few theaters across America. The star is Michael Redgrave and he plays a middle-aged school teacher years past his prime. He's a basic failure with an unfaithful wife and none of it matters at all as he addresses the boys he's known at school, and for that one moment in time, we get to see the humanity of the man and his speech is a heartbreaking triumph, as good as anything you'll ever see on film. "The Browning Version" is now a classic and Redgrave shows an understated power that is rare in any medium; as Tom Wolfe would say, he had the right stuff and plenty of it. Richard Brestoff is no slouch himself, an actor/teacher/writer who discusses teachers' methods and schools that have perfected and offered approaches to the mysterious world of acting. Yes, there are actors that have fallen off horses and were discovered into stars and, if they ever had acting class one, nobody knows about it. Richard Mitchum comes immediately to mind and if you think he can't act, you definitely missed "Night of the Hunter". The average person will never be a Mitchum, but anyone serious about the profession of acting could benefit from the sound principles illuminated in this book. Brestoff discusses Adler, Meyerhold, Meisner, Grotowski, Stanislavski and numerous others who have helped performers realize their potential. An excellent chapter devoted to training school profiles will produce some pain ($16,000 a year at the Actor's Studio in New York and $19,000 at New York University), but each program is discussed and evaluated with specific teachers and types of training techniques offered. This is another excellent title from Smith and Kraus, one of the finest performing arts publishing programs in the country.

Biography

Richard Brestoff is an Assistant Professor of Drama in the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California, Irvine. He is an actor with credits on Broadway, Off-Broadway, in regional theater, and in film, television and radio. He is the author of The Camera Smart Actor, The Great Acting Teachers and Their Methods, Acting Under the Circumstances, and most recently, The Actor's Wheel of Connection.