Book Recommendation: The Great Acting Teachers

I have started and stopped reading more books on the craft of acting than I care to recount. I made it through one of Stanislavski's, halfway through Uta's, a few pages into The Actor and the Target, but for the most part it is a struggle. Not that I don't want to learn more about my craft, I do, it's just that acting teachers don't all make for great writers, nor are the minutia of their techniques compelling to read about. That's why Richard Brestoff's The Great Acting Teachers: and Their Methods was something of a revelation for me. I finished it in less than 2 days, and given it took me nigh on 8 months to read Middlesex that is no small feat.

In this book Brestoff takes the reader on a personal journey through the history of acting from Thespis to Stanislavski to Suzuki. At times the book reads like a history, at others it takes us on a fanciful journey through time and space, and it also includes passages that give you a sense of what it is to learn acting in each of these great teachers' studios.

If you're interested in studying acting at a studio whose work is based on one of the greats but have no idea where to start The Great Acting Teachers will give you a great overview of the guiding principles behind each of the teachers. I for example learned that Strasberg's affective memory is great for film work, but that if I want to improve my script analysis I should study Adler. The book includes wonderful insights into the work of: Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, Sanford Meisner, Viola Spolin, Bertold Brecht, Jerzy Grotowski, Tadashi Suzuki, and Stanislavski.

If you, like me, have a fairly eclectic training, this book will help give you a sense of history and where you fit in it.