Costarring Guides

摘要

Professional actor and teacher Brestoff surveys schools of acting from the ultranaturalistic 19th-century actor-director Andre An-toine, with a style indebted to the writing of Emile Zola, to the Viewpoints system of Anne Bogart, at the forefront of modem experimental theater. Brestoff effectively avoids losing the reader in discussions of abstract theories by reporting the circumstances of their development and implementation in a wonderfully urgent and visceral manner. Elia Kazan's feelings of inadequacy about his physical appearance; Uta Hagen's dissatisfaction with her early successes; and Michel Saint-Denis's oedipal competition with his legendary uncle, Jacques Copeau, are presented dramatically as essential to the development of their individual methods.