About the Book:

HARD TO FIND BOOK, only a very limited number of copies are still available.

The critically praised autobiography of a dynamic, inventive and articulate stage director and drama teacher.

Robert Lewis was one of the most renowned acting teachers of the 21st century. In his more than 60 years of teaching – at the influential Yale School of Drama, at New York's famed Actors Studio, at the Lincoln Center Repertory Company, and at his own Robert Lewis Theater Workshop – his students included Marlon Brando, Anne Bancroft, Jerome Robbins, Montgomery Clift, Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson, Patricia Neal, Sigourney Weaver, Faye Dunaway, Tom Ewell, E.G. Marshall, John Forsythe, Sidney Lumet, Karl Malden, and Frank Langella, Henry Winkler, and Meryl Streep.

The anecdotal theatrical memoir Slings and Arrows: Theater in My Life traces his career through the Group Theater and the founding of the Actors Studio to his emergence as a Broadway director and a teacher at the Yale School of Drama. Writing in The Book Review, Jonathan Reynolds found Slings and Arrows a stylish, chatty, frequently funny reminiscence and said that ''in writing about acting theory, Mr. Lewis performs the near miracle of making it interesting and lucid. And he tells good stories.''

Robert Lewis was an early disciple of the Stanislavski System, or "method" of acting developed earlier in the century by Constantin Stanislavski, the Russian actor and director, that combined an emotional truth — a significant moment from the actor's past relived in performance — with technique. But Robert Lewis always provided his students with his own personal take on Stanislavsky, reached through his own use of it as an actor, director, and teacher in his acting studio, in rehearsals, and in productions. He wrote in Slings and Arrows that the fault with "The Method", a misapplication of Stanislavsky in America, was a "psychological grip" that created "a sense of truth that, while being genuinely derived from the inner life experience of the actor himself, often represented his emotional reaction to a situation rather than the character's."

What people say:

"He's a marvelous storyteller: gossipy, candid without being cruel, and very funny. This vivid, entertaining book is also one of the most penetrating works to be written about the theater." — Publishers Weekly

About the Author:

Robert "Bobby" Lewis (1909-1997) was an American actor, drama teacher, and theatre director. Born in New York City, he studied cello at the Juilliard School of Music before deciding he would rather be an actor. He made his first appearance on stage with the Civic Repertory Theatre in 1929, and two years later joined the Group Theatre Acting Company, noted for its adherence to the acting theories of Stanislavski. He was a founder of the legendary Actors' Studio in New York City and a successful director of Broadway plays and musicals. He taught (1941-76) at the Yale School of Drama and later established his own theatre workshop in New York City.