About the Book:

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

The Great Acting Teachers and Their Methods: Volume 2 features the innovative ideas and theories of: André Antoine, Jacques Copeau, Michel Saint-Denis, Elia Kazan, Uta Hagen, David Mamet, Anne Bogart, and Keith Johnstone

In this follow-up to his first volume that has become an essential classroom text, professional actor and teacher Richard Brestoff examines all new teachers and exposes the origin of today’s ideas and exercises that acting students are practicing. What is the rationale behind the lesson? Why is it useful? Whether they can be called revolutionary or evolutionary, the conflicting theories of these teachers result from outrage and disgust.

Andre Antoine, Jacques Copeau and Michel Saint-Denis represent a virtually unacknowledged yet powerful French influence on acting and actor training in the United States and abroad.

American Realist teachers known as the passionate questioners, such as Elia Kazan, who is disgusted with Broadway’s commercialism, Uta Hagen and David Mamet, and two influential "outside-the-box" teachers, Anne Bogart with her Viewpoints work and Keith Johnstone, creator of Theatre Sports, are also featured.

While differences among the various acting theories and practices are noted and analyzed, so too are exciting and unexpected connections among them revealed.

About the Author:

Richard Brestoff is a 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 theatre, and in film, television and radio.