Dive into the world of the legendary school of actors and actresses: the Actors Studio with this book in 2 parts
Studio History and Dictionary from A to Z
ACTORS STUDIO
History and aesthetics of a method, from Broadway to Hollywood
A book by Michel Cieutat, Christophe Damour,
Jacques Demange and Christian Viviani
Preface by Michel Ciment
14.6cm x 20.46cm | 592 pages
ISBN: 979-10-93798-21-9
What does the Actors Studio still evoke today, this laboratory for actors created by Elia Kazan, Robert Lewis and Cheryl Crawford in 1947 in New York, based on the one designed in Moscow by the Russian actor, director and teacher Constantin Stanislavski at the beginning of the 20th century? Who really came from it? What exactly does the mythical "Method" correspond to, which generated a real aesthetic revolution within American theater, then Hollywood, and produced their best representatives for more than six decades?
"This book thus evokes fifty years of performing arts in America, in theater and cinema, from the beginnings of the Group Theater in the thirties and its collective work where a new style of interpretation was already being developed, through the founding of the Actors Studio in 1947 by Cheryl Crawford, Elia Kazan and Robert Lewis, to its expansion under the often autocratic rule of Lee Strasberg. Also not neglected are training workshops such as those of Stella Adler and Sanford Meisner, also nourished by the same theories of acting but offering variations under their aegis." - Michel Ciment
This book, written by four French specialists on the subject, attempts to answer these questions by evoking the way in which the greatest performers of the "Fifties", Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Saint, Montgomery Clift, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Lee Remick, as well as those of the "Seventies", Dustin Hoffman, Jane Fonda, Robert De Niro, Faye Dunaway, Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, without forgetting a "madman" like Daniel Day-Lewis more recently, practiced this style of acting.
The book is divided into two parts. First, a series of synthetic chapters explores the historical and theoretical foundations of a tradition of acting and an "actoral current", whose singular stylistic criteria contributed to the construction of a veritable mythology around the Actors Studio, a place that is still legendary today, where various types of teaching were provided by facilitators who were venerated in their time, such as Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler or Sanford Meisner.
A second part offers, in the form of a monographic dictionary, an analysis of the career, the persona and the acting style of the main representatives of "Method acting" in the United States from the 1930s to the beginning of the 1980s, the end of the golden age of the Actors Studio.
Released on November 7, 2023
