Actor's Art and Craft

William Esper one of the leading acting teachers of our time explains and extends Sanford Meisner's legendary technique offering a clear concrete step-by-step approach to becoming a truly creative actor.Esper worked closely with Meisner for seventeen years and has spent decades developing his famous program for actor's training. The result is a rigorous system of exercises that builds a solid foundation of acting skills from the ground up and that is flexible enough to be applied to any challenge an actor faces from soap operas to Shakespeare. Co-writer Damon DiMarco a former student of Esper's spent over a year observing his mentor teaching first-year acting students. In this book he recreates that experience for us allowing us to see how the progression of exercises works in practice. <i>The Actor's Art and Craft</i> vividly demonstrates that good training does not constrain actors' instincts--it frees them to create characters with truthful and compelling inner lives.