spelvini's Full Review: Edward Dwight Easty - On Method Acting
This book is an excellent overview of the technique introduced to America by Lee Strasberg and developed at the Actor's Studio in New York City. I myself have used the techniques for my 30 years as an actor and find Easty’s book an excellent source book. This is the same technique that my own teacher taught me back in the 70s and it works just as well today.
The author assumes that the reader has some basic acting proficiency and is working regularly at some level. Easty clearly highlights the details of the acting Method. What's important here is that Easty doesn't try to do a comparative study that would play down other techniques. He offers examples of how the Method technique works for those who have practiced it.
In the chapter on “Sense Memory”, Easty establishes that Sense Memory is at the heart of the Method and also one of the most controversial areas among followers of the Stanislavski technique. In Easty's view "The actor can only express his art with his own instrument and with his own sensibilities and awareness".
The actor is an instrument with a whole set of particular talents and perceptions, which allow him to engage his imagination and creativity to express all the human values, that every one of us as humans, feel. This is important because, depending on the actor, the same script will become a different story every time an actor presents it.
In the chapter on “Affective Memory”, Easty states that with training the actor can turn emotion on and off at will with training. This can be achieved by recalling "deeply personal" experiences, but the author states that to get the most from the technique, a qualified teacher should accompany instruction.
What Easty shows by example is that the need for Narratives is essential to understanding Affective Memory. He gives us an example of an actress who is not trained in the Method, but through the narrative she creates, is able to find an emotional trigger, giving her the ability to recall the memory and show its affect, and then turn off the memory and allow the emotion to subside.
Easty even discusses stage fright, a debilitating problem some actors experience preventing them from relaxing and performing at their best. Easty makes clear that "Stage fright is a direct result of lack of concentration". As soon as the actor creates a Sensory Circle that focuses his concentration on the work, objects relating to the character, or himself, the nervousness falls away and is replaced by a centered confidence.
In the chapter “On Actors' Problems”, Easty gives a good practical way of approaching the initial read-through of a script. He instructs to actor to read with an open mind, look at the script and read the lines with the kind of punctuation he would use if he himself were saying the words. In this way the actor brings his own sensibilities to bear on the script immediately, and later can change how the words are said according to how his character is developed.
Following this reasoning, in the chapter “Imaginative Personalization and Substitution”, Easty explains that the actor is an artist and brings his creative imagination to bear in every role he approaches. In the Imaginative Personalizations the actor seeks parallels of the character in the script and his own life, primarily to create a sense of understanding of the possible feelings of the character. With Substitutions the actor finds a way to substitute objects, situations, and even other actors into other mental entities for himself, so that he can respond to them with the emotional level of the imagined thing.
In the chapter “Creating the Inner Character”, Easty explains that the chapters leading up to this are preparation for this development of the interior of the character of the script you are working on. He reiterates that an audience cannot read your thoughts and are only interested in the artistry of your performance and that the imaginative and creative skills of the actor are what are important.
“On Method Acting” is a handy resource for re-focusing the actors’ attentions on Affective Memory, and to use it to develop the Narratives to use when building a character in a script.
The Method works, and works differently for every single actor who practices it. This is the strength of the technique, that by utilizing the Sense Memory, Affective Memory, and creating Narratives, an actor can use his talent, and imagination to create expressive performances, filled with real levels of emotion that completely involve an audience, and other actors as well.
For the actor, whether he is just starting his approach to the craft, or for the veteran, the book will engage his attention, and possibly enlighten him to some forgotten features of the technique.
Practiced by such actors of stature as Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Julie Harris, Dustin Hoffman, and Ellen Burstyn (not to mention the late James D...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.