The Actor's Art and Craft: William Esper Teaches the Meisner Technique

by William Esper, Damon DiMarco, David Mamet (Preface)

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. The Actor's Art and Craft vividly demonstrates that good training does not constrain actors' instincts—it frees them to create characters with truthful and compelling inner lives.

Genres: Nonfiction, Theatre, Film, Audiobook, Writing

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Elisabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book brought me back to my acting classes at Rutgers. Bill was my director twice and he is so insightful. This book is a must-read for any actor interested in Meisner technique. Brilliant!

[Sasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly inspirational!

Reading this book really gave me an insight on what learning the Meisner technique at the Esper studio is like. I love how most of what Esper is teaching is basically guiding the actor to discover themselves in a way they probably wouldn't have if they had decided on another career path.
This book is about truly living and how through your true self, you will discover how great of an artist you can become. I was really inspired to continue to pursue my dreams of being a working actress.
Just this morning I received a call from the studio and was set for an appointment to interview for the summer intensive program.
Great book and highly recommended. I would read this again and again...

[Hani Eskander · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brilliant transcription and analysis of a Bill Esper ‘Meisner Technique’ Acting workshop. One of the best books I’ve read on the craft of acting.

[Diona Joi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not to be bias due to have already completed my training at The William Esper Studio, but I have to say that it was all because of this book. It breaks down in an interesting and pulling way what you'll experience in 1st year- which I also recommend. Even if you're not an actor- understand what Meisner meant when- I quote, to "find in yourself those things which are Universal". THANK YOU WILLIAM ESPER for continuing on with the legacy and breaking down magic in this book! Enjoy :)

[Lukas · Rating 5 out of 5]

My god. This book is so good. I wish that I had read this book before I took Meisner in college. And I would encourage anyone about to take a Meisner class to do so. However I think that perhaps the sophomore in college me may not have been ready for this book. I've recently discovered, through the books I'm reading now that I had tried to read before, that I'm a firm believer in the idea that you can't read certain books until you are ready to read them, and to try before you are ready might be detrimental to your experience. I think that, at least for me, that might be the case for this book.
Regardless, this is a great book, a wealth of acting knowledge and advice, a treasure trove, I devoured every word. I got a copy from the library and fully intend to purchase my own copy.

[Whit · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was so much closer to my natural acting technique than I thought it would be. There were so many things about emotional truth that resonated with me. I loved the format of the book as different sessions in a class, working your way through in an orderly fashion, creating building blocks. Certainly thought provoking.

[Dusty · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVED! It was a fantastic review of my first year at the Joanne Baron / D.W. Brown studio. The way Bill explains concepts and ideas of how the Meisner Technique works is so easy to follow and understand. I wish I would've picked this book up last year and read along with my class. Can't wait to start the 2nd book!!!

[Jackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

FINALLY! I understood the MEANING behind some of the strange exercises we do. I also learned the method of choice for me after going through Strasburg nightmares! I felt like I was right in the class and learned so much about the Meisner technigue. I felt like someone finally GETS IT!

[David J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly brilliant and inspiring book. If you study acting or are curious about what a real acting class is about... read this book.

[Matias · Rating 5 out of 5]

6/7
This was the "textbook" for my acting class, and it changed the way I think about acting forever. A lot of the concepts weren't completely foreign to me, but getting it all here in one place was awesome. There is so much acting wisdom in this book, I feel like it's required reading for anyone who wants to act in any serious capacity. If I have one complaint, it's that the characters aren't very believable, ironically. The book is formatted like a documentary of a class that Bill Esper is teaching at his studio. Unfortunately, none of the fictional students in the class are written very well, and the same goes for the dialogue. It's all very flat and just doesn't feel real. The students ask very dumb questions at very convenient times, and very smart questions at very convenient times. However, it still gets the job done and doesn't take away at all from everything I learned from reading this book. I'll carry the Meisner Technique with me for the rest of my acting career.

[Quentin Nguyen-duy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic! 👏🏻 Always so excited when a book about acting can help me retroactively breakdown all the weird shit I learned in conservatory. The writing isn’t great, but I can tell the author enjoys himself, and that’s all that matters. His friendship with Esper as observed through the two sequential books (Building a Character) is rather touching and makes me remember the info a lot better. The class is pretty hilarious and his impression of the characters (which is often admittedly overboard) is charming in its enthusiasm.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to wait for three weeks because my Spotify audiobook minutes were used up.

So I have to preface by saying that I’m in recovery from some cult-like religious experience and have noticed in the last few years anytime I sense guru-like behavior, I want to start punching things. Again, I’m working it out. That said, it was hard for me to determine how much of this felt like my own trauma or complete bullshit from a pretentious guru.

A couple of things that I found utterly annoying simply in viewpoint and how objective Bill was on certain things but I did take a few interesting key snippets that I haven’t heard before.

It’s really hard to write a book on meisner and make it interesting to read. I thought the author did a great job.

[Kelsey O’Keefe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes very much enjoyed I think I will go to his studio next year

[sera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Required reading.

[William Adams · Rating 3 out of 5]

I struggle to create characters who don’t sound and act just like me. I’ve chosen females as my first-person narrator in several cases just to force me out of my own head. I’ve tried black people, immigrants, aliens (I mean space-aliens) for the same reason. It’s a struggle because I’m me and not anybody else. How do actors do it? They can be anybody. I read this book because I thought it might reveal the secret.

Author Esper co-taught with legendary acting coach Sanford Meisner for nearly two decades and is apparently the heir-apparent. I’m no actor so I cannot fairly describe what the “Meisner method” is, but this book purports to transmit it.

I did learn some lessons about acting, and indeed, actors gush over this book, judging from reviews and other books on acting by the same author. The chapters and scenes describe a series of workshops conducted by Esper with a group of eight actors with various levels of experience.
Esper gives them instructions on how to execute a certain scenario, such as walking into a room, interrupting someone, and so on, and then each of them tries it, followed by extensive feedback discussion.

Overall, I’d say the main lesson conveyed is to be a good listener, which means don’t worry about your own lines and how you’re going to deliver them but be open and receptive to the other actor(s) and let yourself react “naturally” to that person and the situation. Of course you will react with your memorized lines, not your own speech, but beyond that, your “acting” must be your genuine reactions. In other words, be extremely open to experience.

Some people are naturally open to experience (their own and others’) and some are not. It’s a personality variable on the standard “Big Five” test. Some people live that way and some don’t. If you are not accustomed to feeling the presence of the other and to being open to your own feelings, then this book might be a revelation. Otherwise it might seem like a compilation of incredibly mundane observations masquerading as pseudo-wisdom.

It’s certainly not well-written. The co-author, DiMarco is an MFA actor, and although he has written other books, his attempts to introduce drama into scenes that have none are cringeworthy, as are his attempts at elevated description. On the other hand, it seems like he did understand and convey the Esper acting lessons, which was the main task.

Did I get what I wanted, insight on how to write better characters? Yes and no. I didn’t learn anything new, but my attention was shifted to the idea of openness. I decided that I could improve my characters by being more open to their presence (which presence I have to create first, of course – no small feat). I decided that I am already pretty good at having characters be open to each other, so that was satisfying. I didn’t pick up any new writing technique but I did shift my attention a little in a way that I think will be helpful.

Actors, I still don’t understand their magic. I can see this openness technique being very practical for improv, but for a scripted, directed part – I don’t really see how it would help much. But I’m not an actor, so what do I know.

[Quaker Oats · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook of this.

I found the some of the speeches/long explanations that Bill Esper gives (usually there's one per chapter) extremely valuable. However, the parts of the book where the author is describing students' doing the exercises are really awful.

The students (particularly the women in the book) often take the exercises personally in a way that is unbelievable. For example, when a student is asked to focus on an activity and they know a partner is supposed to start doing a repetition exercise with them and so interrupt them, the student will of course be 100% PERFECTLY focused/lost in their activity and then gets genuinely ANGRY by being interrupted by their partner to the point of literally yelling things like "SHUT UP!!!" at them. Most the exercises somehow play out like that. It's just bad writing.

The way the female students in the book are portrayed is downright offensive. The author is constantly describing how they "blush" as soon as anything barely surprising happens. The author is supposedly describing how he sees the students in the class react, but somehow he sees the women constantly blushing in response to the most subtle things... The women in the book are also always reacting in the most absurdly emotional ways and take everything in the exercises personal, much more often than the men.

The narrator for the audiobook makes literally every woman have the most grating "old hag" voice. It's literally a man trying to do an "annoying nagging woman voice" for every female character in the book. Borderline un-listenable, honestly.

Finally, the teacher (William Esper) gives off this attitude of being a guru that is off-putting. The audiobook accentuates that by making his speech soft and slow almost emotionally distant.

Criticisms aside, there's actually a lot of great information in here. You just have to sit through a lot of terrible drama writing while waiting for the couple important explanations each chapter.

[Dave Wagner · Rating 3 out of 5]

The basic concepts of listening, connecting, and not anticipating are all valuable concepts to add to your acting toolbox, but most of the rest of this book seems to me to be of little use outside of a classroom. I can't imagine ever using one of the increasingly-contrived and structured classroom exercises in a real production of any kind, unless its a play whose director doesn't really care what happens on stage. In film? Forget it.

Worth a read-through, if (like me) you're studying all of the acting techniques, to learn what each has to offer, but having read it, I can't imagine using Meisner as your foundational technique and being very successful as a professional, except in very limited instances. It's all based on spontaneous intuitive response, no two takes ever the same, with little room for craft. If your director ever says "Great! Now do that same thing again!" you're screwed, lol...

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This discursive application of the Meisner Technique is one of the most illuminating books on acting. While there has been many acting theories particularly focusing on permutations of "method" (Meisner, Stanislavski, Strasberg, Atlantic), it is the scripting of a succession of William Esper classes where students respond with varying success to his direction, that makes this book so influential. It is not just about hearing the correct acting approach from the teacher that illuminates but how students make errors and ultimately adapt. It is the justification questioning that the teacher gives which brings out the mastery. An indispensable read for actors which should be read in tandem with weekly acting tutorials (ETA: September).

[Kavya Srinivasan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful and useful, I found a lot of answers I didn't know I was looking for in this book.

[Jim Smiley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bear with me on this, in The Karate Kid (1984 — the good one), Daniel-son wants to learn the ways of the ultimate karate ninja so he can finally whoop them Cobra Kai. His first lesson from old man Miyagi is a simple one: wax the car. The boy uses his left hand to apply the wax and his right hand to remove it. The whole car.

When I first watched it, I wondered the same thing as Daniel: where’s the damn karate? Miyagi’s second lesson comes as two Japanese sanders which the boy must use to sand the floor. Right circle, left circle; breathe in, breathe out. The whole floor. By the third lesson, Miyagi’s convinced Daniel to also paint his fence. As the old man says, “It’s all in the wrist.” Long stroke up, long stroke down, don’t forget to breathe. Small boards with the left hand, big boards with the right hand. Now paint the whole fence. By that point in the movie, I found myself wondering which young Maupinite I could convince to paint my house in exchange for no karate lessons.

But, this ain’t a movie review for The Karate Kid; it’s a book review for The Actor’s Art and Craft by William Esper and Damon DiMarco. In short, the book’s about Esper teaching a class on the Meisner technique, a method used to learn the art of acting, while DiMarco writes it up. Both men have taken a Meisner class before. Esper studied under Sandy Meisner, the class’s namesake, for 17 years and spent the next thirty teaching and distilling the technique into a more potent form. Think White Lightnin’.
During that time, DiMarco took Esper’s version and now, years later, Esper has entrusted him to write just what it is that goes on in a real Meisner course. Why? Because in his forty plus years of teaching actors Esper believes he has refined the technique into something a little purer than when he first learned it. And that he wants to share. But, more than that, like any good instructor, like old man Miyagi, like Sandy Meisner, Bill Esper knows that to be a teacher you must have a relationship with the student, and it’s this relationship that Esper cares most about.

Chapter One begins in Esper’s classroom. It is an actor’s classroom. There are no windows and a small set of risers that face the wall with the room’s only door. Bill’s desk is placed off to the side and the only other furniture are two bed frames with worn mattresses and a cabinet of props.

The first class begins and Bill spins a yarn about some student approaching the house of a great Zen master. This is the first allegory of many Bill will use to teach his class of sixteen students. He finishes and then asks the students why they’re there. One answers, “To study acting,” but this doesn’t satisfy Bill. He spends the rest of the first chapter clarifying the definition of acting. Each word is picked apart until the students achieve the same understanding of what acting is as Esper. The next chapter begins and Bill starts by asking the students if any of them grew up on a farm. A woman answers, Bill asks her how she’d grow the largest head of cabbage. The student answers that first she’d need a seed. He asks how she’d grow the world’s biggest oak tree and she laughs and replies again that she’d need a seed. Bill rhapsodizes on the symbolism of seeds and then introduces the seed of the Meisner Technique: repetition.


Trevor responds, “You’ve got a funny hat on.”

Bill repeats, “You’ve got a funny hat on.”

The exercise continues a short while and then Bill stops it. He points out that while Trevor repeated his every word, just like he’d asked, something felt off. On hearing this, Trevor agrees, “It’s funny...I mean, my impulse was to say ‘I’ve got a funny hat on?’” On hearing the word impulse, Bill smiles. He uses this moment, one that naturally arose from the exercise, to adjust the meaning of the repetition exercise to the class,“See, while you do repeat, you must keep your impulses true. You must never sacrifice a truthful answer to the literalness of repetition.”

The class continues and each student participates. They practice, Bill watches, they try, they fail, and Bill uses each failure as a teachable moment. And through this basic pattern Bill teaches and advances the students through the technique. Slowly. Step by step.

I liked this book because it felt honest. Bill’s a good teacher who knows what teaching is about. It ain’t preaching and it ain’t ego rubbin’. To teach a student is like what my grandma Iris used to say about holding a bird in your hands, “Cup too lightly and it flies away, too tightly and you get one dead bird.” And for the student: good learning, like good growth, means taking time and accepting that during that time you’ll fail. A lot.

There were passages where, just like in any good story, I found myself laughing aloud, slapping my knee, gripping the pages, and needing a breather. There are lessons here on teaching and learning that any teacher or student would greatly benefit from. And most important, the book teaches us to be ourselves because to be the best actor you can be you must know yourself, know your reactions, know how to draw on certain emotions and how to hide them away. You must be a criminal, a saint, a mother, and a dead-beat dad. You must be true and never simply nice. And in addition to this, Bill teaches us that through the simple act of repetition, failure, adjustment, good instruction, and time, we can become anything. All it takes is a seed. And all the while, while we seem to be stupidly parroting our partner, or waxing some dumb car, we are connecting with the folks and world around us and becoming a little better.

If it appears as simple as I’ve described here then you’re mistaken. Bill’s exercises seem simple because of him. Like Atlas holding up the globe, Bill shoulders the weight of Meisner’s knowledge and transfers its mass down to his students bit by bit. That is what Zen masters like Bill and Miyagi do. One minute you’re waxing a car, and the next you know karate.

[Amy Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an essential read for actors because it makes Meisner's work so tangible, and answers some of the more opaque questions around "what is technique??"

It also highlights that mental gymnastics actors go through, or the sensitivities one has to train to be considered "good."

I have too much of an individual streak for my own good, and to that end I never was 100% behind the way Bill executed his class, or rather was portrayed teaching. Who knows how accurate any of this is, since it was written as a first hand account. I fully support the decision with Kenny, but sometimes he used strong language/ criticisms that seemed pointlessly cruel.

This book also highlights the strange dangers in training - Bill talks particularly about the Accessed Memory technique for emotional preparation and how in many cases that technique only serves to bring up past trauma, but he does little to address the exercises that would be considered abusive in any other context. I'm not sure what to make of that, or what my tense feeling around might represent about my own craft.

I had a conversation with another actor recently about clowning, the strange space occupied when you play unsavory traits because they are human, and where you, as a person, have to place yourself to be able to explore that territory honestly. So you have to go there. It's the actor's job to go there, be in touch with every impulse, even the ugly ones. And the best actors don't give themselves an out.

[Laurie Perez · Rating 5 out of 5]

For The Actor’s Art and Craft to succeed, the writing must pull the reader directly into the class — it must be experiential, not merely intellectual. That’s exactly what the book has achieved.

Page after page the Esper and DiMarco invade your space and open you up to the challenges of the actor. You become the student, receiving the teachings directly — there is no cold, erudite curtain filtering the personal nature of what’s happening in Bill’s classes. Acting is visceral. It pushes buttons, stirs memories, demands vulnerability and confidence in equal measures. Intellect is circumspect — you have to learn volumes, then let go of thinking.

Throughout the book, descriptive writing successfully evokes emotional texture while substantive dialogue makes scene work and discovery fully palpable. I expected to learn technical facets of the actor’s experience. I expected to gain practical insight into acting’s complexity and particular challenges. What I didn’t expect was to be so richly entertained.

I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good story and finds the inner workings of the human psyche as compelling as I do. For actors, aspiring and/or seasoned, I imagine The Actor’s Art and Craft must be an essential companion. For writers, novelists, storytellers — this is a lovely complement to books on literary craft.

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book transports you into an acting course as you witness play-by-play accounts of fictional students (inspired by real students) learning a version of the Meisner acting technique. For someone who really knows nothing about acting as a craft, all the lessons were quite illuminating, even exciting to finally understand concrete ways of approaching acting.

The book is keenly soured by the teacher, who acts like some sort of caricature of an acting teacher, over the top, faux sensitive, self-absorbed. I mostly remember pulling out red flags for how they communicated some of the lessons to the students, rudely shaming them in front of the class for things they are ignorant on. I'd have been happy to have walked out of their class and learn the same techniques from someone who was considerate.

But I didn't walk out on the book, which provided a great foundation for exploring acting. Of course all this knowledge is useless without practicing it (which I'd like to play with).

I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in wanting an easy read and introduction to acting (I own it if you'd like to borrow it). Of course this is just one technique, one approach. I'd be interested in reading of others.

[Pooja · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was completely transformative. I’ve been an actor for years now and I feel like every couple of weeks I come up with something new I think/realize about acting and “how to act” that I feel like I’ve been completely guessing at. And all those things have been confirmed in Esper’s book!!! Things that took me years of deep thinking to come up with is just all laid out in this book, and connected in a way I could never fully connect together. So much of what Esper says later in the book is all stuff I knew, but I feel like I’ve always been missing that foundation that he so eloquently lays out in the beginning. I’ve thought for years now my brain just “wasn’t wired” for acting because there would be times I felt completely out of my depth with certain things, and I just didn’t know “how” to do something, but this book completely unlocked so much of what I’ve been missing! It connected so many things for me and I feel like acting makes so much more sense to me now after reading this. It’s a genius book and method honestly. I never even realized how much bad acting training is out there and how incorrectly they teach certain techniques until reading this.

[Charles Goforth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is exquisite — one of the finest ever published on the craft of acting.

I have read it several times, returning to it as both a touchstone and, at times, a life preserver while translating my own training with William Esper into my work as an acting teacher for undergraduates at NYU and other BFA conservatories. I have also taught Meisner to working actors in Hell’s Kitchen, in my own private practice, and for other studios throughout New York. I mention this only to assure anyone curious: not only does this book capture Esper’s work with compelling clarity and accuracy, it also conveys the deep privilege of training with a true master of this technique.

Bill’s mastery is illuminated beautifully here. DiMarco strikes a perfect balance between his in-class process — the real heart of the book — and the quick but essential conversations with Bill that give it context and depth. I would never have guessed a book could so vividly and joyfully recreate the living, breathing experience of those classes.

If you are curious about the Meisner technique, or are currently studying it, give yourself the extraordinary gift of this remarkable book.

[perfectodub · Rating 5 out of 5]

Soy un joven cineasta, quien desea conocer mas a fondo de la forma de abordar el trabajo con actores, y debo decir que éste es un libro excepcional, de incalculables enseñanzas.

Como realizador te abre a un mundo de conocimientos; como se concibe una actuación, la creación previa de los estados emocionales, y la dinámica de hacer de la escena una experiencia real y orgánica. Ademas, todo lo aprendido en este libro en cuanto a actuación y puesta en escena, puedes aplicarlo incluso en tus mismo guión, pues descubrirás a partir de las experiencias escritas en él, cómo las buenas actuaciones se crean a partir de personajes bien delineados, acciones muy definidas en el guion y las libertades que debes dejar de mano de tus actores.

Después de estudiar con dedicación este libro, me siento mucho mas preparado y con herramientas teóricas valiosas para enfrentar mis trabajos como director y realizador.

[Zora · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prior to reading The Actor’s Art and Craft, I had been briefly introduced to Meisner concepts and always been interested in pursuing them further. However, this book fundamentally shifted the way I look at acting, and the book also holds some interesting insights that connect to the potential application of acting as a therapeutic practice. Esper also defines acting as living (or doing) truthfully under imaginary circumstances, and explains that this is a skill as valuable as any other trade. Reading this book made me feel much more secure about my passion and commitment to acting as a career.

[Kyrion · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars. I really wanted to like this book but the format of a fictional class ended up hurting it more than helping in my opinion. Bill in these fictional classes can be a total asshole and he makes crude remarks at one point even encouraging the students to fantasize about their scene partners.. The depictions of the scenes can at points just read like bad fan fiction.
Despite those negatives this book does a good job of introducing the different Meisner exercises and more importantly the meaning behind each one and how they all come together to form the Meisner approach to acting.

[Matthew]

A book I randomly found in a second-hand bookstore, all about acting which is my path of learning at university and passion in my life. The mere coincidence of seeing the book’s foreward written by David Mamet, and having done one of Mamet’s plays, I instantly purchased it.

What I have learnt from this book so far is immeasurable! I feel this is a new, exciting path I am ready to follow for the adventure that awaits.

This book was amazing and is one I shall reread and study as time passes. I recommend this for all who are interested in acting and the craft of acting. This was amazing.

[Hai Le · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was okay but it was more of a narration from the author of William Esper’s classes. The narration included Bill’s teachings on the Meisner technique that included repetition and other techniques. I feel it’s something you really learn by being in the class itself instead of reading a narration of it.

However, the book did offer some useful insight into the mind of William Esper and some helpful tips and hints for the actor!

If you’re interested in learning about the Meisner technique then get it.