Book on Acting: Improvisation Technique for the Professional Actor in Film, Theater, and Television

by Stephen Book

Stephen Book is a top Hollywood acting coach and teacher and a theatre director. His students have won Oscars, Emmys, Tonys, Obies, and Grammys. Thirteen of his present or former students are featured in either starring roles or as cast regulars in the current primetime television schedule. This book contains film and television scenes in which Book-coached actors, used his Improvisation Technique to create their performances. These scenes, showing the actors' performance choices, demonstrate the use of Improvisation Technique in different genres of acting. Well-known theatre and film scenes are included, as well as scenes from such TV shows as 'Frasier', 'Melrose Place', 'Star Trek: Voyager', 'LA Law' and 'The Practice'.

550 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2002

Reviews

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Need help thinking on your toes. This is the book for you.

[Akhilesh Mourya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice

[Isabelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting book. It has all the exercises that Stephen Book teaches in his own classes, with all the instructions for running the exercises as a self-lead group, for the entire two year program that he teaches. Each class someone new should read from the book as the exercise leader.

I believe there is a lot of good improvisational techniques that can be learned from this book, running a small group. However, Book's instructional style is to give the actors instructional commands and not answer any questions about why or how to follow the commands until after the exercise. Which in my mind is counter productive to fully learning what the exercises have to offer, and speaks to the possibility of Book having ego/control issues. If there is a valid educational reason for having the actors fumble around in the dark with an exercise the first time through, I haven't figured it out, nor does Book address that in this book (as far as I can remember.)

But since the book is designed for self-lead groups, it should be easy enough to adjust the way the instructions are given to help the actors feel safe and learn everything they can from the exercises.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a brilliant book for the actor, the improv addict, or the wannabe film star. It brings together the worlds of acting (with memorized lines) and improv and shows the actor how to improvise despite the increasingly restrictive demands of modern TV and film work. Why only 4 stars? Because, at 600+ pages it could have been half the length. The author insists on playing every part, taking every scene, and telling everyone what to do in extreme detail. He's obviously a control freak -- but that's what makes him so good at what he does. This is a work of genius -- narrow genius, but genius nonetheless. For thespians only.

[Dan Richter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hier geht es weniger um Improtheater im üblichen Sinne, sondern um Improvisation als Technik, zur Rollenfindung, als Technik für emotionale Entwicklungen und um schauspielerische Eleganz.
Umfangreich und detailliert. Auch für Film-Schauspieler zu empfehlen.