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The End of Acting: A Radical View
From Richard Hornby's preface: This book is written for those who act, those who teach acting, and those who are interested in seeing it. It is both a theoretical work and a call for action. This book is an unashamed attack on the American acting establishment ... The concepts derive from my graduate seminars in acting theory and history in the School of Theatre at Florida State University ... Much of the feistiness of those classes carries over into this book ... If my arguments serve only to stimulate new dialogue, they will have been valuable.
- GenresTheatre
322 pages, Paperback
First published July 31, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 27, 2016
Although I'm not interested in acting myself, it is something that my sister is very passionate about, so she is the one who gave me this book to read. At first i was hesitant because I thought it wouldn't intrigue me as much as it did with her, as well as further expand her knowledge in the field of acting. However, the more I read this book, the more connected I felt with acting in a weird way. I learned a lot about techniques that are used in acting and certain things that you have to do in your personal life to become the great actor you aspire to be.
July 26, 2017
A book of clarity about a notoriously obfuscated subject. For those who teach, act, or who are interested in the art and craft of acting and the theories surrounding modern acting.
February 10, 2019
Most of my interest in this book came not because I'm an actor or studying to be one, but because I'm curious about the way the disciplines of one art form can be useful in another. Books on acting, on music performance, on painting, etc. all have had things to teach me about writing.
This one, I didn't seek out the way I consciously sought out Tadashi Suzuki's "The Way Of Acting" ( a book Hornby references with props in this book's bibliography). I stumbled across it more or less at random, read the first chapter, then ended up reading the rest in just about a single sitting.
Hornby's main reason for writing it is to attack what he feels are bad teaching habits and bad concepts in the way acting is taught in the United States. He is mainly unhappy with the way Stainslavski's work has been used selectively and prejudicially, with how Strasberg's ideas have been received uncritically and have ended up perpetuating ideological approaches to teaching acting that are often counterproductive.
The book's copyright is 1992, and I am no scholar of the recent literature of acting, so I am not sure how much, if any, of Hornby's thought has taken root and been influential. But a lot of it makes sense and is valuable even without it being an attack on Strasbergian dogmas. The biggest takeaway for me was that an actor should enter into the material they are to perform as a curious and involved party, an arena in which to discover for one's self the emotions aroused by the drama and applied to the characterization, rather than to bring Strasbergian self-evoked emotion to it from the outside.
Hornby is no fan of the various unfounded mythologies that have sprung up around creative types. He takes a whole chapter to dispel the idea that actors are necessarily neurotic, using logic I found parallel to the idea that artistic creation isn't a neurotic activity. Neurosis only gets in the way. We on the outside who see only the most externalized parts of the equation (the creator, the creation, the creator's neurosis) draw the wrong conclusions, and don't see how the best, most capable actors are the ones who inhabit themselves completely.
My sole reason for docking a star is that it is aimed at those in the acting trade or those who plan to teach acting, but anyone already curious about those subjects should add the star back in.
This one, I didn't seek out the way I consciously sought out Tadashi Suzuki's "The Way Of Acting" ( a book Hornby references with props in this book's bibliography). I stumbled across it more or less at random, read the first chapter, then ended up reading the rest in just about a single sitting.
Hornby's main reason for writing it is to attack what he feels are bad teaching habits and bad concepts in the way acting is taught in the United States. He is mainly unhappy with the way Stainslavski's work has been used selectively and prejudicially, with how Strasberg's ideas have been received uncritically and have ended up perpetuating ideological approaches to teaching acting that are often counterproductive.
The book's copyright is 1992, and I am no scholar of the recent literature of acting, so I am not sure how much, if any, of Hornby's thought has taken root and been influential. But a lot of it makes sense and is valuable even without it being an attack on Strasbergian dogmas. The biggest takeaway for me was that an actor should enter into the material they are to perform as a curious and involved party, an arena in which to discover for one's self the emotions aroused by the drama and applied to the characterization, rather than to bring Strasbergian self-evoked emotion to it from the outside.
Hornby is no fan of the various unfounded mythologies that have sprung up around creative types. He takes a whole chapter to dispel the idea that actors are necessarily neurotic, using logic I found parallel to the idea that artistic creation isn't a neurotic activity. Neurosis only gets in the way. We on the outside who see only the most externalized parts of the equation (the creator, the creation, the creator's neurosis) draw the wrong conclusions, and don't see how the best, most capable actors are the ones who inhabit themselves completely.
My sole reason for docking a star is that it is aimed at those in the acting trade or those who plan to teach acting, but anyone already curious about those subjects should add the star back in.
March 7, 2008
Really nice, very provocative enquiry into some of the assumptions that weigh on American acting, both in practice and in how it is taught.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews