Lessons: Truthful Human Behavior on Stage or Screen

by Tom Isbell

Tom Isbell wants you to know that this is definitely not a 'how-to' book on acting. This book is meant to improve your acting skills by developing your awareness as an actor - awareness both of yourself and those around you. By understanding what is worth pursuing, what is worth remembering, and what is worth letting go, you can acquire knowledge about acting which will increase your skill level. A series of 100 plain-speaking, highly readable lessons that convey the big and little truths of acting. Divided into 5 sections - Approach, Fundamentals, Classes and Rehearsals, Performance, and Final Lessons - Isbell presents this as a true acting book that focuses on allowing the natural artist to evolve, grow, mature, and find their own voice. If you're new to acting, these 100 lessons should help provide a foundation. If you've been acting for a while, these lessons should confirm what you already know deep within you, but perhaps haven't yet voiced.

216 pages, Hardcover

Published April 1, 2006

About the author

A graduate of the Yale School of Drama and the University of Illinois, Tom Isbell spent his professional career acting in theatre, film and TV, working opposite Robert DeNiro, Ed Harris, Helen Hunt, Lynn Redgrave, Rosemary Harris, Hal Holbrook, Anne Bancroft, Sarah Jessica Parker, John Turturro, Angela Bassett and others. TV credits include Designing Women, L.A. Law, Golden Girls, Murder She Wrote, Coach, Family Ties, Columbo and recurring roles on Jake and the Fat Man and Sisters. Film credits include 84 Charming Cross Road, Jacknife, Clear and Present Danger, The Abyss and True Lies. He was also the subject of a PBS documentary, Starting in Innocence.

He has written and performed three one-person plays, including Me & JFK, which has been produced in New York, Los Angeles and Egypt. With John Ahart, he co-authored Walt Whitman and the Civil War, which premiered at the Great American People Show in 1995.

As a director, Isbell has taken two productions to the Kennedy Center as part of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF): Dear Finder, a documentary play about the Holocaust, and The Movie Game, written by Adam Hummel. He is the former National Playwriting Program chair for Region V of KCACTF.

An associate professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth, he was recently named the Albert Tezla Scholar/Teacher of the Year, as well as a Horace T. Morse Distinguished Teacher, the highest undergraduate teaching honor given within the University of Minnesota. He is happily married to Pat Isbell, who is both an actress and elementary school teacher.