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The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act
National Book Critics Circle Award Winner, Nonfiction
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2022 BY THE NEW YORKER, TIME MAGAZINE, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, VOX, SALON, LIT HUB, AND VANITY FAIR<7i>
“Entertaining and illuminating.”-- The New Yorker* “Compulsively readable.”-- New York Times* “Delicious, humane, probing.”-- Vulture* “The best and most important book about acting I've ever read.”--Nathan Lane
The critically acclaimed cultural history of Method acting-an ebullient account of creative discovery and the birth of classic Hollywood.
On stage and screen, we know a great performance when we see it. But how do actors draw from their bodies and minds to turn their selves into art? What is the craft of being an authentic fake? More than a century ago, amid tsarist Russia's crushing repression, one of the most talented actors ever, Konstantin Stanislavski, asked these very questions, reached deep into himself, and emerged with an answer. How his “system” remade itself into the Method and forever transformed American theater and film is an unlikely saga that has never before been fully told.
Now, critic and theater director Isaac Butler chronicles the history of the Method in a narrative that transports readers from Moscow to New York to Los Angeles, from The Seagull to A Streetcar Named Desire to Raging Bull. He traces how a cohort of American mavericks--including Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg, and the storied Group Theatre--refashioned Stanislavski's ideas for a Depression-plagued nation that had yet to find its place as an artistic powerhouse. The Group's feuds and rivalries would, in turn, shape generations of actors who enabled Hollywood to become the global dream-factory it is today. Some of these performers the Method would uplift; others, it would destroy. Long after its midcentury heyday, the Method lives on as one of the most influential--and misunderstood--ideas in American culture.
Studded with marquee names--from Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, and Elia Kazan, to James Baldwin, Ellen Burstyn, and Dustin Hoffman-- The Method is a spirited history of ideas and a must-read for any fan of Broadway or American film.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2022 BY THE NEW YORKER, TIME MAGAZINE, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, VOX, SALON, LIT HUB, AND VANITY FAIR<7i>
“Entertaining and illuminating.”-- The New Yorker* “Compulsively readable.”-- New York Times* “Delicious, humane, probing.”-- Vulture* “The best and most important book about acting I've ever read.”--Nathan Lane
The critically acclaimed cultural history of Method acting-an ebullient account of creative discovery and the birth of classic Hollywood.
On stage and screen, we know a great performance when we see it. But how do actors draw from their bodies and minds to turn their selves into art? What is the craft of being an authentic fake? More than a century ago, amid tsarist Russia's crushing repression, one of the most talented actors ever, Konstantin Stanislavski, asked these very questions, reached deep into himself, and emerged with an answer. How his “system” remade itself into the Method and forever transformed American theater and film is an unlikely saga that has never before been fully told.
Now, critic and theater director Isaac Butler chronicles the history of the Method in a narrative that transports readers from Moscow to New York to Los Angeles, from The Seagull to A Streetcar Named Desire to Raging Bull. He traces how a cohort of American mavericks--including Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg, and the storied Group Theatre--refashioned Stanislavski's ideas for a Depression-plagued nation that had yet to find its place as an artistic powerhouse. The Group's feuds and rivalries would, in turn, shape generations of actors who enabled Hollywood to become the global dream-factory it is today. Some of these performers the Method would uplift; others, it would destroy. Long after its midcentury heyday, the Method lives on as one of the most influential--and misunderstood--ideas in American culture.
Studded with marquee names--from Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, and Elia Kazan, to James Baldwin, Ellen Burstyn, and Dustin Hoffman-- The Method is a spirited history of ideas and a must-read for any fan of Broadway or American film.
544 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2022
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December 26, 2022This was loooong – but an incredibly exhaustive account of how method acting came to be; from Stanislavski to Lee Strasburg, with fun anecdotes about Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Robert de Niro, and Meryl Streep. Overall, really informative though I won't lie that the first part that takes place in Russia had me snoozing a bit.
November 3, 2021
The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act by Isaac Butler is an engrossing history of both the style of acting most of us think of as Method acting as well as of theater and film.
I came to this book as someone who loves both theater and film and have studied some history but also as someone with no artistic ability in these areas at all. So my hope was to gain a better idea of what "The Method" is and how it came about. I also expected some anecdotes and interesting stories. Well, this volume exceeded expectations in every facet. The history was much more detailed than I would have thought, the anecdotes and stories were both plentiful and essential to the telling of the history. It is all brought together in a very engaging and readable style that both informed and entertained me.
I knew almost from the beginning I was in for a treat by the way Butler told the story of Frances McDormand's early experience in Blood Simple. In addition to those interested in the history of film, theater, and/or acting I think the casual reader who simply enjoys reading about the interactions of celebrities (and near-celebrities) will find a lot to enjoy here. While I am by nature a rereader of books, this isn't the type I often reread just for pleasure. Yet I am actually looking forward to revisiting this one in another year or so.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
I came to this book as someone who loves both theater and film and have studied some history but also as someone with no artistic ability in these areas at all. So my hope was to gain a better idea of what "The Method" is and how it came about. I also expected some anecdotes and interesting stories. Well, this volume exceeded expectations in every facet. The history was much more detailed than I would have thought, the anecdotes and stories were both plentiful and essential to the telling of the history. It is all brought together in a very engaging and readable style that both informed and entertained me.
I knew almost from the beginning I was in for a treat by the way Butler told the story of Frances McDormand's early experience in Blood Simple. In addition to those interested in the history of film, theater, and/or acting I think the casual reader who simply enjoys reading about the interactions of celebrities (and near-celebrities) will find a lot to enjoy here. While I am by nature a rereader of books, this isn't the type I often reread just for pleasure. Yet I am actually looking forward to revisiting this one in another year or so.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
August 16, 2025
Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski helped form the Moscow Art Theater and codified the style of acting associated with it—inward and naturalistic, based on self-analysis and the actor's rigorous dissection of the playwright's work into a series of tasks, each with its own motivation. The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act is Isaac Butler's rigorous examination of that system's origins, and its migration from Russia to the U.S. in the early nineteen-hundreds.
Much of The Method covers the various clashes between its American practitioners. Rifts developed between his students, all of whom claimed to be his truest disciples. Lee Strasberg, transforming Stanislavski's system into what came to be known as Method Acting, emphasized a notion of emotional memory that influenced an entire generation of Hollywood actors; Stella Adler emphasized a less painful psychological approach that aimed to discover truths through stage action.
Butler's examination of how the Method's domination of the American cinema in the mid-twentieth century is perhaps the book's most compelling section. The narrative reaches a climax in the nineteen-seventies in a dissection of the Method's downfall, as it became less a rebellion and more the orthodoxy, and as critics increasingly stereotyped its adherents as narcissists who refused to break character even when the cameras weren't rolling.
In his coda, Butler examines how the century-old system continues to transform itself. If there's any oversight in the narrative, it's in its disinterest in examining Stanislavski's influence in other countries than the U.S., but admittedly, the book states its focus up front. Students of the theater will relish this comprehensive history and its thorough documentation, and actors will appreciate discovering the genesis of precepts that they and even their teachers probably have long taken for granted.
Much of The Method covers the various clashes between its American practitioners. Rifts developed between his students, all of whom claimed to be his truest disciples. Lee Strasberg, transforming Stanislavski's system into what came to be known as Method Acting, emphasized a notion of emotional memory that influenced an entire generation of Hollywood actors; Stella Adler emphasized a less painful psychological approach that aimed to discover truths through stage action.
Butler's examination of how the Method's domination of the American cinema in the mid-twentieth century is perhaps the book's most compelling section. The narrative reaches a climax in the nineteen-seventies in a dissection of the Method's downfall, as it became less a rebellion and more the orthodoxy, and as critics increasingly stereotyped its adherents as narcissists who refused to break character even when the cameras weren't rolling.
In his coda, Butler examines how the century-old system continues to transform itself. If there's any oversight in the narrative, it's in its disinterest in examining Stanislavski's influence in other countries than the U.S., but admittedly, the book states its focus up front. Students of the theater will relish this comprehensive history and its thorough documentation, and actors will appreciate discovering the genesis of precepts that they and even their teachers probably have long taken for granted.
January 24, 2022
A biography of the Method arguing that it is one of the most influential cultural movements of the 20th century. And I would definitely agree that the author makes that argument successfully.
This sucker is DENSE as all hell if you’re not familiar with the subject (which I absolutely was not), but it’s still an incredibly compelling read.
This sucker is DENSE as all hell if you’re not familiar with the subject (which I absolutely was not), but it’s still an incredibly compelling read.
June 29, 2023
Shoutout Acting 101 with Rebecca! Amazing class, way more fun than the majority of the acting classes in this book. After reading this, I now have very strong feelings about which school of the Stanislavski Method I subscribe to.
February 27, 2022
There's a scene in the show Barry where an actor dies, and his partners in his class immediately start turning that into material. One of them says something to the extent of 'finally, we're going to make it about ourselves!' which, of course, is all they ever do. This is the book version of that. It's a bunch of very self-involved people arguing about whether actors should start with emotion and then build character or vise-versa, a debate that pretty much died in the 80's when audiences decided they were actually interested in light sabers.
Best part of the book is the chapter where a skeptic of the Method makes a completely-convincing argument that the point of acting is to make THE AUDIENCE feel emotion, not the actors, and all the navel-gazing has limited external value.
The Method reminded me a little bit of Chuk Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, written about hair metal, which is also a piece of criticism written about art that the author clearly loves but also by all accounts appears to be dead and buried and should probably stay that way. Butler does a great job of explaining the theory, the people, and the impact of each, and I do recommend the book, although I'm not sure he couldn't have pasted the 100+ page bibliography on google docs or some thing and saved everyone on costs.
Best part of the book is the chapter where a skeptic of the Method makes a completely-convincing argument that the point of acting is to make THE AUDIENCE feel emotion, not the actors, and all the navel-gazing has limited external value.
The Method reminded me a little bit of Chuk Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, written about hair metal, which is also a piece of criticism written about art that the author clearly loves but also by all accounts appears to be dead and buried and should probably stay that way. Butler does a great job of explaining the theory, the people, and the impact of each, and I do recommend the book, although I'm not sure he couldn't have pasted the 100+ page bibliography on google docs or some thing and saved everyone on costs.
February 4, 2023
Fantastic stuff. A very digestible history of a tumultuous century in acting development (and the social upheaval that inspired new artistic expressions) and also some of the best writing on acting - what makes it good, what compels an audience, what is "real" and "true" and are they important - I've ever encountered. Butler breaks down the difference in styles and approaches between teachers and performers, and (while this might be my familiarity with and the availability of the 1950s-1970s screen stars' works) he clearly illustrates and examines the diverging paths of "The Method" and how they manifest in the performances of Clift, Brando, Pacino, De Niro, and many more. Hugely recommended for any theatre kids and movie buffs alike.
April 26, 2024
compelling, sprawling twentieth century cultural history that ALMOST filled the mike nichols bio-shaped hole in my heart
February 2, 2022
“The Method” refers to what has been called “Method Acting.” No discussion of The Method would be complete without a solid grounding in its founder, Stanislavsky. This narrative takes the history back to its foundations with the life of Konstantin Stanislavski in Russia in the late 1800s. (Stanislavski is an assumed name, as his family were successful merchants.). The author sets up these beginnings and then launches into a narrative of the formative time that Stanislavski spent with his theater partner Nemirovich.
Together, Stanislavski and Nemirovich revolutionized what audiences saw on the stage in Russia. Their partnership incorporated real research into the past for classic plays and changed set design and audience perception. Stanislavski acted as the director, rehearsing actors in his vision until the actors were exhausted. This company later became known for their rendition of “the notorious flop” The Seagull by Anton Chekhov.
I find in reading the history of Stanislavski’s Russian troupe that he wanted actors to turn their backs to the audience when the scene required it. (We were yelled at in high school by the theater director for even getting close to showing our backs to the audience! Yeah, high school.) Stanislavski wanted realistic performances. He wanted the performer to inhabit the role. In the early 1900s, Stanislavski had an internal crisis which resolved itself into a style that he called the “system.” Years later it would be interpreted by film actors and directors and morph into the method.”
Stanislavski and Nemirovich’s Moscow Art Theater made it to the U.S. on tour after the Russian Revolution and was a smash hit. However, two people were fired and stayed on in the U.S. teaching acting. Lee Strasberg happened to take some of those classes until he felt he was ready to act. He then struck out on his own, and with Harold Clurman, made plans for a truly American acting theater and style that was simpler and lower key: thus was born the method. But boy, there were many twists, turns, and variations in teaching acting.
I know I am really jumping over a lot but I want to emphasize that when someone is called “a method actor,” they may or may not be. And, what kind of method actor? There are variations under various interpretations of what should be taught to actors (that shorthand includes females). In the 20th Century there were 3 main coaches teaching “method acting:” Lee Strasburg, Stella Adler, and Sanford (Sandy) Meisner. This book also discusses other studios and other coaches but these three coaches receive the focus. The three may all have started at the Group Theater of the 1930s, but their approaches varied widely. Widely enough for a massive feud between Strasburg and Adler. It is fascinating and sad that interpretations of a style have riven such deep divisions in the acting world.
Likewise, there are many actors who were method actors but the book focuses on actors such as Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and later, Robert DeNiro. There are also actors out there that say they are method actors but never reached tutelage from Adler, Meisner, or Strasburg. The practitioners of this style of the art of acting are nearly gone, and are being replaced by new interpretations of what the audience wants to see.
“What is method acting” has been a burning question for a long time; the author points out all of the differing views and traditions, and allows the reader to draw the conclusions.
This is a well-researched and written book. The subject matter is complex; only someone with a historical knowledge of the theater and film could’ve written it. I found it not only fascinating, but now can see over-generalizations made by biographers of actors. The fine differences are a lot to keep straight.
Thank you to Isaac Butler, Bloomsbury Publishing, and NetGalley for allowing me to read a pre-publication galley of this book. My opinions are my own and I didn’t receive anything for posting a review.
Together, Stanislavski and Nemirovich revolutionized what audiences saw on the stage in Russia. Their partnership incorporated real research into the past for classic plays and changed set design and audience perception. Stanislavski acted as the director, rehearsing actors in his vision until the actors were exhausted. This company later became known for their rendition of “the notorious flop” The Seagull by Anton Chekhov.
I find in reading the history of Stanislavski’s Russian troupe that he wanted actors to turn their backs to the audience when the scene required it. (We were yelled at in high school by the theater director for even getting close to showing our backs to the audience! Yeah, high school.) Stanislavski wanted realistic performances. He wanted the performer to inhabit the role. In the early 1900s, Stanislavski had an internal crisis which resolved itself into a style that he called the “system.” Years later it would be interpreted by film actors and directors and morph into the method.”
Stanislavski and Nemirovich’s Moscow Art Theater made it to the U.S. on tour after the Russian Revolution and was a smash hit. However, two people were fired and stayed on in the U.S. teaching acting. Lee Strasberg happened to take some of those classes until he felt he was ready to act. He then struck out on his own, and with Harold Clurman, made plans for a truly American acting theater and style that was simpler and lower key: thus was born the method. But boy, there were many twists, turns, and variations in teaching acting.
I know I am really jumping over a lot but I want to emphasize that when someone is called “a method actor,” they may or may not be. And, what kind of method actor? There are variations under various interpretations of what should be taught to actors (that shorthand includes females). In the 20th Century there were 3 main coaches teaching “method acting:” Lee Strasburg, Stella Adler, and Sanford (Sandy) Meisner. This book also discusses other studios and other coaches but these three coaches receive the focus. The three may all have started at the Group Theater of the 1930s, but their approaches varied widely. Widely enough for a massive feud between Strasburg and Adler. It is fascinating and sad that interpretations of a style have riven such deep divisions in the acting world.
Likewise, there are many actors who were method actors but the book focuses on actors such as Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and later, Robert DeNiro. There are also actors out there that say they are method actors but never reached tutelage from Adler, Meisner, or Strasburg. The practitioners of this style of the art of acting are nearly gone, and are being replaced by new interpretations of what the audience wants to see.
“What is method acting” has been a burning question for a long time; the author points out all of the differing views and traditions, and allows the reader to draw the conclusions.
This is a well-researched and written book. The subject matter is complex; only someone with a historical knowledge of the theater and film could’ve written it. I found it not only fascinating, but now can see over-generalizations made by biographers of actors. The fine differences are a lot to keep straight.
Thank you to Isaac Butler, Bloomsbury Publishing, and NetGalley for allowing me to read a pre-publication galley of this book. My opinions are my own and I didn’t receive anything for posting a review.
November 27, 2023
My full review is here.
https://artsfuse.org/256138/book-revi...
Encompassing a century of acting training beginning in Russia, the book traces the history of the Method, Stanislavsky's initial idea through its many incarnations, diversions, and adaptations. It encompasses world and social history for context, theater history for reference, and lots of specifics about the acting process. The book pulls together so much that I've read, trained, and have been curious about since acting became an obsession when I was young, through college, and beyond. I own and have read many of the acting books mentioned in the text and this book pulls them all into focus. along with specifics on actors and practitioners.
Having never really applied myself to acting as a career except in bits and pieces, the book brings into perspective and focus much I find fascinating about the craft. It is wonderfully written with solid information on the teaching of acting, concluding with relevant contemporary observations and ideas about what acting means, its challenges, and its importance as an art form.
For me, this was a hefty read that I couldn't get enough of. I'll have to follow up with James Lipton's book, and a few biographies. Brando's biography, The Contender, for instance, is one that complements this book well. There are also plenty of films worth revisiting or seeing for the first time after reading this.
https://artsfuse.org/256138/book-revi...
Encompassing a century of acting training beginning in Russia, the book traces the history of the Method, Stanislavsky's initial idea through its many incarnations, diversions, and adaptations. It encompasses world and social history for context, theater history for reference, and lots of specifics about the acting process. The book pulls together so much that I've read, trained, and have been curious about since acting became an obsession when I was young, through college, and beyond. I own and have read many of the acting books mentioned in the text and this book pulls them all into focus. along with specifics on actors and practitioners.
Having never really applied myself to acting as a career except in bits and pieces, the book brings into perspective and focus much I find fascinating about the craft. It is wonderfully written with solid information on the teaching of acting, concluding with relevant contemporary observations and ideas about what acting means, its challenges, and its importance as an art form.
For me, this was a hefty read that I couldn't get enough of. I'll have to follow up with James Lipton's book, and a few biographies. Brando's biography, The Contender, for instance, is one that complements this book well. There are also plenty of films worth revisiting or seeing for the first time after reading this.
Read
May 1, 2022LOVED this book. I absolutely love how Isaac Butler writes and every single page here taught me something new.
April 29, 2022
i’ m having second thoughts about all this “acting” stuff
July 4, 2022
Minunata carte, aducatoare de adevarate revelatii. Nu doar pentru profesionisti - dar, evident, mai ales pentru ei.
July 5, 2023
This book was *so* much more than what I expected. Butler does an exceptional job tracing back the inception of method acting from the 1890s in Russia through it’s utilization and adaption during the rise of the 20th century. Ultimately, it’s clear the method is still a foundational framework for leading actors today.
I often found myself wishing for an accompanying syllabus to help refresh the historical moments or to keep track of all the plays and films mentioned. I imagine there are many BFA programs that could build an entire curriculum off Butler’s work.
I often found myself wishing for an accompanying syllabus to help refresh the historical moments or to keep track of all the plays and films mentioned. I imagine there are many BFA programs that could build an entire curriculum off Butler’s work.
May 29, 2022
I went long on this one so I posted it on Medium. It's great!
https://medium.com/@brendenmgallagher...
https://medium.com/@brendenmgallagher...
September 4, 2025
I studied at an acting school founded by a method teacher and never knew most of this history. This is an engaging look at the evolution of a complex acting theory that got diminished to an almost derogatory descriptor of actors. Should be required reading for American acting students.
February 13, 2022
This was great. Serves as a useful history of the Method from its origins to present day. If you’re looking for an instruction manual, this isn’t it, but it will put into context what you’ll learn from books by Stanislavski, Haggen, Meisner, and Adler.
abandoned-dnf
July 5, 2022DNF @ 25%.
Will probably come back to it at a later date.
I think it's a case of "good book, wrong time to try to get into it."
Will probably come back to it at a later date.
I think it's a case of "good book, wrong time to try to get into it."
April 2, 2022
Vital, spectacular.
August 7, 2022
A fascinating and detailed historical dive into Method acting, it's origins in Russia, how it came to America, its permutations through the present day.
March 21, 2023
(From the introduction): "The Method is not merely an acting theory, or a reliable way to cry on cue. It is a transformative, revolutionary, modernist art movement, one of the Big Ideas of the 20th century... the "system" and the Method brought forth a new way of conceiving of human experience, one that changed how we look at the world, and at ourselves. We live today in the world - and with the aesthetic taste - that the Method helped usher in... but both the "System" and the Method could create as many problems as they solved, particularly when wielded by dogmatists who thought that they were the only right way to get to the truth."
"'We are Americans new,' Clurman told Aaron Copland. 'We need Art which, to begin with, is simply the conscious embodiment of our experience. Culture serves as self-realization for us as individuals and as a community.'" (Pg 142)
This is a superb and thoughtful and stupendously researched chronicle of people who have their contradictions and wants and needs and come upon their epiphanies sometimes by accident but not without years of work and bad times and failures first, acting tome second. It doesn't mean that Butler isn't compelled to show his readers what acting is all about, on the contrary that sort of *is* what the book is dealing with. What are even "Given Circumstances," which is an oft repeated phrase here? You've been seeing it your whole life with TV and films and theater, and you just don't know what it means... till Butler can explain it.
In other words, don't feel nervous, if you're the kind to be so, that this be all "Theory," which can be or seem sort of dry to those who haven't paid lots of money as college students to be yelled at. On the contrary, this is at once a packaging and a truly epic story of the theories - primarily that of Perezivanie as used by the Russians and then picked up and expanded upon by Americans - that makes me understand acting better than I ever have (and as a writer and director I have tried to very much over the years, but I digress).
"... the ultimate goal of Theater artists is a creative theatrical performance, which Boleslavsky defines as 'a collective creation that expresses in *visible, audible* and *rhythmic* images some *real* manifestations of *imaginary life, places and people,* by means of *clear, precise* and *natural feelings and emotions* of the human soul.' Of the utmost importance was the actor, who, as both the artist and the artist's material, 'lives his parts.'" (Pg 126)
I liked that he started it off clearly stating that this is a biography *of* the Method, and so that means showing the evolutions of the people who shaped and controlled and broke and created tendrils from it was possible. It's less like a biography of any one person or system than, how do I put this? It's like someone wrote a biography of a beautiful, crazy-large and idiosyncratic oak tree. It has so many branches and places that come off from it, but ultimately it comes back to the roots and the main center (what is that called uh... the trunk, where's my brain today) of this question: how do actors make an audience not just believe what they are seeing, but to make the *style* of acting so imperceptible that an audience doesn't see the acting (for stage and screen which, as this book makes so greatly and comprehensive for even a layman, are two different things)... or, that's not entirely correct, rather it's what it means for these styles to create an illusion for the watcher.... and this illusion via the Method, which means several things to several kinds of people and actors and directors and writers and other artists and criticis, is the controversial cornerstone of the 20th century.
And like any tree that is worth studying in the most complex detail possible, not every tree limb or branch will be as absorbing or involving necessary as others will. I did get into the sections, really the first half of the book more or less, about the development of the "System" with Stanislavski, Boreslavski, Ouspenskaya, and the Moscow Art Theater, and Butler doesn't make it too complicated to remember the names, but it does take so long to explain and render their story of this development dramatically that I did become impatient. I don't mean this entirely as a heavy criticism so much as an observation, since it is still very well written and with what seems every bit of research possible (and when a moment or moments are unknown about what one person said to another or the outcome of an event, the book is up front about it). But I can't help but find this book so much more of an involving story once the Moscow Art Theater performs in America and those rascals Strasberg, Adler, Clubman, Odets, John Garfield and eventually Kazan come in to the picture and what they do with the Method to transform American acting.
Is that some American bias? I don't think so. It's really just down to finding the history of the American theater, how this Group Theater project developed in the 1930s and that there were so many distinct and dynamic personalities and clashes of ideals and temperaments, that that is what stands out for giving Butler so much to work with - and that, perhaps this is just my interpretation, this period in history is what gets his mind and pulse racing, how this can be inspirational at a time in history where segments of society want art to be conservative and simplistic.
He maybe has to work slightly harder to make the Russian story as vigorous and magnetic, though he does, while the stories and relationships with Strasberg and Adler and Clurman alone make for something out of high school. That could also sound like a knock, like it is too shallow, but it isn't; it's simply that these are some of the most interesting figures I've ever read in a biography, so wound up in their own histories and how they were raised (or precisely were failed by their parents), and when they became fully immersed into this discovery of what acting can be, the tensions and harmonies are passions are staggering to behold. And I'm sure many books have been written about the individual characters here (Odetts alone I'm sure has had a few and he deserves them given his story and part in the Group), but having them all here makes it like this, forgive the analogy, like digging into a cohesive overview of an extended universe of characters. Will Franchot Tone show up in the end credits of the John Garfield story? Who knows.
And my goodness, the times when a pioneer and iconoclast creates the frictions and contradictions that make an entire movement so interesting... and perhaps unstable to an extent. Example:
"According to (Stella) Adler, Stanislavski and the Group had gotten his 'system' wrong. He did not use, and did not think people should use, emotional memory exercises. Problems, action, the given circumstances, and imagination were the keys to the 'system.' You got to emption through them, not the other way around. 'If your director says, please feel [first] and then tou will be able to play, tell him 'when I know how to swim then I will go into the water,'' Stanlislavski said. 'Can one swim without going into the water? One cannot feel and then do the problem- first act the problem for the physical action and then you will be able to feel.'" (Pg 171)
See, fascinating explanation... and to which I'm sure some actors may disagree reading. And that's fine. Sometimes people are right and wrong depending on the (ahem) given circumstances. That's a joke.
My point is, this book is loaded with ancedotes and stories about the PROCESS (big capital letters) of how art is created by human beings who can be screwed up and so attuned with their skills as leaders and followers (or in the case of Marlon Brando, my way of the highway), and it's equally dense storytelling while being easily readable. It's contains the qualities of academic inquiry while still being about who did what to whom on the kind of dramatic levels that would make for its own gristle for a text somewhere down the line (I'm sure at least a few of these figures have had whole plays and movies made about them, authorized or no). And as the book breathes new life and urgency to want to revisit those films of Clift and Brando and Newman and Steiger and of course Pacino (the story of The Godfather making of may be worth the price of the book by itself for it being all about the Acting style clashes and how it... all worked).
Oh, and did I mention how deftly and powerfully Butler writes about politics (and class, rest assured he does touch on accents and how that was a major issue for actors)? The two can't be separated, despite what Elia Kazan thought. That whole section on pg 186 where Butler writes about the performance of Lefty where everyone realized things were... real, and potent, and about what real lives can be as represented on that stage... wow.
(PS: I wonder if Marilyn Monroe had met Stella Adler instead of Strasberg if she would've lived a little longer and... sorry not sorry thing... I agree with Butler 1000% on James Dean. Total copycat. Ok I'll rush to the exits now...
"'We are Americans new,' Clurman told Aaron Copland. 'We need Art which, to begin with, is simply the conscious embodiment of our experience. Culture serves as self-realization for us as individuals and as a community.'" (Pg 142)
This is a superb and thoughtful and stupendously researched chronicle of people who have their contradictions and wants and needs and come upon their epiphanies sometimes by accident but not without years of work and bad times and failures first, acting tome second. It doesn't mean that Butler isn't compelled to show his readers what acting is all about, on the contrary that sort of *is* what the book is dealing with. What are even "Given Circumstances," which is an oft repeated phrase here? You've been seeing it your whole life with TV and films and theater, and you just don't know what it means... till Butler can explain it.
In other words, don't feel nervous, if you're the kind to be so, that this be all "Theory," which can be or seem sort of dry to those who haven't paid lots of money as college students to be yelled at. On the contrary, this is at once a packaging and a truly epic story of the theories - primarily that of Perezivanie as used by the Russians and then picked up and expanded upon by Americans - that makes me understand acting better than I ever have (and as a writer and director I have tried to very much over the years, but I digress).
"... the ultimate goal of Theater artists is a creative theatrical performance, which Boleslavsky defines as 'a collective creation that expresses in *visible, audible* and *rhythmic* images some *real* manifestations of *imaginary life, places and people,* by means of *clear, precise* and *natural feelings and emotions* of the human soul.' Of the utmost importance was the actor, who, as both the artist and the artist's material, 'lives his parts.'" (Pg 126)
I liked that he started it off clearly stating that this is a biography *of* the Method, and so that means showing the evolutions of the people who shaped and controlled and broke and created tendrils from it was possible. It's less like a biography of any one person or system than, how do I put this? It's like someone wrote a biography of a beautiful, crazy-large and idiosyncratic oak tree. It has so many branches and places that come off from it, but ultimately it comes back to the roots and the main center (what is that called uh... the trunk, where's my brain today) of this question: how do actors make an audience not just believe what they are seeing, but to make the *style* of acting so imperceptible that an audience doesn't see the acting (for stage and screen which, as this book makes so greatly and comprehensive for even a layman, are two different things)... or, that's not entirely correct, rather it's what it means for these styles to create an illusion for the watcher.... and this illusion via the Method, which means several things to several kinds of people and actors and directors and writers and other artists and criticis, is the controversial cornerstone of the 20th century.
And like any tree that is worth studying in the most complex detail possible, not every tree limb or branch will be as absorbing or involving necessary as others will. I did get into the sections, really the first half of the book more or less, about the development of the "System" with Stanislavski, Boreslavski, Ouspenskaya, and the Moscow Art Theater, and Butler doesn't make it too complicated to remember the names, but it does take so long to explain and render their story of this development dramatically that I did become impatient. I don't mean this entirely as a heavy criticism so much as an observation, since it is still very well written and with what seems every bit of research possible (and when a moment or moments are unknown about what one person said to another or the outcome of an event, the book is up front about it). But I can't help but find this book so much more of an involving story once the Moscow Art Theater performs in America and those rascals Strasberg, Adler, Clubman, Odets, John Garfield and eventually Kazan come in to the picture and what they do with the Method to transform American acting.
Is that some American bias? I don't think so. It's really just down to finding the history of the American theater, how this Group Theater project developed in the 1930s and that there were so many distinct and dynamic personalities and clashes of ideals and temperaments, that that is what stands out for giving Butler so much to work with - and that, perhaps this is just my interpretation, this period in history is what gets his mind and pulse racing, how this can be inspirational at a time in history where segments of society want art to be conservative and simplistic.
He maybe has to work slightly harder to make the Russian story as vigorous and magnetic, though he does, while the stories and relationships with Strasberg and Adler and Clurman alone make for something out of high school. That could also sound like a knock, like it is too shallow, but it isn't; it's simply that these are some of the most interesting figures I've ever read in a biography, so wound up in their own histories and how they were raised (or precisely were failed by their parents), and when they became fully immersed into this discovery of what acting can be, the tensions and harmonies are passions are staggering to behold. And I'm sure many books have been written about the individual characters here (Odetts alone I'm sure has had a few and he deserves them given his story and part in the Group), but having them all here makes it like this, forgive the analogy, like digging into a cohesive overview of an extended universe of characters. Will Franchot Tone show up in the end credits of the John Garfield story? Who knows.
And my goodness, the times when a pioneer and iconoclast creates the frictions and contradictions that make an entire movement so interesting... and perhaps unstable to an extent. Example:
"According to (Stella) Adler, Stanislavski and the Group had gotten his 'system' wrong. He did not use, and did not think people should use, emotional memory exercises. Problems, action, the given circumstances, and imagination were the keys to the 'system.' You got to emption through them, not the other way around. 'If your director says, please feel [first] and then tou will be able to play, tell him 'when I know how to swim then I will go into the water,'' Stanlislavski said. 'Can one swim without going into the water? One cannot feel and then do the problem- first act the problem for the physical action and then you will be able to feel.'" (Pg 171)
See, fascinating explanation... and to which I'm sure some actors may disagree reading. And that's fine. Sometimes people are right and wrong depending on the (ahem) given circumstances. That's a joke.
My point is, this book is loaded with ancedotes and stories about the PROCESS (big capital letters) of how art is created by human beings who can be screwed up and so attuned with their skills as leaders and followers (or in the case of Marlon Brando, my way of the highway), and it's equally dense storytelling while being easily readable. It's contains the qualities of academic inquiry while still being about who did what to whom on the kind of dramatic levels that would make for its own gristle for a text somewhere down the line (I'm sure at least a few of these figures have had whole plays and movies made about them, authorized or no). And as the book breathes new life and urgency to want to revisit those films of Clift and Brando and Newman and Steiger and of course Pacino (the story of The Godfather making of may be worth the price of the book by itself for it being all about the Acting style clashes and how it... all worked).
Oh, and did I mention how deftly and powerfully Butler writes about politics (and class, rest assured he does touch on accents and how that was a major issue for actors)? The two can't be separated, despite what Elia Kazan thought. That whole section on pg 186 where Butler writes about the performance of Lefty where everyone realized things were... real, and potent, and about what real lives can be as represented on that stage... wow.
(PS: I wonder if Marilyn Monroe had met Stella Adler instead of Strasberg if she would've lived a little longer and... sorry not sorry thing... I agree with Butler 1000% on James Dean. Total copycat. Ok I'll rush to the exits now...
February 11, 2025
Lovely anecdote in this book about how Dustin Hoffman made himself a wreck by staying awake for three days so he could film a scene as a character who had been awake three days. He told the great British actor Laurence Olivier, who wasn't so impressed and said "my dear boy, why don't you just try acting". This book unravels in great detail how the acting we see on stage and film today evolved from the acting that was around 140 years ago. It is very different, much more authentic and changes with the medium, so much more sophisticated. What changed was the emergence of "the method" a style brought to America from Russia. I enjoyed the detailed biographical descriptions of the main characters but got lost sometimes in the denseness of the acting sensitivities. I kept thinking who cares a little too much. But, overall, I know a lot more than I did about something I knew little of and that's the win. Of course the why is money. Things change when humans spot a way to make more money. Better acting made more money, if you want a really short summary.
February 16, 2024
I have been an actor for over half my life. I don’t know how I have gone this long without understanding how all of these acting techniques stem from the same person in the same way that all modern dance stems from ballet. This book, in great detail, chronicles Stanislavsky’s quest to find a new and inventive way to what he eventually called “perezhivanie”. There is some thing about having a dream for something better then going and trying to find it that is very inspiring. This book gave me the same feeling that I got when I read. Free for All: Joe Papp, the Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told and Mike Nichols: A Life
I believe we are in a very interesting time in terms of what acting which the author addresses in the afterward. I read this book to get back to grounding myself in some sort of connection to hearing someone have an opinion of what acting is… The industry (post Covid and the strikes) has felt very precarious and overwhelming and in some sort of floating state where everything is nothing and nothing is everything. It’s been easy to get pulled away to followers, agents, auditions and forget the tradition I come from. I feel as though I’ve just discovered my family tree and feel its roots connected back even more. Feeling incredibly humbled and inspired. I now plan, in chronological order, on reading Stanislavki, Meyerhold, Grotowski, Chekhov, Strausbrug, Adler, Meisner, & Hagen. Knowing that all these people shared space with the next is moving beyond all measure.
I believe we are in a very interesting time in terms of what acting which the author addresses in the afterward. I read this book to get back to grounding myself in some sort of connection to hearing someone have an opinion of what acting is… The industry (post Covid and the strikes) has felt very precarious and overwhelming and in some sort of floating state where everything is nothing and nothing is everything. It’s been easy to get pulled away to followers, agents, auditions and forget the tradition I come from. I feel as though I’ve just discovered my family tree and feel its roots connected back even more. Feeling incredibly humbled and inspired. I now plan, in chronological order, on reading Stanislavki, Meyerhold, Grotowski, Chekhov, Strausbrug, Adler, Meisner, & Hagen. Knowing that all these people shared space with the next is moving beyond all measure.
July 11, 2025
I think I read Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and Uncle Vanya in high school, around the same time as Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler – full confession, I felt these were all like pulling teeth – deadly boring, especially to a 16 year old. If nothing else, Isaac Butler’s The Method helped me contextualize the importance of Chekhov to drama (Ibsen is roughly writing around the same time but doesn’t factor into the Stanislavski world like Chekhov does) to the extent that I toyed with re-reading some Chekhov as hoping that the 30 years since my high school reading might give him a bit more depth (and my reading a bit more patience). This is a largely fascinating study of “method acting” – of course, some of the Russian scenes drag a bit, but once Strasberg, Adler, and Meisner get involved, the story picks up. Of course, there’s some Hollywood drama to liven the proceedings. At NYU, the acting students I think had 5 studios to choose from – Strasberg, Adler, Meisner, and then musical and experimental theater. (Maybe there was a David Mamet school as well?) I only took acting for film so I never got so in-depth with the acting techniques and approaches. I did make it through the book Strasberg’s Method – one of Butler’s many observations is the (very) reductive differences between these three teachers’ approaches to Stanislavski – self, soul, and presence. In my own dealing with actors, I’ve found that each actor approaches acting very differently – they pick and choose whatever technique gets them there. (In the horror realms, since a lot of what you do is on the extreme ends of the behavior spectrum – life and death and lots of blood – I’ve found trying to find ways to protect the actor’s psyche is of the utmost importance.)
It feels that one of Butler’s biggest goals with The Method was to call BS on the immersive approach of some actors who never leave character and declare it as “method acting.” It’s really not – and in a lot of cases (thinking of that Jim Carrey doc where he became Andy Kaufman) I feel like actors push it off-camera to just see how far they can take it, what they can get away with. And in many, many cases, it’s a LOT. Actors are the most expensive aspect of the production, and everything revolves around them, so if they are playing a quadriplegic, especially if awards might be in the cards, there’s a strong chance the production will cater to their immersive whims. But it feels like Butler is saying that this is NOT method acting, in the Stanislavski/Strasberg schools. If Strasberg is pushing utilizing sense memory of the actor’s own past to find the emotional truth of a scene, not quite sure how becoming someone else completely when the camera isn’t rolling is utilizing that method.
In any case, the last two sections on the formation (and eventual dissolution) of the Actors’ Studio and the Method’s legacy in the success (and eventual decline) of the New Hollywood presents an alternate history of post WW2 Hollywood – presenting John Garfield as its first success story, and its subsequent peaks in Streetcar Named Desire, The Godfather, and Raging Bull. Butler connects the dots that the New Hollywood films found success in the pursuit and reflection of truth – the evolution and success of the New Hollywood – The Graduate, Easy Rider, The French Connection, The Godfather, The Exorcist, Jaws, and finally Star Wars – shows the change from gritty truth to fabricated escapism and reflects the moods of the country throughout the late 60s through the 80s. I’m a huge fan of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls so I appreciated another take on this era, with Raging Bull presenting as not only the last gasp of New Hollywood but also the final ties to the original “method” – De Niro’s full immersion in Jake LaMotta provided the framework for “serious” acting, not Stanislavski or his disciples.
Butler also wisely presents the method actors as cautionary tales – John Garfield, Kim Stanley, Montgomery Clift, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean all had tragic ends, Brando became a self-parody (though he did still manage to make a mighty impression in some lackluster fare – thinking of Don Juan DeMarco), and Pacino, Hoffman, and DeNiro all still work, but tend to appear frequently in purely commercial endeavors that don’t require the depth or detail that they showed when they were young and hungry. It makes sense – if nothing else, even Stanislavski seemed to exhaust his cast and crew in the 1890s!
In the end – the methods that Stanislavski’s disciples brought to Hollywood (the journey here is West – from Moscow to New York to Los Angeles) changed acting in the 20th century. The camera in many ways is much more intimate than the stage – we are seeing each line of the face, each nuance, each detail of emotion – and Stanislavski’s quest to see beyond the artifice of the stage lent itself quite well to the post War generation’s desire for fame and fortune on the silver screen. Seeing beyond the artifice seemed to have a bit of a fad with movements like Dogme 95 in the 1990s (is there a correlation between VonTrier & co’s natural lighting and sets with something like MTV’s The Real World and the onslaught of reality/unscripted television, possible now due to the digital revolution in cameras?) and Butler’s final parting ruminations on the “Method” vs. the era of the Hollywood Mega Blockbuster supply the appropriate pathos of someone bemoaning the current state of film – he does find some high points to contemporary actors and I agree with that – there are some AMAZING actors today and phenomenal performances. (I also like seeing some of the pre-Brando acting that takes film away from theatricality – thinking of Frederic March as Mr. Hyde in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or Victor McLaglen in The Informer.) But after looking at film when it dominated the zeitgeist/culture of America – possibly laying claim to a vision of its sub/unconscious – and the actors of that time as the vehicles/channels of those psychic states, well, yeah. Mass commercialization is a let down. The plastic covers everything, so that even the truth at the bottom of it is references to other films or feigned emotion. And the audiences don’t care either way. AGI here we come.
It feels that one of Butler’s biggest goals with The Method was to call BS on the immersive approach of some actors who never leave character and declare it as “method acting.” It’s really not – and in a lot of cases (thinking of that Jim Carrey doc where he became Andy Kaufman) I feel like actors push it off-camera to just see how far they can take it, what they can get away with. And in many, many cases, it’s a LOT. Actors are the most expensive aspect of the production, and everything revolves around them, so if they are playing a quadriplegic, especially if awards might be in the cards, there’s a strong chance the production will cater to their immersive whims. But it feels like Butler is saying that this is NOT method acting, in the Stanislavski/Strasberg schools. If Strasberg is pushing utilizing sense memory of the actor’s own past to find the emotional truth of a scene, not quite sure how becoming someone else completely when the camera isn’t rolling is utilizing that method.
In any case, the last two sections on the formation (and eventual dissolution) of the Actors’ Studio and the Method’s legacy in the success (and eventual decline) of the New Hollywood presents an alternate history of post WW2 Hollywood – presenting John Garfield as its first success story, and its subsequent peaks in Streetcar Named Desire, The Godfather, and Raging Bull. Butler connects the dots that the New Hollywood films found success in the pursuit and reflection of truth – the evolution and success of the New Hollywood – The Graduate, Easy Rider, The French Connection, The Godfather, The Exorcist, Jaws, and finally Star Wars – shows the change from gritty truth to fabricated escapism and reflects the moods of the country throughout the late 60s through the 80s. I’m a huge fan of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls so I appreciated another take on this era, with Raging Bull presenting as not only the last gasp of New Hollywood but also the final ties to the original “method” – De Niro’s full immersion in Jake LaMotta provided the framework for “serious” acting, not Stanislavski or his disciples.
Butler also wisely presents the method actors as cautionary tales – John Garfield, Kim Stanley, Montgomery Clift, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean all had tragic ends, Brando became a self-parody (though he did still manage to make a mighty impression in some lackluster fare – thinking of Don Juan DeMarco), and Pacino, Hoffman, and DeNiro all still work, but tend to appear frequently in purely commercial endeavors that don’t require the depth or detail that they showed when they were young and hungry. It makes sense – if nothing else, even Stanislavski seemed to exhaust his cast and crew in the 1890s!
In the end – the methods that Stanislavski’s disciples brought to Hollywood (the journey here is West – from Moscow to New York to Los Angeles) changed acting in the 20th century. The camera in many ways is much more intimate than the stage – we are seeing each line of the face, each nuance, each detail of emotion – and Stanislavski’s quest to see beyond the artifice of the stage lent itself quite well to the post War generation’s desire for fame and fortune on the silver screen. Seeing beyond the artifice seemed to have a bit of a fad with movements like Dogme 95 in the 1990s (is there a correlation between VonTrier & co’s natural lighting and sets with something like MTV’s The Real World and the onslaught of reality/unscripted television, possible now due to the digital revolution in cameras?) and Butler’s final parting ruminations on the “Method” vs. the era of the Hollywood Mega Blockbuster supply the appropriate pathos of someone bemoaning the current state of film – he does find some high points to contemporary actors and I agree with that – there are some AMAZING actors today and phenomenal performances. (I also like seeing some of the pre-Brando acting that takes film away from theatricality – thinking of Frederic March as Mr. Hyde in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or Victor McLaglen in The Informer.) But after looking at film when it dominated the zeitgeist/culture of America – possibly laying claim to a vision of its sub/unconscious – and the actors of that time as the vehicles/channels of those psychic states, well, yeah. Mass commercialization is a let down. The plastic covers everything, so that even the truth at the bottom of it is references to other films or feigned emotion. And the audiences don’t care either way. AGI here we come.
February 9, 2022
Everyone has a sense of what a good performance looks like. Sure, there’s some room for individual interpretation there, but whether we’re watching a movie or a play or a TV show, we have a certain baseline understanding of what “good” is.
But how does the performer get there?
Isaac Butler’s new book “The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act” is the story of one celebrated, well … method … of doing just that. From its origins in the Russian theatre scene in the early part of the 1900s to its gradual-then-rapid ascent to the apex of American acting, the Method spent decades as one of the preeminent schools of thought regarding performance.
This book treats the Method almost biographically, walking the reader through its embryonic stages with Stanislavski and the Moscow Art Theatre through the acolytes crossing the Atlantic and delivering it to America to the splintering and development of assorted variations on the theme, all of them falling under the umbrella of “the Method.” It is, for intents and purposes, a biography of the Method. Not of those who created it or those who learned it, but of the Method itself.
Some of the greatest actors in American history – stage and screen alike – were students of the Method, though not all learned precisely the same method from the prominent and iconoclastic instructors that brought it to life in the middle of the century. Still, there’s no disputing the impact that the philosophy (however you choose to define it) had – and continues to have – on the acting world.
It all started over a century ago in Russia. A gifted actor named Konstantin Stanislavski sought a way to replicate his own ideas and philosophies of performance. He devoted years to developing what he called “the system,” refining it and sharing it with his partners and peers as he breathed life into the Moscow Art Theatre, an institution that would for a time be recognized as one of the preeminent theatres in the world, presenting groundbreaking revivals and original works that defied the performative conventions of the time.
Great acting was something that was entirely external. Young performers studied assorted gestures and poses that were understood to indicate certain feelings and ideas. If you held your hand one way, it meant this. Another, it meant that. The way you stood, the way you moved – all of it dictated and codified.
Stanislavski introduced interiority to the stage. Instead of utilizing universal gestures and the like, he and his students sought inner characterization. They sought to feel rather than present an exaggerated physical representation of feeling. Their performances were driven by internal choices and actions rather than strictly by scripts and conventions. It was unlike anything the world had ever seen.
However, what we came to know as “the Method” was born when Stanislavski’s system made its way across the ocean. During a U.S. tour by the Moscow Art Theatre, a number of American artists were captivated by the possibilities presented. That captivation would lead to a theatrical revolution in America.
Starting with the experimental and paradigm-shattering work of the Group Theatre, the system would change and evolve into something else … although no one seemed to agree on just what that something else was.
Three teachers would come to embody the Method and its place in American acting – Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler and Sanford Meisner. All three came to the Method from different directions, with each bringing their own ideas and experiences into play. Their students would redefine what it meant to be an American actor.
Perhaps the best-known Method proponent was Marlon Brando, though even his connection to the philosophy was complicated. The truth is that just about every prominent actor from WWII up through the 1970s was at least tangentially attached to Method acting, whether they studied with a specific teacher or simply internalized some of the ideas. The proliferation of academic theatre programs only expanded the Method’s reach.
While the Method has fallen out of favor in recent years, there’s no disputing the significance of its impact on American acting. Stage, screen, doesn’t matter – there is Method in that madness.
As someone who spent time in two different academic theatre programs a decade apart, I am familiar with the fundamentals of the Method – particularly since my stints straddled the shift in attitude regarding the philosophy. Early on, I was skeptical of the Method’s broad acceptance; later, I was equally skeptical of its general dismissal. As is so often the case, reality lay somewhere in between.
Even with that level of familiarity, “The Method” proved fascinating. The story of the philosophy’s growth and evolution plays out in the same manner as any good biography, with each high point explored with scholarship and thoughtfulness. A book like this could have easily read as dry and/or academic, but instead, Butler has woven his thorough research into a compelling narrative, one with heroes and villains and misunderstood figures from the nebulous middle space. All this while also producing a work of theatre history exploring arguably the most significant development in the history of American acting.
The early history, with Stanislavski and the MAT and his other, more experimental endeavors, is interesting, to be sure, but to my mind, things really start to soar when we see just how explosively the Method landed on American shores. Over the course of just a few years, the entire face of the discipline completely and fundamentally changed; within those changes, some of our greatest performers were forged.
“The Method” will be of great interest to fans of history and the theatre, of course, but the truth is that anyone can read this book and engage with it. Butler has crafted an impressive and engaging work of nonfiction, a book that will prove fascinating to anyone who picks it up.
“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t” – Polonius, “Hamlet,” Act II, scene ii
But how does the performer get there?
Isaac Butler’s new book “The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act” is the story of one celebrated, well … method … of doing just that. From its origins in the Russian theatre scene in the early part of the 1900s to its gradual-then-rapid ascent to the apex of American acting, the Method spent decades as one of the preeminent schools of thought regarding performance.
This book treats the Method almost biographically, walking the reader through its embryonic stages with Stanislavski and the Moscow Art Theatre through the acolytes crossing the Atlantic and delivering it to America to the splintering and development of assorted variations on the theme, all of them falling under the umbrella of “the Method.” It is, for intents and purposes, a biography of the Method. Not of those who created it or those who learned it, but of the Method itself.
Some of the greatest actors in American history – stage and screen alike – were students of the Method, though not all learned precisely the same method from the prominent and iconoclastic instructors that brought it to life in the middle of the century. Still, there’s no disputing the impact that the philosophy (however you choose to define it) had – and continues to have – on the acting world.
It all started over a century ago in Russia. A gifted actor named Konstantin Stanislavski sought a way to replicate his own ideas and philosophies of performance. He devoted years to developing what he called “the system,” refining it and sharing it with his partners and peers as he breathed life into the Moscow Art Theatre, an institution that would for a time be recognized as one of the preeminent theatres in the world, presenting groundbreaking revivals and original works that defied the performative conventions of the time.
Great acting was something that was entirely external. Young performers studied assorted gestures and poses that were understood to indicate certain feelings and ideas. If you held your hand one way, it meant this. Another, it meant that. The way you stood, the way you moved – all of it dictated and codified.
Stanislavski introduced interiority to the stage. Instead of utilizing universal gestures and the like, he and his students sought inner characterization. They sought to feel rather than present an exaggerated physical representation of feeling. Their performances were driven by internal choices and actions rather than strictly by scripts and conventions. It was unlike anything the world had ever seen.
However, what we came to know as “the Method” was born when Stanislavski’s system made its way across the ocean. During a U.S. tour by the Moscow Art Theatre, a number of American artists were captivated by the possibilities presented. That captivation would lead to a theatrical revolution in America.
Starting with the experimental and paradigm-shattering work of the Group Theatre, the system would change and evolve into something else … although no one seemed to agree on just what that something else was.
Three teachers would come to embody the Method and its place in American acting – Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler and Sanford Meisner. All three came to the Method from different directions, with each bringing their own ideas and experiences into play. Their students would redefine what it meant to be an American actor.
Perhaps the best-known Method proponent was Marlon Brando, though even his connection to the philosophy was complicated. The truth is that just about every prominent actor from WWII up through the 1970s was at least tangentially attached to Method acting, whether they studied with a specific teacher or simply internalized some of the ideas. The proliferation of academic theatre programs only expanded the Method’s reach.
While the Method has fallen out of favor in recent years, there’s no disputing the significance of its impact on American acting. Stage, screen, doesn’t matter – there is Method in that madness.
As someone who spent time in two different academic theatre programs a decade apart, I am familiar with the fundamentals of the Method – particularly since my stints straddled the shift in attitude regarding the philosophy. Early on, I was skeptical of the Method’s broad acceptance; later, I was equally skeptical of its general dismissal. As is so often the case, reality lay somewhere in between.
Even with that level of familiarity, “The Method” proved fascinating. The story of the philosophy’s growth and evolution plays out in the same manner as any good biography, with each high point explored with scholarship and thoughtfulness. A book like this could have easily read as dry and/or academic, but instead, Butler has woven his thorough research into a compelling narrative, one with heroes and villains and misunderstood figures from the nebulous middle space. All this while also producing a work of theatre history exploring arguably the most significant development in the history of American acting.
The early history, with Stanislavski and the MAT and his other, more experimental endeavors, is interesting, to be sure, but to my mind, things really start to soar when we see just how explosively the Method landed on American shores. Over the course of just a few years, the entire face of the discipline completely and fundamentally changed; within those changes, some of our greatest performers were forged.
“The Method” will be of great interest to fans of history and the theatre, of course, but the truth is that anyone can read this book and engage with it. Butler has crafted an impressive and engaging work of nonfiction, a book that will prove fascinating to anyone who picks it up.
“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t” – Polonius, “Hamlet,” Act II, scene ii
September 2, 2023
Recommended for movie, TV, or stage nerds
Recommended for fans of the Russian Revolution.
I am a fan of actors. I get a charge out of watching a fine performance. I don't mean the entire movie or play (although I do like that too), but a moment. My favorite example is Vince Vaughn (Nick Van Owen) in the 1997 movie, "The Lost World: Jurassic Park." In one scene at the beginning of the movie, he is translating for the Spanish speaking barge captain. The captain has reservations about waiting at the island while Van Owen, Jeff Goldblum (Ian Malcolm), and Richard Schiff (Eddie Carr) go exploring. The captain, in Spanish, says the local fishermen call these islands "las Cinco Muertes." Vaughn translates, "the five deaths, he says,"and then he shakes his head slightly left and right as if to negate what the captain is saying. It's a small moment but that one little head shake conveys so many things: the warning about the island, the mystery of the story, and the slight possibility that he doesn't believe him but maybe he does. I love that kind of stuff.
Which brings me to method acting and this book, "The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act," by Isaac Butler. As far as I know, Vaughn is not a method actor, but in that 1997 movie, his performance is an exemplar of the evolutionary change in the acting craft started in Russia by Konstantin Stanislavski in 1898 as told by Butler.
Before Stanislavski reimagined the acting craft, theater audiences were aware that the actors were performing. Everything was big and exaggerated in order to play to the people in the back. It was presentational. Stanislavski started a shift to perezhivanie. Loosely translated, it means something like “experiencing,” or perhaps “re-experiencing.”
Stanislavski called his set of perezhivanie techniques "The System". During the performance, actors would "experience" their roles so truthfully that the audience would forget they are acting. Actors would breakdown the role into bits, with the aim of “accomplishing each of these bits as truthfully as possible," like Vaughn.
Because of the Russian Revolution and subsequent civil war, Stanislavski brought the system to the United States where it changed how Americans actors approached their craft, first during the Great Depression, then on film in the postwar era.
It helped create one of the most famous American acting schools, The Actors Studio, founded in 1947 by directors Cheryl Crawford, Elia Kazan, and Robert Lewis. It was a place where actors could work together without the pressures of commercial production and members learned Stanislavski's system. Noted alumni include Al Pacino, Paul Newman, Ellen Burstyn, Montgomery Clift, Sidney Lumet, Karl Malden, Patricia Neal, Maureen Stapleton, Eli Wallach, and Marlon Brando.
Lee Strasberg (Actor Studio director from 1948 to 1982) emerged as the authority for the system, extended the techniques, and helped transform Stanislavski's system into "the method." Actors used their own emotional memory for the purpose of dramatic motivation and tried to live the part. When Christian Bale and Robert Dinero lost weight for some of their famous roles (The Machinist, Raging Bull), they were doing method acting. When actors stay in character even when they are not filming (like Jim Carey in the 1999 biopic "Man on the Moon"), that's them using method acting to hopefully create a better performance.
There are criticisms. The Method takes a toll. For example, when Jessica Chastain stared in the Broadway show "Dollhouse" in 2023, there is emotional devastation and sadness to her performance. She doesn't pretend those emotions. She feels them, 6 days a week and twice on Sundays. Her brain and her body doesn't know that she's acting. She's going through the ordeal for real each time. And again, I don't know if Chastain would consider herself a method actress but you can see her craft as a direct line from it. Moderation is the key I guess but some actors have taken it to the extreme and many don't adhere to it at all.
Stella Adler, a former member of the Actor's Studio and student of Strasberg, grew to hate the method and formed her own school teaching what she called the Method of Physical Action. Actors of the day were either in Strasberg's or Adler's camp.
Butler's book tells this story of the evolution of the acting craft complete with all the drama inherent in any major disruption of anything but especially things that artistic types ae involved with. And there's a lot of it. If you're a movie, TV, or stage nerd, this book is for you. It will also appeal to anybody interested in the Russian Revolution.
---
References
Ochoa, S., 2022. Review: Isaac Butler’s history of modern acting “The Method” [Book Review]. Los Angeles Times. URL https://www.latimes.com/entertainment...
Morris, W., Dudley, E., Buetow, H., Weiss, S., 2022. Where’d All the Method Acting Go? [Podcast]. The New York Times. URL https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/28/po...
Green, J., 2022. Is It Finally Twilight for the Theater’s Sacred Monsters? [WWW Document]. The New York Times. URL https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/08/th... (accessed 1.1.23).
Fertel, R., 2022. The Method tells the story of the 20th century’s most controversial acting practice [WWW Document]. The A.V. Club. URL https://www.avclub.com/the-method-isa...
Recommended for fans of the Russian Revolution.
I am a fan of actors. I get a charge out of watching a fine performance. I don't mean the entire movie or play (although I do like that too), but a moment. My favorite example is Vince Vaughn (Nick Van Owen) in the 1997 movie, "The Lost World: Jurassic Park." In one scene at the beginning of the movie, he is translating for the Spanish speaking barge captain. The captain has reservations about waiting at the island while Van Owen, Jeff Goldblum (Ian Malcolm), and Richard Schiff (Eddie Carr) go exploring. The captain, in Spanish, says the local fishermen call these islands "las Cinco Muertes." Vaughn translates, "the five deaths, he says,"and then he shakes his head slightly left and right as if to negate what the captain is saying. It's a small moment but that one little head shake conveys so many things: the warning about the island, the mystery of the story, and the slight possibility that he doesn't believe him but maybe he does. I love that kind of stuff.
Which brings me to method acting and this book, "The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act," by Isaac Butler. As far as I know, Vaughn is not a method actor, but in that 1997 movie, his performance is an exemplar of the evolutionary change in the acting craft started in Russia by Konstantin Stanislavski in 1898 as told by Butler.
Before Stanislavski reimagined the acting craft, theater audiences were aware that the actors were performing. Everything was big and exaggerated in order to play to the people in the back. It was presentational. Stanislavski started a shift to perezhivanie. Loosely translated, it means something like “experiencing,” or perhaps “re-experiencing.”
Stanislavski called his set of perezhivanie techniques "The System". During the performance, actors would "experience" their roles so truthfully that the audience would forget they are acting. Actors would breakdown the role into bits, with the aim of “accomplishing each of these bits as truthfully as possible," like Vaughn.
Because of the Russian Revolution and subsequent civil war, Stanislavski brought the system to the United States where it changed how Americans actors approached their craft, first during the Great Depression, then on film in the postwar era.
It helped create one of the most famous American acting schools, The Actors Studio, founded in 1947 by directors Cheryl Crawford, Elia Kazan, and Robert Lewis. It was a place where actors could work together without the pressures of commercial production and members learned Stanislavski's system. Noted alumni include Al Pacino, Paul Newman, Ellen Burstyn, Montgomery Clift, Sidney Lumet, Karl Malden, Patricia Neal, Maureen Stapleton, Eli Wallach, and Marlon Brando.
Lee Strasberg (Actor Studio director from 1948 to 1982) emerged as the authority for the system, extended the techniques, and helped transform Stanislavski's system into "the method." Actors used their own emotional memory for the purpose of dramatic motivation and tried to live the part. When Christian Bale and Robert Dinero lost weight for some of their famous roles (The Machinist, Raging Bull), they were doing method acting. When actors stay in character even when they are not filming (like Jim Carey in the 1999 biopic "Man on the Moon"), that's them using method acting to hopefully create a better performance.
There are criticisms. The Method takes a toll. For example, when Jessica Chastain stared in the Broadway show "Dollhouse" in 2023, there is emotional devastation and sadness to her performance. She doesn't pretend those emotions. She feels them, 6 days a week and twice on Sundays. Her brain and her body doesn't know that she's acting. She's going through the ordeal for real each time. And again, I don't know if Chastain would consider herself a method actress but you can see her craft as a direct line from it. Moderation is the key I guess but some actors have taken it to the extreme and many don't adhere to it at all.
Stella Adler, a former member of the Actor's Studio and student of Strasberg, grew to hate the method and formed her own school teaching what she called the Method of Physical Action. Actors of the day were either in Strasberg's or Adler's camp.
Butler's book tells this story of the evolution of the acting craft complete with all the drama inherent in any major disruption of anything but especially things that artistic types ae involved with. And there's a lot of it. If you're a movie, TV, or stage nerd, this book is for you. It will also appeal to anybody interested in the Russian Revolution.
---
References
Ochoa, S., 2022. Review: Isaac Butler’s history of modern acting “The Method” [Book Review]. Los Angeles Times. URL https://www.latimes.com/entertainment...
Morris, W., Dudley, E., Buetow, H., Weiss, S., 2022. Where’d All the Method Acting Go? [Podcast]. The New York Times. URL https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/28/po...
Green, J., 2022. Is It Finally Twilight for the Theater’s Sacred Monsters? [WWW Document]. The New York Times. URL https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/08/th... (accessed 1.1.23).
Fertel, R., 2022. The Method tells the story of the 20th century’s most controversial acting practice [WWW Document]. The A.V. Club. URL https://www.avclub.com/the-method-isa...
January 29, 2024
Ça m'a donné le goût de jouer dans quelque chose. J'ai fait quand même pas mal de théâtre au secondaire. C'tu tough être casté dans du théâtre d'été?
Après toutes ces pages, je ne peux toujours pas te dire c'est quoi, en réalité, la Méthode. Enfin si, mais c'est compliqué. Trop. Pour rien.
L'anecdote de Dustin Hoffman devant Laurence Olivier qui s'épuise à bâtir son rôle, Méthode style, ne dormant pas pendant des jours, pour qu'Olivier lui dise au final « Ça te dirait pas de ''jouer'' à la place? » *Chef's kiss*
Fuck, je viens de réaliser que j'ai commencé ce livre il y a un peu plus d'un an.
Après toutes ces pages, je ne peux toujours pas te dire c'est quoi, en réalité, la Méthode. Enfin si, mais c'est compliqué. Trop. Pour rien.
L'anecdote de Dustin Hoffman devant Laurence Olivier qui s'épuise à bâtir son rôle, Méthode style, ne dormant pas pendant des jours, pour qu'Olivier lui dise au final « Ça te dirait pas de ''jouer'' à la place? » *Chef's kiss*
Fuck, je viens de réaliser que j'ai commencé ce livre il y a un peu plus d'un an.
Read
January 24, 2024The first third of the book detailing the Russian theatre was a bit of a slog for me to get through but it obviously provides vital context. Once the story crosses the Atlantic to delve into the Group Theatre it becomes totally enrapturing and increasingly informative. Great to see John Garfield get his respectful due in this space! Very enjoyable read.
May 15, 2025
I picked this one up for research purposes (hint, hint), and it was a pleasure to read. I find Method acting fascinating. Discovering its origins, its ups and downs, and its many definitions was a fun ride.
October 29, 2022
Clear and well paced, switching deftly between in-the-moment narration, larger setting of time and place, and essayist analysis; measured and even-handed about a controversial topic.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 161 reviews