An episode from 11/4/22: Tonight, I talk about creativity and wonder what actors and writers have in common. In the most general sense of finding solace in the anecdotes from the working lives of other creative people, I mention the revelation that Inside the Actor’s Studio was, for me, in my early twenties.
More broadly, are writers and actors just as likely to fall victim to fads of -isms, methods, and interpretations? How can a historical perspective on these things save us, in 2023, from the heartache that accompanies a teacher or a technique that pretends of have all the answers? Finally, what about the simple joy of writing words for books, or writing them for performance?
The springboard for much of what I say is Simon Callow’s article in the New York Review of Books, which itself is a review of Isaac Butler’s “history” of Method acting, The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act.
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