The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act

by Isaac Butler

Overview

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

“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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781639730766
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	11/14/2023
Pages:	544
Sales rank:	132,588
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 5.40(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Isaac Butler is the coauthor (with Dan Kois) of The World Only Spins Forward, which NPR named one of the best books of 2018. Butler's writing has appeared in New York magazine, Slate, the Guardian, American Theatre, and other publications. His work as a director has been seen on stages throughout the United States. Butler holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Minnesota and teaches theater history and performance at the New School and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

Act 1 The Kingdom of Dreams

Chapter 1 The Only Way to Save Art 3

Chapter 2 New Answers to the Problems of Living 19

Chapter 3 The Frenzied Waltz 34

Chapter 4 The Superconscious through the Conscious 47

Chapter 5 The Stanislavski Sickness 67

Chapter 6 I Need a New Theatre 80

Chapter 7 Do You Know the Secrets of Art? 91

Act 2 Togetherness

Chapter 8 No Hack Actors 109

Chapter 9 The Coming of a New Religion 126

Chapter 10 I Am Passionate About This Thing!! 142

Chapter 11 It Makes You Weep 154

Chapter 12 We All Thought He Was God 169

Chapter 13 A New Inner Man 179

Chapter 14 The Life of a Prostitute Is Pretty Comfortable 191

Chapter 15 Your Secret Self 205

Chapter 16 Our Kind of Actors 217

Act 3 A Monstrous Thing

Chapter 17 It Was Murder 237

Chapter 18 Slice-of-Life 247

Chapter 19 Softness and Self-indulgence 264

Chapter 20 Truth, My Ass 277

Chapter 21 It's Been a Terrible Evening 289

Chapter 22 How Do We Do All Our Stuff in Front of That Machinery? 310

Chapter 23 That Level of Being Real 330

Chapter 24 All the Means of Expression 343

Afterword: The Method and the Future 359

Acknowledgments 365

Notes 369

Bibliography 447

Image Credits 467

Index 469

Editorial Reviews

[An] engaging and meticulously researched … Butler's history is an indispensable account of a revolution in acting that ramified beyond the theater.” —Los Angeles Times

“Thoroughly engrossing … Butler makes an airtight case for the Method as an artistic revolution on par with other mid-century advances.” —The Boston Globe

“Lively, well-researched and marvelously readable.” —TIME Magazine

“Meticulous, immersive” —The Atlantic

“Delicious, humane, probing.” —Vulture, Most Anticipated Books of 2022

“It's hard to believe that a style of performance developed amid the turbulence of revolutionary Russia would change Hollywood forever, but the author Isaac Butler makes a compulsively readable case for just that in this 'biography' of Method acting.” —The New York Times

“Intense, deeply researched, historically alert, well-written, eminently readable (and gossipy).” —Wall Street Journal

“Butler knows how to liven up history by focusing on human personalities and foibles. Even as he writes about the various legends who sculpted modern acting, he never fails to find the humor and humanity in his subjects. Seminal acting gurus like Konstantin Stanislavski and Stella Adler are giants, but Butler never loses sight of the fact that they were also goofy theater kids.” —Salon

“Expertly and exactingly told … Butler clearly parses the murky divisions that continue to define the Method, then and today.” —AV Club

“Intelligent and entertaining … Butler's appreciation of acting-and art in general-as an expression of the temper of its times brings welcome insights.” —American Theatre

“Butler accomplishes what the Method's devotees sought to do in their performances, bringing color and dimension to figures who might have been boxed into archetypal roles (omniscient godhead or exploitative charlatan) and presenting them to us in all their brilliant, infuriating complexity.” —Bookforum

“Engaging and accessible … a fascinating study in how intellectual movements splinter.” —Washington Examiner

“What a production! … A print-form master class in The Method.” —Shelf Awareness

“Elegantly written, filled with remarkable detail and incisive commentary, Isaac Butler's sweeping historical epic is the literary equivalent of an irresistible binge-watch, propelled by emotional twists and turns, surprising cliffhangers, and a cast of the greatest actors, directors, writers, and teachers of the last two centuries. The fact that he has done all that while also writing what I think is the best and most important book about acting I've ever read is a major achievement. This is an essential book for anyone in the acting profession as well as for anyone who's ever wondered 'How did they learn all those lines?'” —Nathan Lane

“Butler is the perfect guide-brilliant, insightful, and slyly funny-through the long life of contemporary performance. The Method, like its subject, is forceful, restless, and, above all, real.” —Vinson Cunningham, theater critic, The New Yorker

“An intoxicating mix of history, illuminating character studies, delicious gossip, and a persuasive and revelatory argument about how the Method has been used, abused, and misunderstood. Essential reading, glorious reading.” —Megan Abbott, screenwriter and bestselling author of THE TURNOUT

“A brilliant book that brims with exuberance, compassion and-of course-a keen eye for the dramatic.” —Glenn Frankel, author of SHOOTING MIDNIGHT COWBOY

“Riveting and comprehensive. A narrative one doesn't simply read, but experiences.” —Caseen Gaines, author of FOOTNOTES

“The Method is erudite and deeply researched, but it's also vibrant, energetic, accessible, and often very funny-rich with personalities and packed with insight.” —Mark Harris, bestselling author of MIKE NICHOLS: A LIFE and PICTURES AT A REVOLUTION

“Vividly recreates a fascinating moment of time, filled with creativity, rivalry, artistry, and absurdity, that profoundly transformed American film and theater, with reverberations still being felt today.” —William J. Mann, author of THE CONTENDER: THE STORY OF MARLON BRANDO

“A rich, rollicking dive into one of the most influential philosophies of the century.” —Emily Nussbaum, author of I LIKE TO WATCH

“A compulsively readable cultural history ... I was entertained and enlightened!” —Julie Salamon, author of THE DEVIL'S CANDY and WENDY AND THE LOST BOYS

From the Publisher

★ 02/01/2022

Butler (coauthor of The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of "Angels in America") provides an excellent, thorough history of the preeminent school of American acting. This work is all the more welcome given that consolidating the multiple—and often contradictory—definitions as to what exactly constitutes "the Method" is itself a Herculean achievement. Method acting is associated with moody, fully invested American actors (think Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire, Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy, or Robert De Niro gaining 60 pounds to portray Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull), but Butler traces the style back to its firmly Russian roots and Konstantin Stanislavski's "system," which made its way to the United States in the early part of the 20th century. There it became "the Method," revolutionized American theater, focused actors on "the inner life," and led to schools run by Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, and Sanford Meisner, each of whom had devoted adherents (and detractors). Butler draws a straight line from collective Russian theater actors of the 1870s to the work of current actors like Frances McDormand, with fascinating stops along the way. VERDICT Butler has produced an essential study of this hugely influential theory and practice of American acting. This work should be in every collection of books on theater and film.—Bill Baars

Library Journal

2021-10-27
The history of the innovative method that transformed American theater.

Critic and theater director Butler chronicles the history of the controversial system of actors’ training that came to be known as “Method.” Conceived by Konstantin Stanislavski, founder of the Moscow Art Theatre, and popularized in America by his apprentice Richard Boleslavsky, the technique was based on the idea that actors must draw on their “affective memory” to inform the way they interpret their roles. The Method, Butler asserts, “showed that we were not rational, but repressed. Its model of the human was one in which roiling seas of emotion and discontent lay beneath all of our frozen, placid surfaces.” Central to this detailed, authoritative narrative are many strong-willed, often irascible, characters: acting teachers Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, and Sanford Meisner; directors Howard Clurman and Elia Kazan; studio founder and producer Cheryl Crawford; and a host of actors, including Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, Gene Hackman, and James Dean. Inspired by Stanislavski and Boleslavsky, in 1931, Strasberg, Adler, and Crawford founded the Group Theatre, aiming to establish an ensemble company that would revolutionize stage offerings. Awake and Sing, by Clifford Odets, became the first major play of the Method era, Butler notes, setting a template “for the kinds of psychologically realistic depictions of everyday people that were associated with the American theater for the rest of the twentieth century.” Throughout the 1930s, rivalries and conflicts abounded among the founders, and actors and directors defected to Hollywood. In 1947, Kazan founded the Actors Studio, with Strasberg as artistic director and Crawford as vice president; Adler set up her own school. Butler follows the fortunes of various teachers, directors, playwrights, and actors as the entertainment industry—and American culture—evolved, with the Method only one of myriad approaches to acting. The author also delves into the debate over expression, naturalism, and artifice that continues still, as actors strive to convey “the truth of being human.”

A well-researched cultural history sure to please theater and film buffs.

Kirkus Reviews