From acclaimed writer Isaac Butler, the first cultural history of Method acting—an ebullient account of creative discovery and the birth of classic Hollywood.
National Book Critics Circle Award Winner, Nonfiction
Named one of the best books of 2022 by The New Yorker, Time, San Francisco Chronicle, VOX, Vanity Fair, and Salon • A New York Times and The Strategist Holiday Gift Guide selection
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? 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 theater makers—including feuding mavericks Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg—refashioned Stanislavski’s ideas and shaped generations of actors, enabling 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.
