The Method

November 15, 2021
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.

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January 1, 2022
According to Butler (The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America, 2018), the Method is more than an acting technique or theory. It is a "transformative, revolutionary modernist art movement."" In this history of that movement, he traces its journey across stages and continents and introduces us to a colorful cast of actors, directors, and teachers. In the 1890s, Russian actor and director Konstantin Stanislavski, founder of the Moscow Art Theatre, devised a "system" which, when it crossed the Atlantic, would become the Method. Its practitioners, including Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, cofounder of the Group Theatre, influenced a generation of film and stage actors, and the story of their rivalries and feuds makes for a very compelling script. As the song says, "art isn't easy / every line / every glance, every movement / you improve and refine / and refine each improvement." The Method enabled actors to put it all together in some of the most memorable performances on stage and screen. This perceptive and well-executed book will engage readers on both sides of the footlights.

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Starred review from February 1, 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

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