The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act

Bloomsbury presents The Method by Isaac Butler, read by Isaac Butler.From the co-author of The World Only Spins Forward comes the first 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 theatre and film is an unlikely saga that has never before been fully told.Now, critic and theatre director Isaac Butler chronicles the history of the Method in a narrative that transports listeners 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.