Overview

The Actor Uncovered is certainly not a set of rigid rules advocating one ""method"" or one singular ""truth."" Departing from the common guidebook format, Michael Howard uses a unique approach to teaching acting, reflecting on his own history and sharing his own experiences as an actor, director, and teacher. How he writes about the process and craft of acting is at once intensely personal and relatable by others. Readers are invited to participate as though present in this master teacher's classes. Each human being, and thus each actor, is unique. Howard encourages actors to uncover their own ways of working, using their particular abilities and personality traits. Going beyond the craft and into human psychology and the importance of acting as a life force, readers will see new and deeper ways to study and practice, to be introspective, and to arrive at places of revelation about their craft.The Actor Uncovered will have much to say to beginners, to those who are advanced, and to professional and working actors. Howard discusses such topics as: Techniques, styles, and methods in a changing society Relaxation, concentration, and the breath The relationships among actor, director, and writer Memory On camera versus on stage Obstacles After more than seventy years as a professional actor, director, and teacher, Howard shows how living creatively and invoking one's own personality can lead to a successful career as an actor.

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9781621535492

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Reviews

I consider Michael Howard the most important mentor I ve had in the theater, as an acting teacher and as a director. Michael Kahn, artistic director, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington, DC Michael Howard's The Actor Uncovered is filled with the same passion, love, respect, and dedication to the actor that I encountered when studying with Michael for four years in the early sixties. His influence on me was an enormous motivating factor in my choosing to make the theater my life's work as an actor, director, and teacher. There is no one I've met in my journey in the theater that has more passion for the art and craft of acting than Michael. Over his many years of dedicated teaching, Michael has instilled that love and devotion to actors wise enough to listen and take note. The Actor Uncovered is a book I would highly recommend to every actor enrolled at my studio as a must-read. Thank you, Michael, for what you have passed on and given so fully to the actor. Terry Schreiber, founding artistic director, T. Schreiber Studio for Film and Theatre The Actor Uncovered is a beautiful, necessary, inevitable book, filled with a lifelong love of acting, actors, theater, art [and] lifelong accumulated wisdom, insight, practical advice, clarity of thought. Michael has written a gem, a perfect volume for young actors and would-be actors to find orientation and inspiration, as well as for advanced acting students and experienced actors to read for replenishment of spirit. The book offers simplicity of approach and clarity of understandingwhile not demystifying acting, which is the in vogue goal of several schools and perhaps represents one of the darker trends in education, art, and society of late. In fact, this book does just the opposite. Michael, while remaining humble and humorous, celebrates the greatone might say shamanicmystery at the heart of acting and of the actor. Tom Oppenheim, artistic director, Stella Adler Studio of Acting

I consider Michael Howard the most important mentor I've had in the theater, as an acting teacher and as a director. --Michael Kahn, artistic director, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington, DC Michael Howard's The Actor Uncovered is filled with the same passion, love, respect, and dedication to the actor that I encountered when studying with Michael for four years in the early sixties. His influence on me was an enormous motivating factor in my choosing to make the theater my life's work as an actor, director, and teacher. There is no one I've met in my journey in the theater that has more passion for the art and craft of acting than Michael. Over his many years of dedicated teaching, Michael has instilled that love and devotion to actors wise enough to listen and take note. The Actor Uncovered is a book I would highly recommend to every actor enrolled at my studio as a must-read. Thank you, Michael, for what you have passed on and given so fully to the actor. --Terry Schreiber, founding artistic director, T. Schreiber Studio for Film and Theatre The Actor Uncovered is a beautiful, necessary, inevitable book, filled with a lifelong love of acting, actors, theater, art [and] lifelong accumulated wisdom, insight, practical advice, clarity of thought. Michael has written a gem, a perfect volume for young actors and would-be actors to find orientation and inspiration, as well as for advanced acting students and experienced actors to read for replenishment of spirit. The book offers simplicity of approach and clarity of understanding--while not demystifying acting, which is the in vogue goal of several schools and perhaps represents one of the darker trends in education, art, and society of late. In fact, this book does just the opposite. Michael, while remaining humble and humorous, celebrates the great--one might say shamanic--mystery at the heart of acting and of the actor. --Tom Oppenheim, artistic director, Stella Adler Studio of Acting

Author Information

Michael Howard has been a major force in American theater for more than seven decades. After studying with Sanford Meisner in the 1940s and Lee Strasberg in his private classes and in the Actors Studio in the 1950s, Howard enjoyed an acting career that led him to work with such American luminaries as Clifford Odets and Uta Hagen before moving on to direct and teach. He served as the first artistic director of Atlanta's Alliance Theater and later on the faculties of Julliard and Yale University. A teacher for more than fifty years in the studio he founded, Michael Howard Studios, he has been and continues to be a trainer of actors who have achieved international recognition.

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