Sanford Meisner and Dennis Longwell

Today Sanford Meisner, who has been a fixture at the Neighborhood Playhouse for fifty years, is the best known and most beloved teacher of acting in the country. This book, written in collaboration with Dennis Longwell, follows an acting class of eight men and eight women for fifteen months, beginning with the most rudimentary exercises and ending with affecting and polished scenes from contemporary American plays. Throughout these pages Meisner is a delight - always empathizing with his students and urging them onward, provoking emotion, laughter, and growing technical mastery from his charges.

With an introduction by Sydney Pollack, Oscar-winning director of Out of Africa and Tootsie, and Meisner's former teaching assistant.

"How lucky we are to have this glorious book for actors and everybody else. O, rare Sanford Meisner!"-Maureen Stapleton

"This book should be read by anybody who wants to act or even appreciate what acting involves. Like Meisner's way of teaching, it is the straight goods."-Arthur Miller

"If there is a key to good acting, this one is it, above all others. Actors, young and not so young, will find inspiration and excitement in this book."-Gregory Peck

"This is the best and most illuminating book on the process of acting I have ever read - and I've read them all."-Robert Whitehead