Improvisation Technique for the Professional Actor in Film, Theater, and Television

Stephen Book, 628 pages, index

Improvisation is essential to acting and Book is a terrific teacher.—William Hurt

Coming as I did from stand-up comedy—and with a movie part in hand I was greatly in need of a teacher and a system which could bring out and begin to develop my natural skills in a short time. Stephen Book and his workshop were just such a combination. I continue working with him to my great benefit. —George Carlin

A new technique for improvising performances with scripted and memorized lines

The ability to improvise a skilled performance while speaking scripted and memorized lines is of paramount importance to actors working in today’s film and television productions, which often allow very little if any rehearsal time. Through his innovative Improvisation Technique, Stephen Book shows the actor how to create a spontaneous performance by applying improvisation to traditional script-acting for film, theater, and television.

Book on Acting begins with immediate training in how to improvise. Book’s fundamental principle of improvisation is “Acting is doing, and there is always more to do.” The actor learns what to do to keep himself in a spontaneous improvisational state.

This Improvisation Technique is then applied to exercises with scripted lines, developing sophisticated improvisation skills for enhancing character, emotions, conflict, and agreement, as well as improving the actor’s audition process. Also included is a unique process for breaking down scripted scenes into improvisation choices.

Book on Acting contains film and television scenes in which Book-coached actors, used his Improvisation Technique to create their performances. These scenes, showing the actors’ performance choices, demonstrate the use of Improvisation Technique in different genres of acting. Well known theater and film scenes are included, as well as scenes from such TV shows as Melrose Place, Star Trek: Voyager, L.A. Law, Frasier, and The Practice.

Book’s Improvisation Technique extends the work of Viola Spolin (author of Improvisation for the Theater). Book was Spolin’s student, assistant, representative, and her partner in the Spolin Theater Game Center in Hollywood, where he served as executive director and principal teacher in the 1970s.

Stephen Book is an acting coach, teacher, and director. He is a former long-time faculty member of The Juilliard School and the University of Southern California. He has also taught at Stanford, Brown, the Bread Loaf School of English, and the Esalen Institute and continues to teach and coach at his workshop in Hollywood. His students have won Oscars, Tonys, Emmys, Obies, and Grammys. Thirteen of his present or former students either star in title roles or as cast regulars in the current primetime television schedule. Book is also the author of The Actor Takes a Meeting