Telling Stories: A Grand Unifying Theory of Acting Techniques (review)

Telling Stories: A Grand Unifying Theory of Acting Techniques, written by Mark Rafael from his perspective as a teacher of acting, advocates strongly for the idea of the actor as an informed creative artist. It is most useful as a concise but thorough survey of contemporary acting-training approaches and their histories and interrelationships to one another. Rafael brings the major acting theorists and teachers of the post-Stanislavski era into clear focus, not only by defining the uniqueness of each one's approach, but by also summarizing their backgrounds to provide a context for their methods and the evolution of their techniques.

I applaud Mark Rafael for promoting the idea that the actor needs to be (and indeed has a responsibility to be) a conscious theatre artist, aware of the needs of the audience, the structure of the play, and the actor's role in bringing the story itself across. Acting theory and acting classes can and often do become narcissistically absorbed in technique for technique's sake, focusing so intently on the interior life of characters that the larger purpose of the characters becomes subsumed in the quest for inner truth. Rafael advocates balance: a quest for truth without losing sight of the real goal, the prime directive. Actors, this book reminds us, must never forget that they are serving the audience by telling a story; all the tools at an actor's disposal, and all the shoulders of past greats upon which today's actors stand, are there to further this essential task.

The first few chapters are particularly exciting, because of their clear and logical explanation of the current state of acting theory and its roots. In these chapters, Rafael also introduces his "grand unifying theory" and reminds the reader that acting, despite all the hype that surrounds it and all the drama that has been engendered by the conflict among the great teachers and their disciples, is about telling stories. Throughout these chapters the writing seems geared toward any reader who wants a more global perspective on the myriad ways that acting is approached and taught.

In the middle, however, the book becomes a classroom how-to, which makes it less interesting and bogs it down in a series of selected exercises. The problem is that these exercises, drawn from the work of master teachers, provide only a taste of each; a student reader could not come to a true understanding of any of the techniques by doing the limited exercises described, and a teacher using the book would be shortchanging their students by using only these exercises and not going further into works written directly by or about the master teachers. Because of this, the intended audience for the "In Class" chapter of the book becomes decidedly murky. There is good information, but the amount of it exceeds what is necessary for a cursory overview, without being enough to provide a genuinely solid foundation.

Six teachers and theorists are featured and discussed in the "In Class" chapter: Keith Johnstone, Stanislavski, Michael Chekhov, Strasberg, Meisner, and Brecht. In the following chapter, titled "Other Voices," the author conscientiously presents a well-chosen list of other influences on contemporary acting. The names here range from commedia dell'arte to Anne Bogart and include even Rudolf Laban, whose work was not originally designed for acting application. Rafael presents each with respect, although his stronger enthusiasm for some is evident. While the influence of all the "Other Voices" on contemporary practice certainly makes it important for any serious modern actor to know something about them, there is a danger that the thumbnail sketches of theorists as complex as Artaud, Grotowski, Laban, and others could make them seem overly simple to student readers.

The author begins the book by observing that an actor will frequently "begin his work on a text with the question, 'How can I act this part well?'" (1). He then aptly compares such an approach to a plumber whose...