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Reviewed by:
  • The Politics of American Actor Training
  • Steven Harrick
The Politics of American Actor Training. Edited by Ellen Margolis and Lissa Tyler Renaud. Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies. New York: Routledge, 2010; pp. viii + 218. $95.00 cloth.

With The Politics of American Actor Training, coeditors Ellen Margolis and Lissa Tyler Renaud make an important contribution to the fields of theatre history and acting pedagogy. Along with twelve contributors, they have created an excellent publication that moves seamlessly among history, pedagogy, theory, and practice. As such, The Politics of American Actor Training serves several needs and deserves consideration from scholars, teachers, and professional theatre artists alike.

In the introduction, Margolis and Renaud articulate their goals in pursuing this project: "Our collective aim has been to assess current and past training policies and practices, and to propose new ideas that will inform twenty-first century actor training in America" (2). The book offers several chapters that address one or both of these points. Divided into two parts, it covers topics as diverse as the many misunderstandings of Stanislavsky's work in the United States, recruiting a more diverse student body, and the difficulties of script selection and acting opportunities in one's larger academic community. The first part concerns the broader milieu of actor training, both in the United States and abroad, while the second part (neither part receives a name or heading) offers several approaches to teaching acting and specific techniques to employ in particular situations. Although the book contains two sections, many chapters could easily reside in either part of the book, as most of them address both ambitions of the co-editors and clearly speak to each other, making for a useful collection of essays.

Part 1 begins with Sharon Marie Carnicke's consideration of Stanislavsky and how his work has been misunderstood both in his native country and the United States. Carnicke builds upon her excellent work in the second edition of Stanislavsky in Focus: An Acting Master for the Twenty-First Century (2009). Jonathan Chambers's chapter on historicizing actor training follows Carnicke's. Both Carnicke and Chambers encourage historical contextualization in considering approaches to acting and acting theories. The Indian theatre scholar/artist Chadradasan outlines ways in which American actor training (and Western actor training writ large) has seeped into Indian theatre training and practice, as well as the ramifications of that influence. Leigh Woods and Lissa Tyler Renaud offer chapters suggesting ways to achieve a more satisfying artistic life through interdisciplinarity—Woods by encouraging actors to collaborate with those in other departments and community engagement, Renaud by suggesting more intellectual rigor (specifically with the European avant-garde). Donna Aronson looks at the growing Hispanic population in the United States and outlines how she actively pursued a more diverse student body in her previous theatre department. Renaud caps off part 1 with her second chapter, this one focusing on her experiences teaching acting in Asia for several years. Part 1's strengths reside not only in the intellectual precision of the authors' works, but also in the specific pedagogical experiences they contemplate.

The second part is equally compelling, emphasizing the reasons to diversify theatre programs. David Eulus Wiles suggests that "we should select artists to train based on their aptitude, as students in other disciplines are selected" (136). Mary Cutler's brief but thorough chapter looks at gender, typecasting, and script selection. Derek Mudd recounts his abusive experiences while pursuing an acting degree, particularly while rehearsing The Exonerated. He explains that he felt as though he had no agency, since it was the first opportunity for him to perform in his school's new Equity theatre. Micha Espinosa and Antonio Ocampo-Guzman negotiate reinforcing and subverting stereotypes in their teaching Latina/o performers. Venus Opal Reese proposes a new approach to acting pedagogy based around dramaturgical experimentations by playwrights, specifically African American dramatists. Reese's chapter, in which she proposes "embodiment," offers a group of exercises useful to an embodiment approach to acting. Victoria Ann Lewis's chapter, "Disability and Access: A Manifesto for Actor Training," is a brief overview of disabled students who have pursued actor training at the university level, as...

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