Essential Acting: A Practical Handbook for Actors, Teachers and Directors (review)

Brigid Panet, who is the director and teacher of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, offers this enlightening acting handbook to actors, teachers, and directors. The book encourages practitioners to experiment with a multitude of methods by introducing exercises for the rehearsal space and classroom and suggesting strategies for combating acting dilemmas, directing difficulties, and clichéd teaching habits.

Essential Acting juxtaposes familiar exercises with techniques drawn from Panet's experience in directing and actor training. Her introduction emphasizes, for example, how she "joins this [the Method of Physical Action developed by Konstantin Stanislavski] with the practical analysis of rhythm and movement developed by Rudolph von Laban" (xv). Panet combines techniques to create a toolbox of useful practical training. The book is a good reference for teachers who wish to create, without lecturing, a more active environment for their students. The author states that she wrote this book at the request of students and actors who "wanted to enjoy rehearsals and classes without the bother of taking notes and trying to remember the details of an exercise or technique" (xv).

Essential Acting is divided into six parts, each addressing a distinct approach to teaching and directing. Techniques on how "to explore problems of approach and shared energy in acting" (8) included in part 1, Acting Exercises, are equally useful in the rehearsal space or classroom. The well-known "Yes, and . . ." improvisation exercise, for example, is deployed here toward overcoming obstacles and achieving aims through active, physical games.

The text is laid out in a very easy-to-use format, with specific aims and outcomes displayed in gray boxes beside each exercise. These asides explain the focus of the exercise and the space, time, and numbers required. They cover essential notes for the teacher and information required for safe, successful instruction; for example, "Exercises in Immediate Response" is intended to assist actors to develop their imaginations and to overcome what Panet refers to as the "inner policeman" (32) (or the actor's inner voice telling them that they will fail).

Part 2, Acting Is Behaving, references step-by-step approaches to the connection of actors and building relationships. In the chapter on "Status," Panet cites Keith Johnstone's Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre as "the source of my work on both status and eye-gaze" (57). The chapter benefits directors and teachers who wish to use status exercises with their actors to help them on their path to understanding human behavior.

Part 3, The Rehearsal Process, uses Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard to emphasize the implementation of French scenes, events, and units. The play is used consistently throughout the book as Panet examines character work, response, and understanding subtext. Advice on how to divide a script into digestible chunks and to strip the characters to their bare bones by analyzing the text in terms of units and the what, where, when, who, and why is offered. The chapter also covers practical techniques to facilitate actors in learning their lines faster, such as "The Ghost Exercise, for a Scene" (121).

Tips and Techniques (part 4) is a brief though useful section aimed primarily toward actors' issues with emotional expression. Chapter 13, "Unstrung Pearls," offers tricks for acting laughter, crying, kissing, surprise, and shock (148). Panet proposes suggestions for breath control, pace, and picking up cues. She adds a valuable rule for actors to remember when contemplating their breathing: "A sentence = a thought. A thought = a breath. Therefore: A sentence = a breath" (154), which is one of a variety of handy hints for both actor and teacher to reference during rehearsal or class time.

Panet offers a comfortable array of thoughts on run-throughs based around the notion of giving the actors an "aim" for each, so that they can deal with one particular detail at a time: runs for "clear story-telling," "accuracy of unit changes of thought and focus," "relationships," "clear grouping," "clear speaking," "neat...