An Actor Prepares

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An Actor Prepares is the first book of Konstantin Stanislavski's trilogy on acting. It is followed by Building a Character and Creating a Role. it was first published in English in 1936.

The book takes the form of the diary of a student, Kostya, in the Stanislavski System, or Method, of acting. The student has no previous acting experience, nor do most of his classmates, and as they go through the class, their teacher, the director, Tortsov, gets rid of the many assumptions they have formed which contradict Stanislavski's teachings. The book endeavours to teach the System indirectly, through example.

An Actor Prepares is the first volume of Stanislavski's enduring trilogy on the art of acting. The "System" which he describes is a means both of mastering the craft of acting and of stimulating the actor's individual creativeness and imagination. It has become the central force of determining almost every performance we see on the stage of screen, and still remains today the only comprehensive theory of acting we possess.

"An Actor Prepares" deals with the imaginative process, techniques of relaxation and concentration, and the inward preparation an actor must undergo to explore a role to its full. Stanivslavski here introduces such concepts as the "magic if", "emotion memory", "unbroken line" and many more now famous rehearsal aids.

"This great book...without which there is no theatre but trifles" -Clifford Odets

"He elucidates simply the principles for achieving true character delineation" -Charles Chaplin

"Every actor must read this book...it is of deep interest to every lover of the theatre." -The Guardian (London)