A well-researched cultural history sure to please theater and film buffs.
The history of the innovative method that transformed American theater.
Critic and theater director Butler chronicles the history of the controversial system of actors’ training that came to be known as “Method.” Conceived by Konstantin Stanislavski, founder of the Moscow Art Theatre, and popularized in America by his apprentice Richard Boleslavsky, the technique was based on the idea that actors must draw on their “affective memory” to inform the way they interpret their roles. The Method, Butler asserts, “showed that we were not rational, but repressed. Its model of the human was one in which roiling seas of emotion and discontent lay beneath all of our frozen, placid surfaces.” Central to this detailed, authoritative narrative are many strong-willed, often irascible, characters: acting teachers Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, and Sanford Meisner; directors Howard Clurman and Elia Kazan; studio founder and producer Cheryl Crawford; and a host of actors, including Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, Gene Hackman, and James Dean. Inspired by Stanislavski and Boleslavsky, in 1931, Strasberg, Adler, and Crawford founded the Group Theatre, aiming to establish an ensemble company that would revolutionize stage offerings. Awake and Sing, by Clifford Odets, became the first major play of the Method era, Butler notes, setting a template “for the kinds of psychologically realistic depictions of everyday people that were associated with the American theater for the rest of the twentieth century.” Throughout the 1930s, rivalries and conflicts abounded among the founders, and actors and directors defected to Hollywood. In 1947, Kazan founded the Actors Studio, with Strasberg as artistic director and Crawford as vice president; Adler set up her own school. Butler follows the fortunes of various teachers, directors, playwrights, and actors as the entertainment industry—and American culture—evolved, with the Method only one of myriad approaches to acting. The author also delves into the debate over expression, naturalism, and artifice that continues still, as actors strive to convey “the truth of being human.”
A well-researched cultural history sure to please theater and film buffs.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63557-477-7
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
A charming and often poignant valediction from rock ’n’ roll’s Prince of Darkness.
The late heavy metal legend considers his mortality in this posthumous memoir.
“I ain’t ready to go anywhere,” writes Osbourne in the opening pages of his new memoir. “It’s good being alive. I like it. I want to be here with my family.” Given the context—Osbourne died on July 22, 2025, two weeks after the publisher announced the news of this book—it’s undeniably sad. But the rest of the text sees the Black Sabbath singer confronting the health struggles of his last years with dark humor and something approaching grace. The memoir begins in 2018; he wrote an earlier one, I Am Ozzy, in 2010. He tells of a staph infection he suffered that proved to be the start of a long, painful battle with various illnesses—soon after, he contracted a flu, which morphed into pneumonia. A spinal injury caused by a fall followed, causing him to undergo a series of surgeries and leaving him struggling with intense pain. And then there was his diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, the treatment of which was complicated by his longtime struggle with alcohol and drug addiction. Osbourne peppers the chronicle of his final years with anecdotes from his past, growing up in Birmingham, England, and playing with—and then being fired from—Black Sabbath, and some of his most well-known antics (yes, he does address biting the heads off of a dove and a bat). He writes candidly and regretfully about the time he viciously attacked his wife, Sharon—the book is in many ways a love letter to her and his children. The memoir showcases Osbourne’s wit and charm; it’s rambling and disorganized, but so was he. It functions as both a farewell and a confession, and fans will likely find much to admire in this account. “Death’s been knocking at my door for the last six years, louder and louder,” he writes. “And at some point, I’m gonna have to let him in.”
A charming and often poignant valediction from rock ’n’ roll’s Prince of Darkness.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781538775417
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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