Changing Direction: A Practical Approach to Directing Actors in Film and Theatre

Preface

For years now my students and workshop members have been begging me to write a book about my approach to directing actors and its vocabulary. “Give us lists,” they’ve implored. “Write us a text of the course.” I’ve successfully resisted their pleas until now, mainly because I suspected that one couldn’t get a real sense of this material from reading a book. Behavior, which is the core of our work, is so involved with the visual. You have to see it to study it. To understand my approach you have to do it. To make it useful for yourself you have to make it part of your cells, get it into your bloodstream.

And then of course there was a certain unwillingness on my part to take on the challenge of attempting to write down on ...