The Actor's Art and Craft

The Actor’s Art and Craft

William Esper, one of the leading acting teachers of our time, explains and extends Sanford Meisner’s legendary technique, offering a clear, concrete, step-by-step approach to becoming a truly creative actor.

Esper worked closely with Meisner for seventeen years and has spent decades developing his famous program for actor training. The result is a rigorous system of exercises that builds a solid foundation of acting skills from the ground up, and that is flexible enough to be applied to any challenge an actor faces, from soap operas to Shakespeare. Co-writer Damon DiMarco, a former student of Esper’s, spent over a year observing his mentor teaching first-year acting students. In this book, he recreates that experience for us, allowing us to see how the progression of exercises works in practice. The Actor’s Art and Craft vividly demonstrates that good training does not constrain actors’ instincts—it frees them to create characters with truthful and compelling inner lives.

About the author(s)

Damon DiMarco earned his M.F.A. from the Rutgers University Mason Gross School of the Arts under Bill Esper’s tutelage. He acts professionally on stage, screen, and TV, and teaches at Drew University. Damon’s other books include Tower Stories: an Oral History of 9/11; Heart of War: Soldiers’ Voices from the Front Lines of Iraq; and My Two Chinas: The Memoir of a Chinese Counterrevolutionary with Baiqiao Tang, which features a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.