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I read Peter Brook’s The Empty Space as an undergraduate in 1983. That sentence feels almost too simple for what the book did to me. It was an oldie even then. First published in 1968, it already carried the authority of something people had been handing to theatre students for years: here, read this, this will explain something. The uploaded copy I’m looking at is a later Touchstone edition, but the book itself belongs to that earlier theatrical moment when theatre still see

I have not recently discovered Eugenio Barba’s The Paper Canoe. I bought it very close to the date it first came out in English, around 1996, and read it on vacation in Mexico. Yes, let that comedic image sink in. In 1996, beach-book chic was John Grisham. I was reading theatre anthropology. Since then, the book has lived on my shelf, but not passively. It is one I return to when I need a phrase, a provocation, a reminder, or a way back into a problem I see returning year aft

I do not have the same clear and humourous memory of first reading Hans-Thies Lehmann’s Postdramatic Theatre that I have of reading Eugenio Barba’s The Paper Canoe in Mexico. Barba has a scene attached to it: vacation, sun, 1996, and a theatre anthropology book where a beach novel should have been. Lehmann sits differently in my memory. I bought the book in 2006 and when colleagues saw the cover, they hit me with that side eyed glance. Admittedly the term postdramatic, at tha

Why is my most recent contribution to actor training a card deck rather than another book? A book asks for a linear account of what I know. It requires sequence, explanation, and a path that can be followed from one idea to the next. Even a book that celebrates uncertainty must arrange its uncertainty into sentences, chapters, and conclusions. This is not a weakness. Books have formed much of my understanding of acting. They preserve discoveries, make distinctions available a

A while back I wrote one blog post about Active Analysis. I guess I have more to unpack. The second reason I love Active Analysis is that it refuses to let thinking remain safely abstract. I did some training with Anne Bogart and SITI Company a while back. As a director, Bogart never let us sit in a comfortable circle discussing ideas. We had to show, not tell. And if we can't show it directly, do something that points to it. Actors can talk brilliantly about a scene. I know

I wrote one post on Active Analysis already, then I needed to get two more points out. Maybe these will apper again on the substack or crosspoints site in a condensed form. What do you think? The third reason I love Active Analysis is that it gave me a way to stay with Stanislavsky without becoming trapped by the narrow version of Stanislavsky that can rub some actors the wrong way. As much as I respect rebellion, it matters to me. All the while I was training and sharing ide

It Begins in the Event I love Active Analysis because it begins with the simplest theatrical truth: something happens. Not something is diagnosed or discussed. I've often seen work lose its heat and resonance that way, only to be chased and rediscovered through more rehearsal. When you start with the first silent étude, you're already into something. The people inside the scene can no longer proceed as they did before. That sounds obvious, but in actor training it is so easy