Creating a Role

No-one has had greater influence on acting as we know it than Stanislavski. His system or interpretations of it - has become the central force determining almost every performance we see on stage or screen. His teaching is principally set out in three famous books: An Actor Prepares Building a Character and Creating a Role. It is still the only comprehensive theory of acting we possess. In the first book An Actor Prepares Stanislavski dealt with the inner imaginative processes. In the second Building a Character he concentrated on the body the voice and other physical means of expression. In Creating a Role the third book he describes the elaborate preparation that precedes actual performance.Creating a Role "describes the elaborate marination that precedes the acutal performance. The analyses of Othello and The Inspector General which make up Parts Two and Three show a mind cutting through text like an inspired psneumatic-drill...Altogether Creating a Role is a brilliant little treatise and a careful reading is worth several lessons in almost any English acting academy" (Charles Marowitz The Observer)