Content area
Full text
AN ACTRESS PREPARES: WOMEN AND "THE METHOD." By Rosemary Malague. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2012; pp. 264.
A zeitgeist now exists in which the actress takes center stage in a host of new plays that feature the actress as a dramatic character-Venus in Fur (David Ives), Stage Kiss (Sarah Ruhl), Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (Christopher Durang), The Com- mons of Pensacola (Amanda Peet), for instance-a moment enhanced by Rosemary Malague's vibrant scholarly analysis of Method acting from a feminist perspective. As the author points out in her opening chapter, there are numerous studies written on the Method, but none to date has tackled its inherent gender politics on a large scale.
An autobiographical thread running through Malague's argument accounts for her ability to straddle the great divide between practice and scholarship. She was trained as an actor in the early 1980s, and continues to implement much of what she learned then in her own dual roles as teacher and theatre artist. However, because, as she explains, "my early experiences with 'the Method' were con- fusing and unhappy" (4), she questioned the process and pursued a scholarly path that would allow her to understand. Throughout, Malague comments to her reader, like an actor 's aside to the audience; this first-person commentary points out key questions about her actor training and underscores key points she makes throughout.
An Actress Prepares: Women and "the Method" has six chapters. The first is a fine overview of femi- nist theory linked to performance and acting from the 1980s and beyond. Malague resurrects a short though significant essay, "The (Female) Actor Pre- pares" by Linda Walsh Jenkins and Susan Ogden-...