Essential Acting: A Practical Handbook for Actors, Teachers and Directors

Essential Acting: A Practical Handbook for Actors, Teachers and Directors Brigid Panet with Fiona McHardy London and New York: Routledge, 2009. 276 pp $33.95 paper

Within the world of theatre so many practitioners are actor/directors or director/teachers that lines understandably blur. Is the intention of labeling a system appropriate for "actors, teachers, and directors" a truism or a marketing device? If, when putting up a show for children, it also entertains the adults who carried them there, is that not simply good theatre, labels aside? It should follow, therefore, that Brigid Panet's Essential Acting is valuable because it is brimming with effective exercises and concepts. Most notably a teacher for LAMDA and RADA, Panet roots her acting vocabulary in Stanislavski-paying greatest homage to the utility of his Method of Physical Action. The...