cover image A Method to Their Madness: The History of the Actors Studio

A Method to Their Madness: The History of the Actors Studio

Foster Hirsch. Da Capo Press, $15.95 (367pp) ISBN 978-0-306-80268-3

The birthplace of the Method school of acting, the Actors Studio has had enormous influence on American drama over the years. Here Hirsch describes the Studio's founding and growth, focusing on its animating force, Lee Strasberg, who died in 1982. We learn of Strasberg's background, his autocratic ways, his technique, his contradictory feelings about celebrity. PW called this a ""lively, gossipy, perceptive, sometimes scathing study.'' (March)