The Actor Uncovered

The Actor Uncovered is certainly not a set of rigid rules advocating one "method" or one singular "truth." Departing from the common guidebook format, Michael Howard uses a unique approach to teaching acting, reflecting on his own history and sharing his own experiences as an actor, director, and teacher. How he writes about the process and craft of acting is at once intensely personal and relatable by others.

Readers are invited to participate as though present in this master teacher's classes. Each human being, and thus each actor, is unique. Howard encourages actors to uncover their own ways of working, using their particular abilities and personality traits. Going beyond the craft and into human psychology and the importance of acting as a life force, readers will see new and deeper ways to study and practice, to be introspective, and to arrive at places of revelation about their craft.The Actor Uncovered will have much to say to beginners, to those who are advanced, and to professional and working actors. Howard discusses such topics as:
 

• Techniques, styles, and methods in a changing society
• Relaxation, concentration, and the breath
• The relationships among actor, director, and writer
• Memory
• On camera versus on stage
• Obstacles

After more than seventy years as a professional actor, director, and teacher, Howard shows how living creatively and invoking one's own personality can lead to a successful career as an actor.

Michael Howard has been a major force in American theater for more than seven decades. After studying with Sanford Meisner in the 1940s and Lee Strasberg in his private classes and in the Actors Studio in the 1950s, Howard enjoyed an acting career that led him to work with such American luminaries as Clifford Odets and Uta Hagen before moving on to direct and teach. He served as the first artistic director of Atlanta's Alliance Theater and later on the faculties of Julliard and Yale University. A teacher for more than fifty years in the studio he founded, Michael Howard Studios, he has been and continues to be a trainer of actors who have achieved international recognition.