The Actor's Guide to Creating a Character William Esper Teaches the Meisner Technique

William Esper, one of the most celebrated acting teachers of our time, takes us through his step-by-step approach to the central challenge of advanced acting work: creating and playing a character.

Esper’s first book, The Actor’s Art and Craft, earned praise for describing the basics taught in his famous first-year acting class. The Actor’s Guide to Creating a Character continues the journey. In these pages, co-author Damon DiMarco vividly re-creates Esper’s second-year course, again through the experiences of a fictional class. Esper’s training builds on Sanford Meisner’s legendary exercises, a world-renowned technique that Esper further developed through his long association with Meisner and the decades he has spent training a host of distinguished actors. His approach is flexible enough to apply to any role, helping actors to create characters with truthful and compelling inner lives.

William Esper was a graduate of Western Reserve University and the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre in New York City. Bill trained as both actor and teacher under Sanford Meisner. Bill and Sandy worked closely together for 17 years, during which time Bill served as Associate Director of the Playhouses's Acting Department (1973-1976). Bill founded the William Esper Studio in 1965 and the Professional Actor Training Program at Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts in 1977. These two schools are renowned for routinely contributing actors of the highest quality to the International stage and screen. He died in 2019 at age 86.

Damon DiMarco earned his M.F.A. from the Rutgers University Mason Gross School of the Arts under Bill Esper's tutelage. He acts professionally on stage, screen, and TV, and teaches at Drew University. Damon's other books include, Tower Stories: an Oral History of 9/11; Heart of War: Soldiers' Voices from the Front Lines of Iraq; and My Two Chinas: The Memoir of a Chinese Counterrevolutionary with Baiqiao Tang, which features a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Introduction by Patricia Heaton
Prologue                     
Chapter One: Welcome Back – and Back to Work
Chapter Two: Gimps, Limps, and Lisps: Physical Impediments
Chapter Three: How Being in Intense Pain Can Actually Help Your Work
Chapter Four: How to Explore Drugs and Alcohol without Rehab, Prison, or Death
Chapter Five: Imitation and Point of View
Chapter Six: Come, Sit at the Table! The Essence of the Character
Chapter Seven: Still at the Table: Actions and Super Objectives
Chapter Eight: Beats, Homework, Inner Emotional Lines, and Particularizations
Chapter Nine: Nursery Rhymes
Chapter Ten: Spoon Rivers
Chapter Eleven: Periods and Styles
Chapter Twelve: Periods and Styles in Practice
Chapter Thirteen: Acting in Film and TV
Chapter Fourteen: Commencement: The Serious Actor Business
Afterword by David Mamet