Jackson Bryer and Richard Davison have compiled an entertaining and informative collection of interviews which examines the actor's craft at the end of the twentieth century (The Actor's Art, 2001: Rutgers UP).  The fifteen interviews of seventeen actors - couples Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy and Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson are considered together - were assembled from a Smithsonian celebration of Broadway's one-hundredth anniversary, in 1993, and the editors' own interviews.  Other actors, almost all who will be familiar from their work on screen or TV as well, include Zoe Caldwell, Blythe Danner, Ruby Dee, George Grizzard, Julie Harris, Eileen Heckart, Cherry Jones, James Earl Jones, Stacy Keach, Shirley Knight, Nathan Lane, Jason Robards, and Maureen Stapleton.  DC locals, critic Bob Mondello (Caldwell), director Michael Kahn (Keach), and the late actor Robert Prosky (Grizzard), as well as some the area's former newspaper critics conducted a portion of the interviews. 

The editors provide a concise overview of twentieth century American theater in an excellent introduction to the text.  Readers who enjoy James Lipton's Inside the Actor's Studio will find the format familiar - though (thankfully) it omits the personal details and focuses on the craft.  This gives the actors more space to delve into their approach to roles, their techniques during rehearsal and performance, what they look for in directors and fellow actors, contrasts in acting for stage and movies, their view of critics (alas, they don't much care for us, but this is not unique to theater), and always a rich and generous helping of theater lore - all the war stories are delightfully trotted out.  My favorite: at the old Arena Stage, the Hippodrome on Ninth St., they had no way of crossing backstage, so the actors often had to go around the block and, if it was raining, be accompanied by someone with an umbrella! (Grizzard-Prosky)

They are uniformly complimentary of their fellow performers - no scores settled on these pages - and enjoy seeing each other's work. It may surprise you to note that you the audience figures large in their views of performance, shaping it, energizing it, "like another character in the play ..." taking "you where you didn't think you could go that day"(Lane). They point out that the motivation in accepting parts is the challenge - stretching them artistically or doing something they think they could improve upon (C. Jones); if the definitive work on a part has been done, they will typically pass on a play.  They are uniformly respectful of the playwright, attempting to honor the text and bend over backwards to find ways of interpreting something they either don't understand or seems odd.  "I think it's the actor's job, even if a line doesn't quite make sense, to keep trying to understand it" (J.E. Jones). It may also surprise you to discover that these highly skilled, creative, and doubtless complex individuals come across as everyday folks, with little or no pretense. From the frank and uniquely funny "retired" George Grizzard (who would come back to win a Tony as best actor for A Delicate Balance) to the deadpan Maureen Stapleton who's as perplexed as anyone as to where the talent comes from, we see them without the mask.

Though most of their stage performances were not captured on film, the fame that surrounds them and their predecessors may paradoxically live on all the more strongly in the legend that continues to build around these icons of the theater.   And deservedly so.

Recommended for acting fans of all kinds and levels and as a required text in theater departments.