Book on Acting: Improvisation Technique for the Professional Actor in Film, Theater and Television Book

This is an interesting book. It has all the exercises that Stephen Book teaches in his own classes, with all the instructions for running the exercises as a self-lead group, for the entire two year program that he teaches. Each class someone new should read from the book as the exercise leader.

I believe there is a lot of good improvisational techniques that can be learned from this book, running a small group. However, Book's instructional style is to give the actors instructional commands and not answer any questions about why or how to follow the commands until after the exercise. Which in my mind is counter productive to fully learning what the exercises have to offer, and speaks to the possibility of Book having ego/control issues. If there is a valid educational reason for having the actors fumble around in the dark with an exercise the first time through, I haven't figured it out, nor does Book address that in this book (as far as I can remember.)

But since the book is designed for self-lead groups, it should be easy enough to adjust the way the instructions are given to help the actors feel safe and learn everything they can from the exercises.