The Magic of Theater: Behind the Scenes With Today's Leading Actors

by David Black

Gathers interviews with F. Murray Abraham, Stockard Channing, Hume Cronyn, Jim Dale, Colleen Dewhurst, Judith Ivey, Madeline Kahn, Swoosie Kurtz, Frank Langella, and Liv Ullman

Hardcover

First published April 2, 1994

About the author

David Black is a Tony Award-Winning broadway producer, director, actor, artist, playwright, teacher, and author

Librarian's note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Tom Schulte · Rating 4 out of 5]

This books is the transcriptions of a cavalcade of theatre stars interviewed before a student audience. They discuss their craft and the realities of their industry in time and place: film vs. stage, the limiting nature of high Broadway seat prices, and how to exhibit emotion on command. Unfortunately, the text is laid out in an unusual way for Q&A: there are no line breaks between questions and not typographical indication of when the interview is paraphrasing, describing, or being quoted. (We really have no idea exactly what question is being asked.) While reading this book, I was attending a conference and Rachel Levy of the Mathematical Association of America mentioned that "everyone has a math story." This primed, I noticed apropos of nothing, three actors alluded to their math story without prompting:

Eli Wallach --

"I hated mathematics," Eli said, "and I knew I could get out of trouble by acting my way out."

Judith Ivey --

"I was a painter long before I ever began acting," said Judith. "But obviously expressing myself artistically was my bent rather than mathematics."

and then more generally but with no less negativity:

Zoe Caldwell --

"I am hopeless with numbers, so I choose to ignore their existence, I don't learn telephone numbers. I don't even know my own. I don't take them into my life."