What Actors Do: Advice to the Players in Seven Paradoxes and a Manifesto - Paperback

by Mike Alfreds (Author)

In What Actors Do, revered theatre director Mike Alfreds explores the wellspring of the actor's craft, tracing a pathway to creative freedom through the thickets of competing methodologies and confusing paradoxes that you will face throughout your training and career.

Frank, uncompromising and full of sharply focused insights, this book will help you strip away the inhibitions and habitual thinking that can shackle our imaginations. It will show you how to generate truthful performances by trusting your inner creativity and remaining radically open, responsive and present in every moment.

Author Biography

Mike Alfreds has been directing plays for more than fifty years. In the 1970s he founded Shared Experience, and has since worked for the National Theatre, Shakespeare's Globe, the Royal Shakespeare Company and also extensively abroad. He is hugely respected within the profession.

He is the author of Different Every Night (Nick Hern Books, 2007), Then What Happens? (Nick Hern Books, 2013) and What Actors Do (Nick Hern Books, 2023).