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

by William Esper

A second-year Meisner-based course in character creation

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Paperback New English

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AlbakiReads Editorial

A second-year Meisner-based course in character creation

Presented through a fictional acting class, this guide documents William Esper’s step-by-step approach to the advanced work of building and playing a character. It continues the course of study introduced in The Actor’s Art and Craft, shifting from foundational training toward the actor’s work on a role’s inner life. Esper’s teaching draws on Sanford Meisner’s exercises while showing how that training can be extended into character development across different roles. Co-author Damon DiMarco frames the instruction through classroom experience, giving the book a course-based structure rather than a purely abstract account of technique.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Actors continuing beyond introductory Meisner training
  • Performers seeking a structured approach to character development
  • Theater students interested in classroom-based acting instruction

Themes

Meisner techniqueCharacter creationActor trainingInner lifeActing classes

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

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.
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