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Contact: Max Farber
How The Famous Got That Way
New book reveals the rare artistic secrets of today's greatest performing artists What got the young Ian McKellen, Judi Dench, and Richard Burton started on their successful careers? What separated them from the crowd and moved them from mere potential to fame and renown? A new book on directing reveals the rare artistic secrets shared with these stars early in their careers by British Director Frank Hauser. Hauser ran the Oxford Playhouse for seventeen years and had numerous theatrical productions in London, New York, and throughout Europe. He also taught at Oxford, Julliard, and several other universities where his actors and students have included many of the top performers of the past two generations. "The next best thing to working with Frank Hauser is to read his book. His wise and pithy observations on acting and rehearsing don't age, reminding me how much I have learned from him." – Sir Ian McKellen Notes on Directing is a first-hand account that reveals for aspiring directors exactly what Hauser told his actors when they were young and ready to begin their journeys. Collected here are the teachings of a man who clearly knew how to nurture the talent of giants. Notes on Directing delivers 130 insights, each supported with authoritative commentary, clear examples, and rare quotes by other prominent artists as diverse as Anton Chekhov, John Gielgud, Elia Kazan, Harold Clurman, and Bernard Shaw. The book's coauthor, American Russell Reich, is another of Hauser's former students. In 1987, Hauser appointed Reich as his assistant director on a production of Robert Bolt's A Man For All Seasons. (The production later moved to London with Charlton Heston in the lead role, and Heston adapted the production with the same cast into a made-for-television movie.) During rehearsals – and with the understated suggestion of "you might find these helpful" – Hauser handed Reich twelve pages of typed notes developed and refined over his impressive fifty-year career. The Notes shared a teachable and useable approach to directing that Hauser used when working with such luminaries as Sir Alec Guinness and Kevin Spacey. Reich has picked up where Hauser left off. It was Reich who first approached his former mentor with the idea for turning the Notes into a book and who contributed and compiled the book's additional matter. After working with Frank Hauser, Reich later went on to study with David Mamet, Jerry Zaks, Andre Serban and to direct at Harvard, Princeton, and New York's Circle Repertory Company. "Our goal with the book," says Reich, " was to provide what we felt all directors need to know – and what we think every actor, writer, and audience member wants them to know." The book includes four appendices, an original acting exercise called "The What Game," a recommended reading list, and an index. It is endorsed by Dame Judi Dench, Sir Ian McKellen, director Jerry Zaks, actors Rupert Graves and Rosemary Harris, and Sir Richard Eyre – the former artistic director of Britain's Royal National Theatre. "This book is so sensible, so straightforward, so complete and so 'right' that some might think it was not serious. They would be wrong." – Pulitzer Prize Winner Edward Albee |