Stephen Book is an International author, teacher, director, creative consultant, and heads a professional acting workshop in Hollywood since 1985. His students and clients have won Oscars, Emmys, Tonys, Obies, and Grammys. He is a former long-time faculty member of The Juilliard School and the University of Southern California. He co-designed with Viola Spolin, the Spolin Theater Game Center, and served as its executive director and principal teacher. He has also taught at Stanford, Brown, UCLA, the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College, Globe Shakespeare Center in London, GITIS (the state theater school of Russia) in Moscow, and the Esalen Institute.
A theater director, his productions have been seen Off and Off Off Broadway and in Regional and university theaters, including: Circle in the Square, Los Angeles Actors Theater, Washington Theater Club, Stanford Repertory Theater, Equity Library Theater, New Dramatists, Princeton, Brown, Sarah Lawrence College, U.S.C., and the Theater of Dionysus in Athens.
He was Creative Consultant: to the director, Vincent Ward, on the Oscar winning film, What Dreams May Come, starring Robin Williams; to Melissa Manchester on her album, Don’t Cry Out Loud, including her Grammy nominated Best Pop Female Vocal Performance for her top 10 hit title song.
He is the author of BOOK ON ACTING Improvisation Technique for the Professional Actor in Film, Theater & Television. In 2006, Silman-James Press also published his THE ACTOR TAKES A MEETING How to Interview Successfully with Agents, Managers, Producers, and Casting Directors. In 2007, BOOK ON ACTING was translated and published in Poland as HANDBOOK FOR ACTORS.
