Accidentally on Purpose: Reflections on Life, Acting and the Nine Natural Laws of Creativity

By John Strasberg

Book Overview

Based on his own experience and the teachings of his celebrated but distant father, Lee, John Strasberg defines the talent of becoming real in a role. He surveys the traditional partition between life and theatre, and urges actors to make it a dynamic living membrane through which vital elements may pass. John Strasberg has written his own intensely personal story about his father's work and the Strasberg dynasty. It is a painful odyssey during which he relives the often demanding role he played as son to a man who was the central father figure to a generation of American actors.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1557831963
• ISBN13: 9781557831965
• Release Date: April 2000
• Publisher: Applause Books
• Length: 258 Pages
• Weight: 0.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

solving the mystery of the Three Sisters production

I bought this book to solve the mystery of the 1964 Broadway production of Chekhov's "Three Sisters," since John Strasberg knew about it firsthand. The mystery is that a later video shows a slightly different cast,dropping out Shirley Knight, for example, and adding Sandy Dennis: was this a video of the 1965 London production at the Aldwych, or is it a version filmed in New York with the slightly different cast from the opening? The video's credits do not make this clear. When I read the relevant pages in Strasberg's book, I thought he told me the answer, but another book on the same topic says something slightly different. About the history and nature of both productions, both authors seem to agree, but I still don't know for sure where or when this film was made. (I wanted to know, because I saw the play on Broadway, with Geraldine Page, who both opened and is in the film, but can't remember the rest of the cast. My old playbill's lost. Did I see Shirley Knight or did I see Sandy Dennis? etc. etc.) Equally authoritative sources muddy the waters. As for the rest of the book, it's talkative, repetitive, and somewhat moralizing. I wouldn't fault it for this but take it for what it is: an interesting read on the people, places, work, and time by someone who was there.