On stage and screen, we know a great performance when we see it. But how do actors draw from their bodies and minds to turn their selves into art? What is the craft of being an authentic fake? More than a century ago, amid tsarist Russia's crushing repression, one of the most talented actors ever, Konstantin Stanislavski, asked these very questions, reached deep into himself, and emerged with an answer. How his “system” remade itself into the Method and forever transformed American theater and film is an unlikely saga that has never before been fully told.

Now, critic and theater director Isaac Butler chronicles the history of the Method in a narrative that transports readers from Moscow to New York to Los Angeles, from The Seagull to A Streetcar Named Desire to Raging Bull. He traces how a cohort of American mavericks--including Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg, and the storied Group Theatre--refashioned Stanislavski's ideas for a Depression-plagued nation that had yet to find its place as an artistic powerhouse. The Group's feuds and rivalries would, in turn, shape generations of actors who enabled Hollywood to become the global dream-factory it is today. Some of these performers the Method would uplift; others, it would destroy. Long after its midcentury heyday, the Method lives on as one of the most influential--and misunderstood--ideas in American culture.

Studded with marquee names-–from Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, and Elia Kazan, to James Baldwin, Ellen Burstyn, and Dustin Hoffman--The Method is a spirited history of ideas and a must-read for any fan of Broadway or American film.

1) What's your favorite thing in your refrigerator right now?

Today, I noticed that some of our celery was a little past its prime, but an upside of its floppiness was that it had sprouted a large number of celery leaves. So I took those leaves and made a pesto with them, just subbing out 1:1 celery leaves for basil in a standard recipe and adding a pinch of crushed red pepper. It’s deliciously savory and currently in the fridge in a Tupperware awaiting some roast vegetables (or, perhaps, scrambled eggs) in the future. It’s my favorite because I made it as an experiment and it all worked out, which is the best kind of cooking.

2) What's your writing routine?

I used to really have a lot of set routines around writing, particularly in graduate school, but now that I’m a father to a seven year old during a pandemic and every day brings a new surprise, I’ve tried to let go of the idea of “routine.” No day is routine! That said, when working on a long term project, I do try to work on it—whether that means writing or researching—every day for at least a bit. I write and think best in the mornings, so often it’s about how fast I can get to my computer, and I usually can’t do actual generative writing for more than 4 hours a day. Sometimes I can, but very rarely! I will also say that a big difference between now and graduate school is I almost always know what I am writing before I sit down to do it because I have pitched it somewhere. That helps. If I didn’t have that, I’d need to develop some more of a routine so that I could summon the muse on demand.

3) If you could be one character from any book, who would it be?

This is a surprisingly hard question! I don’t really want to live in a different time period, and most books give their characters a pretty rough going over. I did recently read a delightful desert fantasy novel by Terri Windling called The Wood Wife, whose main character is a poet and biographer who inherits a house outside Tucson and discovers that she can communicate with the spirits of the desert who reside there. All of that sounds quite lovely, doesn’t it? 

4) What's your go-to shower song?

I like making up melodies in the shower, or beat boxing little bits of a drum loop, or singing snatches of a new lyric. The shower (and long walks) are prime creative time, time that the unconscious can do its work without worrying too much, so I like to follow it wherever it goes. In the before-times, I would sometimes practice karaoke songs in the shower, so for a long time my go-to shower song was Just a Gigolo, the David Lee Roth version.

5) If your book could talk, what would it say to you?

While writing both of my books I felt like I was in frequent conversation with the manuscripts while working on them. In many ways, I feel like The Method  taught me how to write it. So I suppose it would say, “thank you for taking my advice all the time,” or, in more peevish moments, “I told you so!”