My must read trilogy for preaching:

The 3 Stanislavsky books on Acting. I went through the first book, “An Actor Prepares,” a few years ago and absolutely loved it. Recently I have been going through “Building A Character,” and after that plan on Creating A Role. They are great reads from the fictional viewpoint of students who are in a class led by a great acting teacher. What I love about it them is how what Stanislavsky says to Actors is so important to Preachers as well. It’s about communication. It’s about communicating what is deep inside of us, what we have labored over for weeks or months, and communicating to those hearing us in a way in which they receive the message with the same passion, beliefs, and awe that we have while we are speaking it. After all, we can have a great manuscript or outline, but if the message we speak isn’t lining up with the message we are trying to convey something is wrong; we have worked hard all week, but have missed out on delivering it with the intended purpose. I know I’ve messed up before in this regard, and just seeing Stanislavsky’s works on my bookshelf remind me of the work I must do not only in the writing, but in the deliverance as well. It’s like he’s calling out “watch your gestures! do you believe it! is it truly yours? give every phrase it’s true value -extract everything that you can! do you see the story alive around? can they hear your words or are they running together?” I love this stuff.

~ by Eric Whitman on November 21, 2007.