Anthony Abeson s actor-training is an amalgam of his work with Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotowski, Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler and Harold Clurman. Many of his students have gone on to successful careers in theatre, film and television. In his book "Acting 2.0: Doing Work that Gets Work in a High-Tech World" Mr. Abeson discusses the consequences of the American acting culture s emphasis on using rather than developing talent. In the opening of his book he says "I want to empower you with practical tools with which to do good work that gets work in the room work on the stage and screen that inspires all of us, that arouses not prurience or violence but that precious something, intangible but of inestimable value, that is being destroyed from our lives : our humanity. Anthony Abeson's actor-training is an amalgam of his work with Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotowski, Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler and Harold Clurman. Many of his students have gone on to successful careers in theatre, film and television. In "Acting 2.0: Doing Work that Gets Work in a High-Tech World" Abeson draws upon his many years of experience and expertise to discuss the consequences of the American acting culture's emphasis on using rather than developing talent. In the opening of "Acting 2.0), he says "I want to empower you with practical tools with which to do good work that gets work in the room work on the stage and screen that inspires all of us, that arouses not prurience or violence but that precious something, intangible but of inestimable value, that is being destroyed from our lives : our humanity. Enhanced with the inclusion of a four page Bibliography and a two page Author Biography, "Acting 2.0" will prove an informative and instructive read for anyone aspiring to an acting career. While very highly recommended for personal, professional, community theatre, community library, and academic library Theatrical Studies reference collections and supplemental studies reading lists, it should also be noted that "Acting 2.0" is also available in a Kindle edition ($9.99), ISBN 9781575259024, $16.95, PB, 165pp, --Midwest Book Review, James A. Cox, Ediitor Anthony Abeson s high school summers were always spent in summer stock, acting and directing, along with all the other jobs summer theater required: stage managing, set construction, lighting design, etc. Teaching surfaced even then. His earliest memory is of writing the name Konstantin S. Stanislavski on a blackboard in front of bewildered children s theater apprentices. While at Columbia University he made his off-Broadway debut as an actor and assistant director at the Sheridan Square Playhouse in a repertory company whose director introduced him to Lee Strasberg and the Actors Studio. He was unable to attend his graduation due to his appointment by the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council as a resident actor and director of the Canterbury Theatre Company in Christchurch, New Zealand, that country s first international, professional theater, where he worked with actors from all over the U.K. (As a twenty-two-year-old American, it was a challenge to direct actors whose previous director had been Laurence Olivier.) While there, Anthony also served as the director of the Experimental Theatre Laboratory of the Christchurch Academy of Dramatic Arts, that country s first training academy. In 1968 he began his long collaboration with Jerzy Grotowski, first as an actor at the Centre Dramatique National du Sud-Est in Aix-en-Provence, and later, in the early 1970s, as a participant/ assistant in Grotowski s first Special Project in a forest outside of Philadelphia. Further collaboration occurred under the auspices of the Instytut Aktora in Wroclaw and Brzezinka, Poland. In 1972 Anthony was invited to join Peter Brook, former director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, at his Centre Inter- 2.0.indd 163 12/21/2015 12:29:11 PM 164 Anthony Abeson national de Recherche Théâtrale, in Paris, where he participated as an actor in the Centre s exploration of the effect of nonlinear language on the actor s process. The research was facilitated by the deliberate inclusion of actors from Japan, Africa, France, and other countries, with hardly any common language between them. Instead, during Anthony s stay, the verbal impulse was channeled into ancient Greek and/or bird calls and applied to situations created by Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath s husband, who went on to become the poet laureate of England. In 1968, Anthony started a theater company, the Ensemble Theatre Laboratory, a project of both the New York State Arts Council and the New Mexico State Arts Commission. One of its founding members was the late actor-monologist Spalding Gray, whose ironic version of their Missouri tour of The Tower of Babel, can be found in his A Personal History of the American Theatre. During this time, Anthony continued to be exposed to Lee Strasberg and the Actors Studio, becoming one of the youngest people ever to address a special session of th