Directors of the Spolin Theater Game Center: Robert Martin (Technical), Viola Spolin (Artistic), and Stephen Book (Executive)

Stephen Book

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 Grammies. 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, Gittes (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, Festival Theatre of Texas, Princeton, Brown, Sarah Lawrence College, U.S.C., and the Theater of Dionysus in Athens.

He was the Creative Consultant on the pilot for the Comedy Central series, Special Unit, starring Christopher Titus. He was Creative Consultant to the director, Vincent Ward, on the Oscar winning film, What Dreams May Come. He was Creative Consultant to Melissa Manchester on her Grammy nominated album, Don't Cry Out Loud.

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. Samuel French Play Publishers and Bookstores lists Stephen Book as one of seven original sources of modern acting technique, along with Boleslavsky, Stanislavsky, Michael Chekov, Uta Hagen, Viola Spolin, and Sanford Meisner.