Acting in America has staggered to a dead end. Every year tens of thousands of aspiring actors pursue the Hollywood grail and chant the familiar strains of the Stanislavski "Method" in classrooms and studios across the nation. The initial liberating spirit of Stanislavski's experiments has long ago withered into rigid patterns of inhibitions and emotional introspection. According to Richard Hornby, the Method now "shackles American acting". With his iconoclastic new work, The End of Acting, Richard Hornby dismantles, tenet by tenet, the American Method as promulgated by Lee Strasberg and other pretenders to the Stanislavski dynasty. Hornby separates the myth from the Method in his exploration of Stanislavski's original initiatives and the proprietary feud over his theories which continues even today.

"An analysis of script interpretation for the theater. The text includes theories on performance as well as examples from the works of Shelley, Ibsen and Pinter. In his new preface, Hornby laments the modernization of classic plays which he believes subverts the original text." -Library Journal