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Letters to a Young Artist: Straight-up Advice on Making a Life in the Arts-For Actors, Performers, Writers, and Artists of Every Kind
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About Letters To A Young Artist: Straight-up Advice On
Product Description From the most exciting individual in American theater” ( Newsweek), here is Anna Deavere Smith’s brass tacks advice to aspiring artists of all stripes. In vividly anecdotal letters to the young BZ, she addresses the full spectrum of issues that people starting out will face: from questions of confidence, discipline, and self-esteem, to fame, failure, and fear, to staying healthy, presenting yourself effectively, building a diverse social and professional network, and using your art to promote social change. At once inspiring and no-nonsense, Letters to a Young Artist will challenge you, motivate you, and set you on a course to pursue your art without compromise. From Publishers Weekly Actor and playwright Smith casts her reflections on the creative process, the artist's life and the acting profession as a series of brief letters addressed to a fictitious teenager. Defining artist broadly, Smith ( Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992) shares advice not only from painters, dancers, writers and actors but from a bull rider, a boxer and a dentist. Her advice is often directly practical: how to deal with stage fright, face an audition, even keep well ("Stay hydrated"). Smith treats concerns of the spirit as well: how to cope with disappointment, depression and feeling alienated. The letters have the immediacy of a genuine correspondence, replying to an imagined request for information ("How did you find your mentors?"), remembering a special moment ("It was summer the first time I moved to New York") and reporting on the present ("I just got a call from my agent saying there's a job for me on a television show"). What emerges most persuasively is Smith's sense of the complex interrelationship between one's art and one's everyday life. With a pithiness that wards away the preachy, Smith succeeds in conveying the pain, the joy and the effort that characterize a life on the stage and in the world. (Feb. 7) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From School Library Journal Adult/High School-From a role on the popular TV show The West Wing to a MacArthur Foundation Award, Smith has attained success as an actress, a playwright, and a director. Her letters are filled with anecdotes and stories about her own successes and failures, giving the book an accessible, conversational feel. While the author primarily focuses on the joys of an artistic life, she also points out how much hard work, persistence, and even luck are necessary to succeed. She gives especially tender advice for those times when progress seems slow or when the review is bad. The book reads breezily front to back but is also divided into categories so it can be easily used as a reference when needing inspiration in specific areas. The one glaring omission is the almost complete lack of attention to promoting one's work. But this is a small complaint for what is otherwise a witty and inspiring guidebook for anyone interested in pursuing an artistic life. -Matthew L. Moffett, Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Nearly a century after Rainer Maria Rilke wrote Letters to a Young Poet, actress and author Smith offers her own collection of wisdom, advice, and personal anecdotes, directed in letters sent to a young, fictitious painter. Loosely combined into categories, the selections speak with passion and candor about creating art and the realities of an artist's life, beginning with "the basics" of focusing and learning to live both "inside and outside" the world, overcoming procrastination, and caring for oneself: "In most circles of successful artists, there is a lot more health and wholesomeness than one is led to believe." Whether she is speaking about childhood memories, tough Hollywood situations, or finding inspiration in the work of others, Smith is generous, vulnerable, and pe
