ABSTRACT
American actor training seeks to thrive in the tension between the two opposing impulses in arts policy expressed in the chapter’s opening quotations-one celebrating artistic “difference” across the country, and one seeking to bring the disparate arts communities under the single banner of “America”; that is, one a de-centralizing impulse, the other, centralizing. In the U.S., actor training tries on the one hand to respond to market needs to serve the most students (de-centralizing, spreading out, dividing), and on the other hand to gather the students together under the umbrellas of a few prominent methods or teachers’ work (centralizing, unifying, consolidating).4 As American actor training negotiates these extremes, there are repercussions both for acting students and for the American theatre.
