Telling a Story, Part Five in the Five Approaches to Acting Series is a chance to learn true witchcraft: the casting of a spell on audience members so that they see what isn't there. More, the telling of a tale can reveal the occult: what takes place in the mind of the speaker. Shakespeare's soliloquies offer an actor special opportunities to reveal the processes of thought, and there is a separate chapter in Telling a Story, Part Five in the Five Approaches to Acting Series about ways to prepare and perform soliloquies from Shakespeare's plays. Like Mae West's sultry recitation of nursery rhymes, Romeo's bashful recitation of Juliet's charms works from the principle that it's not what you say, it's how you say it - and what happens to you while you say it. Actors burdened with "emotional memory" in story-telling are given access to a more useful technique by identifying point of views and creating dramatic onstage action while telling a story by shifting points of view.

Telling a Story, Part Five in the Five Approaches to Acting Series offers practical techniques for analyzing texts and performing stories within the context of a play, whether written by Sam Shepard, Tennessee Williams, the ancient Greeks, or Shakespeare. Telling a Story suggests strategies for actors to switch between performance and story-telling in their approach to any role.

David Kaplan is curator and co-founder of the Provincetown Tennessee
Williams Theater Festival, now in its tenth year. He is the author of
the biography /Tennessee Williams in Provincetown/and editor of the
centennial collection of essays, /Tenn at One Hundred/. He has written
two series of college textbooks: /Five Approaches to Acting/and
/Shakespeare, Shamans, and Show Biz/.

Kaplan has staged Tennessee Williams plays worldwide: /Suddenly, Last
Summer/in Russia in Russian, /Ten Blocks on the Camino Real/in Uruguay
in Spanish, and /The Eccentricities of a Nightingale/in Hong Kong in
Cantonese. In 2008 he directed the world premieres of Williams /The Day
on Which a Man Dies/in Chicago and /The Dog Enchanted by the Divine
View/in Boston. At the New Orleans Tennessee Williams Festival he's
staged Williams /The Traveling Companion/, /The Chalky White Substance/,
and /The Hotel Plays/.