cover image Working on the Inside: The Spiritual Life Through the Eyes of Actors

Working on the Inside: The Spiritual Life Through the Eyes of Actors

Retta Blaney. Sheed & Ward, $18.95 (178pp) ISBN 978-0-7425-3319-6

Blaney highlights actors' spiritual lives in a brief but thoughtful look at how faith can enhance craft and lead to greater self-knowledge. In 10 chapters illustrating different aspects of the""universal spiritual life,"" Vanessa Williams, Liam Neeson, Kristin Chenoweth and others share their personal religious practices and explain why faith, silence, prayer and community are particularly necessary for actors, who""play so many roles onstage they face the danger of losing themselves"" and who""need to develop a spiritual centering to avoid being taken over by a character, as well as the hype that often surrounds their performances and their personal lives."" The spirituality Blaney presents here is informal amalgamation of traditions; the actors often pick and choose aspects of various faiths to tailor a practice that best fits their individual needs. By sharing with readers the spiritual experiences of actors and noting what sustains them in the anxiety-ridden, high-pressure world of entertainment, Blaney hopes to offers models of new perspectives:""From their faith-producing experiences,"" she writes, actors""can offer us inspiration, and they can turn those experiences into performances that help us transcend the difficulties in our lives."" Blaney mixes her discussion on actors with interviews with priests, reverends and rabbis, in chapters that are dense with quotes from both people and Scripture. Blaney makes a good faith effort to encompass all the possibilities for a spiritual life, but her book might have been strengthened with a narrower focus.