Product Review

With the increasing cost of tuition and the challenges of finding work in an overcrowded marketplace, actors need to be well equipped to enter the business and succeed artistically and financially. Minding the Edge is an empowering guidebook that helps actors to think like CEOs. It presents down-to-earth yet potent strategies for “making it” in the entertainment industry.

The principle “If you seek fulfillment, success will come” is foundational to the authors’ sensible and sensitive advice on how to create a plan to cope with the volatility of an acting career. A series of interactive exercises and discussion questions motivate readers to explore personal feelings, understand present circumstances while preparing for future ones, and maintain a positive mental approach to the business. Quotations from professional actors, writers, directors, and others in the field, as well as anecdotes from the authors’ own lives, reinforce essential concepts in the book, inspire readers to be proactive, and cultivate a positive mental approach to achieving fulfillment and success.

Minding the Edge has been used as a supplemental text in audition and capstone courses as well as in classes designed to teach actors how to cope with the business side of the industry.