The Collected Series: Five Approaches to Acting by David Kaplan is the complete collection of his five approaches to acting with an additional section that deals with comparing, choosing and combing the different approaches. This is an excellent acting textbook that deals with theory and practice for both beginning and advanced actors. David Kaplan's The Collected Series: Five Approaches to Acting contains his five approaches to acting: identifying tasks, playing episodes, building images, learning the world of the play, and telling a story. Each approach has its own definition of what it means to act, what it means to act well, what it means to be a character in a performance on stage, and, by extension, what it means to be a person in ?real? life. Each approach covers history, theory and examples of its practice.Anyone interested in the study of acting will instantly realize that The Collected Series: Five Approaches to Acting is a comprehenive approach to studying acting. As David Kaplan explains, "If we can agree that acting involves the theory and practice of human relationships ? not just the relationships of actors with actors, but of actors with audiences ? then the study of acting merits attention from anyone interested in behavior, character, and a relationship to the world from which ideas about such things evolve.'