Welcome to the New York Times Book Review Podcast.

I'm Gilbert Cruz, the new editor of the book's desk,

and for the next many months we'll be highlighting great author interviews from our decade plus archive.

This week we're featuring a pair of conversations.

The first is from 2011, Sam Tannenhaus, who is then the editor of the book review

and host of this podcast, spoke with the actor John Lithgal about his memoir, drama, and actor's education.

Okay, so you say acting, storytelling.

What do you mean?

I guess an actor is a part of a large machine of storytelling that you play characters.

But basically you're unfolding a story for an audience.

An actor is on the inside of that story and helping bring it to life.

And sort of late in my life I've made storytelling into a sort of adjunct of acting in place.

And for you it began at an extremely early age, you can yell at things so high.

That's right, anti-out college.

That's right, my dad was on the faculty there.

And you started acting very young.

And he was very serious, Shakespeare, you learned early.

He created Shakespeare festivals in Ohio all through my young years, four of them in all.

One of them, the Great Lakes, Theodore Festival and Cleveland, is still going on.

And it was just part of our lives.

The Antioch was the first of them and a long sustained one in which he produced every single one of Shakespeare's plays.

The first line of the book proper is I started acting before I even remember.

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