Imagination
Stella Adler
Opened her studio in 1949 and taught for five decades; Brando and De Niro among her students. She put imagination at the centre and asked actors to search between the lines for what the script leaves unsaid.
Prologue · The past & other techniques
The ones who came before us.
Acting went from the stage to silent film to a 4K world where every twitch is seen. It would be strange if the craft hadn’t changed — but every technique, past and present, can still teach us something. We encourage every student to study as many as they can.
The Method
Lee Strasberg
Led the Actors Studio for over thirty years, working with James Dean, Julie Harris and Jane Fonda. Drawing on Stanislavski, his “method” asked actors to use their own emotions and experiences to create reality.
Respect for acting
Uta Hagen
Two-time Tony winner — the original Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? — who taught for decades at HB Studio. Her books Respect for Acting and A Challenge for the Actor are still standards.
Epilogue · Our own path
Respect the past. Create your own.
At the time these techniques and methods were being designed, individuality was something that hadn’t been explored to its fullest. Everyone followed a very specific path: you learned a vocation and went from there. You followed the rules, you followed the steps, and you ended up in a very specific place — in life, in every job, and yes, even in theater.
That doesn’t really work anymore. Now that we have individuality, and have learned to accept it as special, we see that it is that uniqueness people long to see — the thing that connects to them, that allows them to grow, to be, and to accept who they are and their eccentricities. When we show our individuality, when we take our own path, that’s when we learn the true artist that we are.
Look at all the artists you’ve known and admired. None of them followed any path but their own — the great musicians, the great painters, the great sculptors, and yes, the great actors. There’s nobody like them. There’s nobody who does exactly what they do.
Remember: yes, we are here to entertain, but we are also here to anchor. We are here to teach. We are here to share, sometimes, the burdens that people can’t share with anybody else. In that music, in that painting, in that situation we have portrayed, we can hope it allows the people we share it with to grow just a little bit.
So although we respect and learn from the past, we understand that we must create our own if we are to move forward.
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Thomas Edison