Following her Broadway debut in Carl Kapek’s “The World We Live In,” she joined the American Laboratory headed by Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya, who were former members of the Moscow Art Theatre. In 1924, she met her second husband, Harold Clurman, one of the co-founders of The Group Theatre, for the first time; and in 1928, she participated in the Actor’s Laboratory where she met Lee Strasberg as well. When, in 1931 Clurman, Strasberg, and Cheryl Crawford created an influential theatre group that championed an imperative for realism and the teachings of Konstantin Stanislavski, Clurman and Strasberg invited Stella Adler to become a founding member of that collective, which was called The Group Theatre. Although neither the politics nor the cooperative energy of the company appealed to her greatly, she nevertheless joined the ensemble in 1931, having been promised leading roles and having been enamoured of Clurman’s vision.

While acting with the Group, she did some of her best work, including the notable roles of Sarah Glassman in “Success Story,” Adah Menken in “Gold Eagle Guy,” Bessie Berger in “Awake and Sing,” and Clara in “Paradise Lost.”

Taking a brief leave of absence in 1934 to travel to Russia, she stopped off in Paris, where she met and studied for five weeks with Konstantin Stanislavski. (She was the only American actor ever to study with him privately.) When she returned to The Group Theatre with a new understanding of his work, and a new idea of what American theatre could be, she began to give acting classes for other members of the Group, including Sanford Meisner, Elia Kazan, and Robert Lewis, all of whom went on to become notable theatrical directors and acting teachers.

Although the Group provided her with some support, she never felt comfortable there; and in 1937, she left for Hollywood.

After six years as an associate producer at MGM, and a number of roles (under the name “Stella Ardler”) in movies such as “Love on Toast” (1937) and “The Shadow of the Thin Man” (1941), she returned to Broadway and London to direct and act in many plays, including the London premiere of “Manhattan Nocturne,” the Off-Broadway revival of the Paul Green-Kurt Weil anti-war play, “Johnny Johnson,” as well as “Sons and Soldiers,” “Pretty Little Parlor,” and “He Who Gets Slapped.” Her last stage appearance was in the critically controversial production of Arthur Kopit’s “Oh Dad, Poor Dad”, “Mama’s Hung You in the Closet”, and “I’m Feeling So Sad” (1959).

Concurrent with her work as an actor and director, Stella Adler began to teach in the early 1940′s at the Erwin Piscator Workshop at the New School for Social Research. She left the faculty in 1949 to establish her own place for young actors to work, study, and perform, which would last five decades and enrich every part of the American theatre and motion picture arts.

Combining what she had learned from the Yiddish theatre, The Group Theatre, Broadway, Hollywood, and Stanislavski, the Stella Adler Theatre Studio (later renamed the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting, and finally the Stella Adler Studio of Acting) offered courses in principles of acting, speech and voice, Shakespeare, movement, and makeup, together with workshops in play analysis, character, scene preparation, and acting styles. Onstage experience was acquired by performances of scenes and plays before an invited audience. Among her students were Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Warren Beatty, Elaine Stritch, Mario Van Peebles, Harvey Keitel, and Candice Bergen. Her belief in the supreme seriousness of her art kept many well-known members of the theatre coming back for her intelligent and passionate advice.

We know the basic life stories of the people close to us. We know that their losses were such and such, their loves and high peaks such… but experiencing pain and extroverting it changes something within you.

Personal pain becomes a wrapping. It closes in on us and we think no-one can feel it as intensely as we do.. but feeling that pain on behalf of your character does something different. Instead of it being your own self-pitying wrapping it becomes something that can be extended outward.

Listening to my mum reminiscing on a story of past pain, a story she’s told me many many times I felt my heart aching for her in a way it has never done before. It was as if empathy was taken to another level. I wasn’t listening to just support her, i was listening and feeling and sharing her pain and TRULY understanding her. I “pained” WITH her. Specifically HER pain.

I think up until this point I used to listen and then relate her story to something in my own life. Unconsciously. I used to think many reasonable thoughts such as “it’s good she got herself out of that mess” or “had she not done this and that this and that would not have ensued… poor mom..” But for once I just sat and FELT with her. No judgement. No solutions.

And that is REALLY why we need to talk to the people we love so badly. Lounging on the psychologist’s couch could never do that. Although technically a psychologist should make you feel comfortable and should not judge but merely “listen”.. its not listening that we want! We want someone to FEEL with us. Not transferring our gut-wrenching pains or problems but merely someone that can feel a stirring in their hearts as you talk, and then sit in silence with you. No judgement. No solutions.

God! Acting is so wonderful!

One of Laura’s students is a playwright who regularly performs her own work. And

Sentimental musings and an odd gentleness seems to be taking hold of me. I asked several of my fellow students at Stella Adler whether they felt a similar shift in their emotional household taking place. Three out of the four said that they felt the same thing. We do so many exercises to “open up” and to “listen to the unconscious” and “practice empathy” that I think it is starting to have a more solid presence within us. I think many of us had to work, or are working day jobs where such fragility would be suicide. I personally worked in sales – and the number one rule is confidence. And moderation and control – you do not want to scare the customer away.

This sudden freedom to be as vulnerable as we were as children is the most marvelous sensation EVER!

As I was thinking this over today the song “Breakable” by Ingrid Michaelson started playing on my Ipod. Only six months ago I would have pressed “skip”. There would have been no time or emotional space for such gentle tones. At night or some weekends perhaps… but these days? ALL the time!!!

Breakable

Have you ever thought about
What protects our hearts?
Just a cage of rib bones
And some other various parts

So it’s fairly simple
To cut right through the mess
And to stop the muscle
That makes us confess

And we are so fragile
And our cracking bones make noise
And we are just breakable, breakable, breakable
Girls and boys

And you fasten my seatbelt
Because it is the law
In your two-ton death trap
I finally saw
A piece of love in your face
That bathed me in regret
Then you drove me to places
I’ll never forget

And we are so fragile
And our cracking bones make noise
And we are just breakable, breakable, breakable
Girls and boys

And we are so fragile
And our cracking bones make noise
And we are just breakable, breakable, breakable girls
Breakable, breakable, breakable girls
Breakable, breakable, breakable
Girls and boys

Next to acting the Tango is my second most obsessive passion. Although this blog is about finding Athena, wisdom and strength, through acting and the travails of daily life in Los Angeles, I would be painting a very incomplete picture if I didn’t at least devote one blog entry to this most moody and complex of dances. Athena herself, I am dead sure, must adore it!

The tango scene in Hollywood is small but very active. I am finding niches all over. It is hard to get to without a car but its comforting to know its out there…

Tango was the first couple dance ever seen in Europe that involved improvisation. Of course terribly frowned upon, but it was the arrival of Tango that defined the beginning of couple dance as we know it today.

In Buenos Aires, where it all originated from, the dance was still completely unacceptable in polite society around 1900. But young guys from good families have always had a tendency to spend time in places they are not supposed to visit, and with girls that their mothers would rather they did not marry, and as a consequence several of these young men were quite good Tango dancers. These very same guys traveled to Paris and Tango took Europe by storm!

There is a myth that women in Paris were the first to abandon their corsets in order to dance the Tango with more hip movement and sensuality. (The official color for the tango was orange.. which is extremely weird no?!!)

I wondered how the young boys in Buenos Aires learnt the dance. Because there seems to be a uniform thing among Argentineans that they would never take a class except if they wanted to go professional. Lessons are for sissies.. But if a young guy were to go to a Tango bar and not know the steps… that would be social suicide! The women are among the harshest critics I have ever heard when discussing the competence of each dancer. I was asked to dance by a shy boy once and when I came back my Argentinean friend rolled her eyes and said that she hoped I wouldn’t waste another dance on a skill-less dancer!

So what I found was the following:

“The young man who was starting to notice the attractions of young women had little option but to learn to dance the Tango. He would go to a men only practice dance, or práctica, and, after he had watched for a little while one of the older men would start to teach him how to follow, that is to say he would learn to dance the woman’s part. Once he was considered to be good enough at dancing the woman’s part he would be allowed to try leading another young man who had been dancing about as long as he had, and start to learn to dance the man’s part. I have asked many elderly men, from many different parts of the city, how long this process took (baring in mind that the men I speak to for my research are generally the outstanding ones, who would not have been the slowest members of their group), and I have never been told that it took less than nine months to learn to dance the woman’s part well enough to be allowed to start learning to lead.

They would then continue to learn, dancing both parts, gradually leading more, until one night one of the more experienced men would tell them to put on a suit on Saturday because they were going to a dance, or milonga. I have asked many elderly men how long that whole process took, and not one has told me that it took less than three years.”

3 years!!!!! Intimidated to learn at all? I sure was! Uhm.. typo.. I sure AM!

If the tango is danced as it should be… it is a theatrical masterpiece. All the elements of good acting is present. You have your set of movements (your lines) and you have a partner with whom you need to connect. You must communicate with intention, intuition and heart. You must listen… and if all these elements are present the dance becomes a masterpiece!

Paul Cuneo

http://movemental.typepad.com/the_movement_for_actors_b/about-paul-cuneo.html

19, 20 and the 21st of October.

Hope to see you there!!

For the last 5 weeks Ive been working on Cleopatra. Doing several of her monologues. But it was when I did the following one that I felt transported to Egypt fully. Although I have spoken about the fact that an actor doesn’t “become” another person when on stage.. he merely give the ILLUSION of becoming it.. for several seconds during the saying of this monologue, I forgot all about myself. There was nothing BUT saying good bye to my two trusted aids. There was nothing BUT feeling the snakes fangs pierce my skin. This has been a first.

CLEOPATRA

Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have

Immortal longings in me: now no more

The juice of Egypt’s grape shall moist this lip:

Yare, yare, good Iras; quick. Methinks I hear

Antony call; I see him rouse himself

To praise my noble act; I hear him mock

The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men

To excuse their after wrath: husband, I come:

Now to that name my courage prove my title!

I am fire and air; my other elements

I give to baser life. So; have you done?

Come then, and take the last warmth of my lips.

Farewell, kind Charmian; Iras, long farewell.

Kisses them. IRAS falls and dies

Have I the aspic in my lips? Dost fall?

If thou and nature can so gently part,

The stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch,

Which hurts, and is desired. Dost thou lie still?

If thus thou vanishest, thou tell’st the world

It is not worth leave-taking.

CHARMIAN

Dissolve, thick cloud, and rain; that I may say,

The gods themselves do weep!

CLEOPATRA

This proves me base:

If she first meet the curled Antony,

He’ll make demand of her, and spend that kiss

Which is my heaven to have. Come, thou mortal wretch,

To an asp, which she applies to her breast

With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate

Of life at once untie: poor venomous fool

Be angry, and dispatch. O, couldst thou speak,

That I might hear thee call great Caesar ass

Unpolicied!

I listenend to the Groundedness in my voice. The sheer power I was capable of and I cringed. We are capable of enormous things. Good and bad. And that is what is so scary. That is why doing this voice work it is not about practicing the vocal chords or learning breath support. It is embracing whole parts of yourself you had denied for years and years.

The student that stood in and acted as Caesar for me told me that I had intimidated him. Me? Intimidate? Yes! he said he scared. My wrath seemed consuming.

To get to that point Heidi, my voice teacher, had me ground and reground my voice. This, after a 45 minute voice warm-up. I stood in front of the class with my head thrown backwards, speaking lower than I ever thought my voice could go, pounding on my chest. And as I did it I felt the deepest sadness taking over me. All the anger, fear and sadness Cleopatra is feeling as she is about to commit suicide fill my whole being. I always say that my emotions are situated in my stomach.. but the day I performed this monologue I felt it coursing through my whole body.

My brain has never gotten that much oxygen! I felt so dizzy I thought I’d faint right there and then, in Cleopatra fashion. My lip started involuntarily quivering, and wouldn’t stop throughout the duration of the class!

We have been conditioned by the realistic theatre for the last 100 years to minimize outward show of emotion. But in the time of Shakespeare grandness in speech was commonplace. For the modern actor to speak Shakespeare it is extremely difficult. I found all this inner resistance shouting… its overacting!!! its exhibitionism!!!  But with the release of all tension and having that much breath available it felt like an out-of-body experience. That much emotion seemed so natural, and extroverting it all felt even more so. In that moment all instincts to hide my emotions were suspended and I believe, for the first time ever, I was 100 percent naked in front of others.

]]> http://seekingathenainhollywood.wordpress.com/2009/09/27/cleopatra/feed/ 0 seekingathenainhollywood Cleopatra_-_John_William_Waterhouse The_Death_of_Cleopatra_arthur http://seekingathenainhollywood.wordpress.com/2009/09/27/feeling-tender-and-hurt-tonight/ http://seekingathenainhollywood.wordpress.com/2009/09/27/feeling-tender-and-hurt-tonight/#comments Sun, 27 Sep 2009 07:56:38 +0000 seekingathenainhollywood http://seekingathenainhollywood.wordpress.com/?p=53 ]]> “Do Less!” my first  Acting professor said over and over again. And I would go back on stage and redo my scene. “Do even less!” What? How can i do less? I already feel like a life-less robot!

I was in college and Acting was my big escape from what I thought I should be doing, and which I was officially studying. Acting well wasn’t at the forefront of my mind though. A magical different world was. The smell backstage. The shock and wondrous horror when the stage lights were turned on. I would gladly have played trees, homeless-lady bystanders and waiters. But I signed on for Acting 101 as an elective, thinking that I would probably drop the course for a more sensible one after the first week. I just wanted to wet my toes a little.

Frank Bradley was my professor. When he assigned our first scenes I had lofty ideals! Mine was from “Night, Mother”. As Jesse I tried to channel up every suicidal thought I had ever had. I dug out old diaries scribbled full with teenage love disappointments and existential naivities. When the time came to go onstage I felt I would have a nervous breakdown! Stringing personal memory after memory to channel up the appropriate emotions, poor Jesse’s journey had become less important. I was trying much to hard to believe myself when I said I wanted to take my life.

My professor looked at it all and grimaced. He searched for the right words (As my innards contracted waiting for the final swoop: you’re a horrible actress…) “Try doing a little less…” he said instead. So I kept my hands still. I ceased looking all over the place. Instead of pacing up and down the stage I sat myself down. I firmly decided to work harder on my inner life. I would have to remember my personal sadness even more vividly! I will exaggerate them this time!! I will make myself believe that all these other terrible things happened… Needless to say I went home that day and stared at that bottle of sleeping pills long and hard.

In my next scene I was Neasa in Shining City. A new mother supporting her boyfriend who also happens to be an ex-priest. In the scene he breaks up with her. I felt completely overwhelmed. In real life I was in a relationship that was itself not that stable and I knew that if I was going to use anything from it I would end up breaking up a beautiful love. Deep deep down I knew the relationship would have to end soon but I fought against it with all my heart. So I firmly refused to do any channeling and remembering and sense-memory rubbish. My scene partner tried his utmost to draw emotion from me… but I stuck to my guns. I was saying my lines thinking a single thought: “I don’t want to lose my boyfriend”

The night of the performance my scene partner and I did all we had learned. We warmed up our voices and our bodies. We stood in front of each other staring into each other’s eyes for what felt like ages… and I could KICK myself!! Here i was, about to perform my final scene in front of the whole Theatre department and I had done nothing other than learn my lines and objective. I was mortified! My scene partner went on stage and started performing (brilliantly!) and as I stepped onto the stage I was so relieved to see my partner being confident and perfectly in character that when I threw my arms around him as his girlfriend, me the actress was the one that was relieved as could be. From the moment he broke the news of wanting to break up all I could think of was that I could do to not lose him. Every word, every move I made was motivated by that single thought and it was so urgent because I knew without my scene partner these minutes on stage would have been the worst agony imaginable, and I also knew that I wanted to do anything possible not to lose the real love in my life.

Those few moments on stage was the most electric and alive I’d ever felt, and my scene partner confirmed after the performance that he himself had never felt such electricity and rapport onstage either. Two of our professors came to us afterwards and asked to be in their plays the following semester. Frank Bradley grabbed the both of us and said he could never assign this scene to another couple again. We’ve branded it as ours. Pride positively oozed from the both of us.

Although I couldn’t put into words what I had learnt from the experience, Stella Adler did. It is not about Doing Less with your physical behavior or hitting certain emotions at certain places. It is doing actions to get what you want. And the more desperately you want what you want the more your emotions will just be there.

Forget FEELING what you think your character will feel. Just try and get what you need with everything you have. Keep it simple. Keep it clear. Just DO it!

There is a part in the beginning of the book that is very relevant for actors. Would love to hear your input!

“For those who have more than one skin, there are places where the secret act of metamorphosis takes place, an imperceptible shading into a hint of a different gait, a softening or a crispening of an accent. For those whose past and present belong to different worlds, there are places and times that mark their passage from one to the other, a transitional limbo: like airports and airplanes” …and stages, in front of cameras and increasingly in front of home cameras for “@-home auditions”.

“But the true chameleons are the ones who straddle two worlds, segueing smoothly from one to the other, adjusting language and body language, calibrating the range of emotions displayed, treading the tightrope of mannerisms and mores. If it is well-done it can look effortless, but it is never without cost.”