By Stella Adler
Edited By Howard Kissel
"You have to understand that the theatre is epic. It's large the way The Law is large, the way Family Life is large, the way growing trees are large -- you must nurture them. You can't neglect them." This is the primary lesson to which Stella Adler continually returns in the collected and edited classroom lectures that comprise Howard Kissel's edited "The Art of Acting."
Adler had perhaps the greatest credentials of any acting teacher. Born into a theatrical family -- her father was the great Yiddish actor Jacob P. Adler -- she took to the stage early. After studying with both Harold Clurman and Constantin Stanislavsky, she worked with many of the biggest names in 20th century theater, performing alongside Lee Strasberg, Sanford Meisner, and Myrna Loy, among many. Her students included, to name only three, Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro and Warren Beatty.
This book contains edited versions of 22 lectures, taking the reader through nearly six months of courses with Adler. In these lectures collected by Kissel, Adler repeatedly condemns the tendency of American theater acting to over-rely on American misinterpretations of Stanislavki's "Method" techniques. The trend, she says, led to the replacement of the tradition of grand theatrics and a sense of the nobility of the theater with the subtler, more naturalistic style that we regard as standard in American acting, especially in film.
Adler's emphasis on the importance of the actor's imagination differentiates her from the rest of the Method teachers, who claim that acting relies on the actor's memory and finding the character within oneself. It is a difference perhaps best illustrated by a fabled exchange between Dustin Hoffman and Lawrence Olivier during the 1975 shoot of "Marathon Man." Upon catching Hoffman jogging up and down a stairwell before filming a scene in which he was supposed to be out of breath, a bemused Olivier asked him what he was doing. When Hoffman said he was getting out of breath for the scene, Olivier is said to have responded with the suggestion, "Try acting." Adler's sentiments exactly.
Adler's intention, as captured here, was to train the actor to build an understanding of the theater that is larger than life and to develop characters to fit this model. Her advice to the player is concise and colorful; she examines items such as the importance of costuming and a sense of class in character creation. By a firm voice and steady hand, the reader is led through the book and emerges with an excellent sense of the grand doyenne's presence, better than is provided by any of the other books that lay out Adler's thoughts on acting.
The exercises discussed here will be useful in the classroom setting, but this book is not ideal for the classroom; its examples are too precise and are clearly driven by her pedagogical methodologies. It cannot be used as a replacement for classroom work by the beginning actor, but will help to keep performers honest and to remind us all of the cultural importance of theater and the importance of "great cultures" in producing great theater. In reading this book, one comes closer to understanding the passions that produce both great theater and great teaching.
The anecdotes from her life and experiences in and around the theater and her discussion of 2,000 years of history make this a book not only for actors but for anyone interested in the Theater (with a capital T).
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