Stella Adler - The Art of Acting

HOWARD KISSEL

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o me Stella Adler is much more than a teacher of acting. Through her work she imparts the most valuable kind of information - how to discover the nature of our own emotional mechanics and therefore those of others. She never lent herself to vulgar exploitations, as some other well-known so-called "methods" of acting have done. As a result, her contributions to the theatrical culture have remained largely unknown, unrecognized, and unappreciated.

s far as I know, she was the only American artist who went to Paris to study with Konstantin Stanislavski, who was himself a skilled observer of human behavior and a most prominent figure in Russian theatre. She brought back to this country a knowledge of his technique and incorporated it in her teaching. Little did she know that her teachings would impact theatrical culture worldwide. Almost all filmmaking anywhere in the world has been affected by American films, which has been, in turn, influenced by Stella Adler's teachings. She is loved by many and we owe her much.

am grateful to the inestimable contributions she has made to my life and I feel privileged to have been associated with her and her family professionally and personally throughout my life.

- MARLON BRANDO

ver the next few months you will hear me say repeatedly that acting is not about you. But right at the start I want you to know that you do matter.

You live in a very busy world. You didn't have your coffee, or you grabbed it at the cafeteria. Your baby is home crying, or your husband doesn't love you, or your boyfriend didn't call you. Everybody has troubles.

Then there's the scattered person who doesn't know where she is. She's late for no reason. She's just late. That's her way of life.

You must understand that while you're in this room you leave the outside world outside. You need all of yourself here. You don't need your father. You don't need your mother. You don't need your husband. You don't need your child. You don't care what happens in The New York Times.

You need 100 percent honorable selfishness toward you.

You are about to embrace a profession that is 2,000 years old. However, what being an actor has meant for most of that time is not what it means now.

Actors today face certain requirements, certain realities that would have been unheard of, even impossible fifty years ago. People would have been astonished at an actress being required to audition for Juliet, for instance. When I was a young actress you didn't audition. You were a member of a company, and they'd seen you. They had practically raised you.

They wouldn't dream of producing Romeo and Juliet unless they were sure they had, right in their company, a capable Romeo, a capable Juliet, a good Nurse, a good Friar Laurence. They had seen you develop as an actor over a period of time. They knew what you could do. And what you couldn't.

You joined the company, and you traveled through the provinces. You played little parts. That's how you learned to act. They showed you how to hold a spear. They saw you weren't holding it right and they showed you how to hold it. That's how you learned to hold a spear and, eventually, how to play Hamlet.

You're not so lucky. You only think you are, because you've been fed dreams of actors being "discovered" at drug store counters. But even if that dream did come true, if you shot right to the top, you'd be the poorer actor for never learning how to hold that spear. And you'd never know why either.

Carrying a spear makes you a different person. You have to see what it means to carry a spear at that time. Today there's no reason to carry a spear. Or no longer the same reason. In other times there were extremely important reasons for it, and for doing it right. Was it for a great ceremony? Was it for warfare? You must understand those reasons. This is the essence of our job as actors.

Today you can start not holding the spear but on top. Today we have instant actors. You can start by being the lead. You can start anywhere they want you to start. This is an absolutely new phenomenon.