Acting techniques from the Masters: Stella Adler

The Importance of Being Honest: Acting Techniques from the Masters

The following are excerpts from Dr. Mary Schuttler's class on the masters of acting technique.

Summary of Stella Adler's contributions

Acting means the elimination of human barriers. You must knock down the walls between yourself and the other actors. This will give you a sense of freedom on stage. The first job of the actor is to rid him/herself of outside opinions. Truth is in the truth of the circumstances of the character.

Biography of Stella Adler

Mary's Bio: In New York City, sometime in the early nineteen hundreds, Sarah Lewis-Adler gave birth to Jacob P. Adler’s daughter, Stella. Both parents were actors themselves and three sisters, two brothers, and one cousin would choose acting as their careers as well. ACTING, it’s in the family, it’s in the blood! Stella studied acting under Constantin Stanislavsky at the American Laboratory Theatre with her father, Maria Ouspenskaya, and Richard Boleslavsky.

As a member of her father’s Yiddish theatre company, Miss Adler made her stage debut, in “Broken Hearts,” at the age of four. She made her London debut at the Pavillion Theatre in 1919.

In 1922, under the assumed name Lola Adler, she first appeared on Broadway as Apatura Clythia in “The World We Live In The Insect Comedy).” In 1926, using her real name, she appeared as the Baroness Creme de la Creme in the American Laboratory production of “The Straw Hat.” Other roles include Elly in “Big Lake” and Beatrice in Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” (both 1927). She also toured with the Yiddish Art Theatre in both Europe and the US.

In 1931, Miss Adler joined the Group Theatre where she had roles in many plays including Bessie Berger in “Awake and Sing” and Clara in “Paradise Lost” (both 1935). 

She appeared as Zinaida in “He Who Gets Slapped” (1946). Stella Adler directed “Polonaise” (1945), “Sunday Breakfast” (1952), and “Johnny Johnson” (1954). In London she appeared as Madame Rosepettle in the premiere of “Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Momma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feeling So Sad” (1961).

Her film debut was in the 1938 movie, “Love on Toast.” Ms.. Adler was the associate producer of “Du Barry Was a Lady” (1943). She also had a small role in the 1944 hit, “The Thin Man.”

Stella Adler was married to Harold Clurman for seventeen years, from 1943 until they were divorced in 1960.

Since 1949, she has been the director of the Stella Adler Theatre Studio in NYC. She has also taught acting technique at the Dramatic Workshop of the New School for Social Research (1940-42). Ms. Adler headed the acting department at Vale University (1967-68).  She also taught undergraduate drama classes for NYU out of her own studio.

Stella Adler has had a tremendous amount of influence over many great. actors over the past fifty years including, most notably, Marlon “The Godfather” Brando.

Web Bio: From 1905, at the age of four, until her death eighty-seven years later, Stella Adler dedicated her life to preserving and expanding the highest level of art in the theatre. The youngest daughter of the eminent Yiddish tragedians, Sara and Jacob Adler, Stella began her career on her father's stage at the age of four in a production of "Broken Hearts." When she was eighteen, she went to London, where she made her debut at the Pavilion as Naomi in "Elisa Ben Avia," a role she performed for a year, before returning to New York. She spent the next ten years performing throughout the United States, Europe, and South America, appearing in more than 100 plays in vaudeville and the Yiddish theatre. She received a great deal of acclaim among Yiddish-speaking audiences as the leading lady of Jacob Ben Ami and Maurice Schwartz; yet she longed for wider

recognition and the opportunity to play more varied roles. 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 premi?re 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.

Sample Acting Exercises by Stella Adler

1. (ACTIONS)  Planned Entrance. Office: hold the mail while coming in; put eyeglasses away; drop your keys.  Bedroom: take off scarf; put key into purse; read name and address on letter.  Classroom: take off coat; take off gloves; arrange class papers.
2. (ACTIONS) Five Preparations.  For example, “to hide” – he’s looking for me so I better hide: Do something as you enter the room and finish it on stage.  That way the audience can tell what you were doing before you entered.
3. (ACTIONS) Pain – a headache: Imagine “as if” a) someone were pushing in your eyeballs.  b) I were sticking a needle in your eye.  Toothache: locate the tooth and imagine “as if” someone were scraping your gums with a razor.  Do not anticipate the pain.
4. (WORKING ON THE STAGE) Props: a) personalize them – in reading a magazine, tear out a page; in counting money, put some of the change in your pocket; in going through letters, look for a specific one and throw it away.  b) endowment – in pinning a flower on your dress, shake off the water or take off a thorn; in putting away a sweater, fix a loose thread first; in drinking a glass of water, wipe off the lipstick mark first.

The Technique on Acting by Stella Adler

(CHARACTERIZATION/OBSERVATION)

1. The Actor’s Goals – rid self of outside opinions; begin with self-awareness; body, speech, mind, emotions; discipline.
2. Beginning the Technique – energy, be heard, eliminate tension, physical control, speech control, muscular memory, animal movement.
3. Imagination – collective consciousness, seeing imaginatively, seeing and describing.
4. Circumstances – the truth of the place, living the circumstances, building the larger circumstances, mood in circumstances.
5. Actions – do-able and in VERB form.  Action is something you DO (to read; it has an end (reading newspaper); it is done in circumstances (in the subway); it is justified (to follow the stock market).
6. Justification – 1st comes the action, then the reason for doing it.  Instant, creative, in the circumstances (physicalize props), inner.
7. Working on the Stage – Props, Smartening up the Action, Personalization, Planned Accidents.
8. Character – Start with circumstances the playwright gives you.
9. Working on the Text – Verbing, Units, Study Script, Tell the Story, Actions 1st – Words 2nd; words come out of actions.

chapter one - The actor's goals

• 1st job of actor: rid self of outside opinions.
• Make lists of assets and faults: only with true awareness of both, can you begin to learn to break out of your mid-class defensiveness.
• Cannot hold back anything; begins with self-awareness.
• Actor has only her body as an instrument; work on body, speech, mind, emotions.
•     Must have a core made of steel and a will to survive.
• Entails a special strength, a new discipline.

chapter two - beginning the technique

• Energy: find the energy you need for your words; start with vocal.
• Reaching the Audience: all must hear you!
• Tension: enemy of acting; prevents truth; reduced when concentration is given to action; locate tense areas; relax.
• Physical Controls: principle - 1st you must achieve your norm and understand your body.
• Controls for Speech: understand yours; lips, accents, etc.
•    Muscular Memory: sensory truth of movement; touch object & then re-create when not there.
• Animal Movement: purpose - rid actor of social mask and free from inhibitions.  15  min/day; learn to use body and voice differently.

chapter three - imagination

• 99% of what you see and use on stage comes from it.
• Collective Consciousness: tap in to all you’ve experienced.
• Seeing Imaginatively.
•  Seeing and Describing.                                                                                                              
• Facts vs. Actor’s Way: pg. 21; in your CHOICE is your talent.

chapter four - circumstances

• The Truth of the Place: before go to text, imperative to physically move around in new circum. and use them; complete absorption.
• Living the Circumstances: pg.32; don’t take self and put into.
• Hamlet; truth of character is not found in YOU, but in CIRCUMSTANCES of royal position of Hamlet. THE TRUTH IS ALWAYS THE TRUTH IN THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE CHARACTER.
• Building the Larger Circumstances: Details!; build place for self and live in it.
• Mood in the Circumstances: Mood comes from the circum; church, bar, hospital has a mood; light or dark.

chapter five - actions

• Aim of your approach to acting is to find the actions in a scene or play; must be do-able; expressed by using verb form.
• Action is something you DO (to read); it has an end (reading newspaper); it is done in circumstances (in the subway); it is justified (to follow the stock market).
• Strong & Weak Actions: must have an objective.
• Explanation of an Action: KNOW - what you do, where you do it, when you do it, why you do it; the action does NOT include “how” which should be spontaneous and unexpected.
• Nature of an Action: it’s truth; with some actions you DO physical things or “activities”; do each and it will result in an overall.
• Overall Action (Ruling Idea): sum of all other actions (goal); 3 activities per step.
• Physicalizing: do something physical; takes the burden off the actor.
• Completing and Not Completing Actions: if can’t complete, change it to another; if can complete, do so, then go to another.
• Actions Which Do Not Use Text: they provoke you to use circumstances; pg.43-to read on veranda you must move chair, shoo bees, arrange book etc. (4 actions are good).
• Preparation and Covered Entrances: helps you start your action; keeps you from tightening up; prop keeps you truthful (take off coat when enter room).
• Pain and Death: Need “as if...” (stuck needle in eye=headache).
• Emotion: all can be found thru imagining in the circum. in the play; go to similar ACTION in own life that produces needed emotion; remember what you did, recall the place.

chapter six - justification

• 1st comes action, then reason for doing it (justification).
• What you choose for just. Should agitate you; as a result of agitation you will experience the action and the emotion. Talent consists of how well you do this.
• Instant Justification: awakens ability to experience activity; drink water to take pills; each just. Must have logic; deal only with circum. in front of you.
• More Creative Justifications: use imagination; more personal to you then more interesting and vivid to audience.
• Justification in the Circumstances: use the circum and physicalize the props if possible.
• Inner Justification: what the actor contributes to the lines of the playwright; lies behind the words; author gives lines and actor justifies.
• Answering factually: boring so Just. Turns facts into experience.

chapter seven - working on the stage

• Props: use imagination when working with props; know life of prop; understand each.
• Smartening Up the Action: can’t afford to be boring on stage; what you do on stage also needs a certain economy - can’t do all so choose parts (put on make-up - only lipstick and blush).
• Personalization: put own truth into every prop; be original (mirror is dirty); add detail; talent is how one chooses, handles and personalizes each prop; practice with them; adjust to them.
• Planned Accidents: practice so no unplanned occurs!
• Costume: action & costume go together; personalize for character; helps create inner self.

chapter eight - character

• Acting is largely based on differences between characters.
• Start with circum. that PW gives you.
• [Social Situation, Class, Playing a Profession, Background of Character (who, what, when, where, why), Character Elements, Attitude Toward Partner, Dialogue (indicate on app. pg: actions, moods, activities), Attitude, Building a Plot (character revealed thru it), Background (of family & beliefs), Levels (light comedy, medium, dark drama); only 1.]

chapter nine - vocabulary of action

• Verbs

chapter ten - actor's first approach to the actor

• Paraphrase play in actor’s words so they belong to you.
• Break play into sequences; units.

chapter eleven - working on the text

• Discuss it and its ideas; tell the story!
• study script, lift idea, realize the play.

chapter twelve - actor's contribution

• Lose dependency on words and go to the actions of the play.
• Actions 1st, words 2nd; words come out of the actions.
• Read the play several times.

Additional Weblinks for Stella Adler

Stella Afdler Studiol of Acting, New York City