Download Stella Adler - Public Schools of Robeson County

Stella Adler
Stella Adler (February 10, 1901[1] – December 21, 1992) was an American actress and an
acclaimed acting teacher [2], who founded the Stella Adler Conservatory in New York City
(1949), where she taught the Method acting technique of acting for over four decades [3][4]. Prior
to that she started acting at the age of four as a part of the 'Independent Yiddish Art Company' of
her parents, and concluded it 55 years later, in 1961. During that time, and for years after, Stella
Adler taught acting as well. [5]
Career
She began her acting career at the age of four in the play 'Broken Hearts' at the Grand Street
Theater on the Lower East Side, as a part of her parents 'Independent Yiddish Art Company' [3][5].
She grew up acting in her parents often playing roles of boys and girls, and her work schedule
allowed little time for schooling, but when possible she studied at public schools and New York
University. She made her London debut, at the age of 18, as 'Naomi' in the play 'Elisa Ben Avia'
of her father's company, in which she appeared for a year before returning to New York. In
London she met her first husband, Englishman Horace Eliashcheff, their brief marriage however
ended in a divorce.
She made her English-language debut on Broadway in 1922, as the Butterfly in the play 'The
World We Live In', and also spent a season in the vaudeville circuit. In 1922-1923, legendary
Russian actor-director Stanislavsky, made his only US tour, with his Moscow Art Theatre, Adler
saw his performances as did many others; this was to have a lasting impact on her career, and also
on the 20th century American theatre [6]. She joined the American Laboratory Theatre School in
1925, here she was introduced to Stanislavsky's theories, from founders and Russian actorteachers and former members of the Moscow Art Theater - Richard Boleslavski and Maria
Ouspenskaya. In 1931 she joined the Group Theatre, New York, founded by Harold Clurman,
Lee Strasberg and Cheryl Crawford, through theater director and critic, Clurman, whom she later
married in 1943. With Group theatre she worked in plays like 'Success Story' by John Howard
Lawson, two Clifford Odets plays, 'Awake and Sing!' and 'Paradise Lost' and directed the touring
company of Odets's 'Golden Boy' and 'More to Give to People'. Members of Group Theatre were
leading interpreters of the Method acting technique based on the work and writings of Konstantin
Stanislavsky.
In 1934 Adler herself, went to Paris with Harold Clurman, and studied intensively with
Konstantin Stanislavsky of the Moscow Art Theatre, for five weeks, during this period she found
that Stanislavsky had revised his theories to stress that the actor should create by imagination
rather than by memory. Upon her return, she broke away from Strasberg on the fundamental
aspects of Method acting [7].
Three years later, in January 1937, she moved to Hollywood, where she acted in films for six
years, under the name Stella Ardler, occasionally returning to Group Theater until it dissolved in
1941. Eventually she returned to New York to act and direct, and most importantly to teach, first
at the Erwin Piscator Dramatic Workshop at the New School for Social Research, New York City
[8]
, and eventually founding Stella Adler Conservatory in 1949. In the coming years, she taught
students like Marlon Brando, Dolores del Río, Robert De Niro, Elaine Stritch, Martin Sheen,
Manu Tupou, Harvey Keitel, Melanie Griffith, Peter Bogdanovich and Warren Beatty at her
school, the nuances of principles of characterization and script analysis, besides this she has also
taught at the New School [9], remained as an adjunct professor of acting at Yale School of Drama
and for many years headed the undergraduate drama department at New York University [3][10],
and became one of America's leading acting teachers [7]
"Stella Adler was 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."[11]
-Marlon Brando
Adler was Marlon Brando's first professional acting teacher. Brando met her through his sister,
Jocelyn, who was studying drama with Adler, and he decided to take drama as well. Brando had
been considered unsuitable for the Army and had been expelled from the military school that his
father had sent him to. Adler believed when she met Brando that he would be the best American
actor in theater before the end of the year. In 1988, she turned author, with the publishing of 'The
Technique of Acting' (Bantam Books), with a foreword by her former pupil, Marlon Brando [9].
From 1926 until 1952 Adler appeared regularly on Broadway, and over the years, Her later
notable stage roles include the 1946 revival 'He Who Gets Slapped' and, in London, an eccentric
mother in a 1961 black comedy, 'Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm
Feelin' So Sad.' Among the plays she directed was a 1956 revival of the Paul Green-Kurt Weill
antiwar musical 'Johnny Johnson', in all appearing in nearly 200 plays [12]. She appeared in only
three films, Love on Toast (1937), Shadow of the Thin Man (1941), and My Girl Tisa (1948).
Stanislavski and The Method
Adler was the only American actor to be instructed in the art of acting by Konstantin Stanislavski.
She was a prominent member of the Group Theatre, but differences of opinion with Lee Strasberg
over the correct teaching of the Stanislavski System (later developed by Strasberg into Method
acting) contributed to her breaking off from the group.
Adler's biggest issue with Strasberg concerned whether an actor should use the technique of
"affected memory" (recalling a personal event or sensory experience for more expressive and
truthful behavior), or living in the moment, using your partner to create a believable result. It's
been said that after Strasberg died, Adler asked for a moment of silence in her class for the
famous actor. Afterwards, she allegedly claimed that it will take a hundred years to repair what
Strasberg did to acting.
The fundamental difference between Strasberg and Adler is in how each approaches the problem
of accessing emotion. Strasberg was always a strong advocate of emotional memory, i.e. using
the five senses to evoke a past private emotion, whereas Adler thought that if you studied the text
and truly believed in the imaginary circumstances, all the emotions in the script would surface
organically.
Legacy
Stella Adler Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard
In 2004, The University of Texas at Austin's Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center
acquired the complete archive of Stella Adler to be preserved for future research, it included
correspondence, manuscripts, typescripts, video and audiotapes, photographs and other materials,
tracing her career, from her start in the New York Yiddish Theater in 1906, to her encounters
with Konstantin Stanislavski and the Group Theatre in the 1930s, to her lectures on the Adler
technique at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting [13].
In 2006, she was honored with a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in front on the
'Stella Adler Theater' on Hollywood Boulevard [14].
Stella Adler Studio
The acting studios Adler founded still operate in New York City and Los Angeles today. Her
method, based on use of the actor's imagination, has been studied by many renowned actors, such
as Robert De Niro, Martin Sheen, Roy Scheider, Vincent D'Onofrio, Mark Ruffalo, Warren
Beatty, Michael Imperioli, Barbara Stuart, Joyce Meadows, and Benicio del Toro, in addition to
Marlon Brando, who served as the studio's Honorary Chairman until his death, and was replaced
by another pupil Warren Beatty. Adler's legacy continues with the work of the Stella Adler
Conservatory, and with the Actors Circle Theatre, established by Arthur Mendoza, a former pupil
and founding principal instructor at her studio in Hollywood.
Quotes






"Don't use your conscious past. Use your creative imagination to create a past that
belongs to your character. I don't want you to be stuck with your own life. It's too little."
"You can't be boring. Life is boring. The weather is boring. Actors must not be boring."
"Growth as an actor and as a human being are synonymous."
"A junkie is someone who uses their body to tell society that something is wrong."
"The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place. It is the
place people come to see the truth about life and the social situation. The theatre
is a spiritual and social X-ray of its time. The theatre was created to tell people the
truth about life and the social situation."
"Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one."