Actors Studio

Theater company that emphasized a training technique based on actors’ psychological and emotional awareness of their characters’ motivations

Date Formed in 1947

Place New York, New York

The Actors Studio rose to fame as one of the best acting schools during the 1950’s by expanding and promoting famed Russian stage director Konstantin Stanislavsky’s “Method” acting and became a major influence on postwar theater.

Founded by Elia Kazan , Cheryl Crawford , and Robert Lewis in 1947, the Actors Studio adapted the techniques of Konstantin Stanislavsky’s “system” of acting (later known as the Method) and trained American actors to act from within. Most important, it emphasized that acting was a technique rather than solely an art form.

Stanislavsky challenged the actors he directed to find the character within themselves and used the Method to prepare them to act in plays of the era that were using a new genre, realism. Stanislavsky felt that the actors’ art alone enabled them to perform in classical drama or farce, genres popular in the nineteenth century, but not necessarily in realist performances. During Stanislavsky’s tour of the United States and Europe in 1922 with his Moscow Art Theater, two members defected and began teaching at the American Laboratory Theater. A businessman, Lee Strasberg , was impressed by the acting.

Strasberg joined Cheryl Crawford, a successful stage producer, to found the Group Theatre in 1931. This company was the first in the United States that worked as an ensemble. Actors were invited to join, Elia Kazan and Robert Lewis among them. Financial problems and artistic differences split the company in 1941, but some of the original members—Kazan, Lewis, and Crawford—decided to start another group, the Actors Studio, in 1947.

Strasberg Years

Initially, Robert Lewis and Elia Kazan taught acting to the original fifty members; in 1949, after several changes of personnel—such as Lewis’s resignation—Strasberg was invited to join. He soon became the only person to teach acting, and in 1951, he was named artistic director.

Strasberg taught actors to reach inside themselves for the play’s required emotions. This meant that actors had to prepare themselves before each scene, frequently dwelling on events in their own pasts that would evoke emotions similar to those felt by their characters. Actors taught this way were called “method actors.” Strasberg initiated the process by which an actor attains inspiration and subsequently created workshops for actors to work on facets of their art apart from the concerns of production.

While the Actors Studio was not the only school teaching method acting (Marlon Brando , studying with Stella Adler, used the technique to bring Stanley Kowalski to life in Tennessee Williams’s 1951 screenplay A Streetcar Named Desire) , most major theater and film actors studied at least for a time at the Actors Studio.

Actors went through a rigorous audition process, and talent, rather than celebrity, was the primary factor in their acceptance. If not accepted, they often re-auditioned several times. Once an actor was a member, the membership was lifelong. Classes were conducted in workshops where actors performed scenes that were critiqued by experienced professionals as well as by other students.

Impact

The 1950’s was the Actors Studio’s heyday, and its approach revolutionized theater and film acting. Strasberg turned the studio into a breeding ground for a generation of theatrical stars, including Brando, James Dean , Montgomery Clift , Joanne Woodward, and Geraldine Page . Audiences were enthralled by method acting and watched as performers seemed to become the character in front of their eyes. Method acting became standard in the world of theater and film, and the list of actors trained by the studio eventually came to include notable performers such as Paul Newman , Ellen Burstyn , Al Pacino , Dustin Hoffman , Jack Lemmon, Meryl Streep, Shirley MacLaine , and Rip Torn.

Subsequent Events

The Actors Studio continued its prominence in the world of theater throughout the twentieth century. After Strasberg died in 1982, the company went through some difficult financial times, but its board managed to keep it afloat. Cable television’s Bravo network created the program Inside the Actors Studio, which provided a regular source of revenue in the early twenty-first century. In 2004 it still had a theater in New York City at which actors, playwrights, and directors displayed their craft.

Bibliography

Frome, Shelly. The Actors Studio: A History. New York: McFarland, 2001. The founders of the studio are thoroughly discussed, as are the lives and careers of its early icons.

Hethmon, Robert, ed. Strasberg at the Actors Studio: Tape-Recorded Sessions. 1965. Reprint. New York: Theater Communications Group, 1991. The interviews with Strasberg contained in this book give the reader Strasberg’s thoughts on acting technique and theater in general.

Hirsch, Foster. A Method to Their Madness: The History of the Actors Studio. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2001. Examines the techniques of the studio and how its alumni shaped theatrical history.