April 19, 1993
Special guest stars: Actors Studio teachers
have brought the Method to the
By Staci D. Kramer
Shelley Winters is cajoling 16
Winters is part of a pilot program that has brought
the vaunted Actors Studio of New York and
But why this university outside
A.E. Hotchner is the answer. Hotchner,
the author, playwright and business partner of Paul Newman, was a
During a visit to
He and Newman are partners in the company that produces popular
"Newman's Own" products like spaghetti sauce, salad dressing and
popcorn. Every year the two men give away all of the profits through the
Newman's Own Foundation, or an average of $8 million a year.
"In terms of our donations, this is small potatoes," Hotchner said of the $40,000 grant that covered the
expenses and honorariums for the pilot program that could spread to other
schools. Any funds remaining will be turned over to the Actors Studio, whose
members have included Marlon Brando, Robert de Niro,
Al Pacino and Julie Harris, and which relies solely
on contributions.
Quick action
Hotchner, Schvey and the
studio moved swiftly. A year after the conversation, Ernie Martin, artistic
director of the Actors Studio West, arrived for a three-week stay. He was
followed by character actor Salem Ludwig, a member of the Actors Studio board,
and by actor, teacher and author Carlton Colyer.
Winters arrived in late March, skipping the Academy Awards to keep her
commitment. Hampered by a bad back, she still put as much energy into class as
she might starring in a movie.
"Be kangaroos with babies in your pouches," Winters orders her
students. "You're monkeys with tails. Some of you be
baby giraffes." Wisecracks mingle with mock groans as the students warm up
for the fifth of her six two-hour classes. "Now be human beings."
"Oh, that's the hardest one of all," says one young man. Winters
tells the human beings to square dance and gets a blank look from the MTV
generation.
Warmups over, the real work begins. Clad in casual
black knit pants, T-shirt and a Fitz's Root Beer cap, Winters
peppers the class with questions, anecdotes of her career and insights about
the profession.
Anything is fodder, even an episode of "All My Children" she had
just watched in her hotel room. Actress Joyce Van Patten was portraying the
bitchy mother of a popular character and this was the climactic moment when she
remembers her own youth.
"You can't do Method work on a soap opera," Winters
says of the performance, which employed Method acting. "Be careful. Know
what your medium is."
"I've been told the Method works for everything," says a puzzled
student.
"I know, but it ain't true," Winters replies. She tried Method acting in an episode of
"Hotel" that went awry. "It was too much reality for television.
Am I onfusing you no
end?"
The answer is a quick yes.
'Re-creation of behavior'
"The Method," or what Ludwig explains as "the re-creation of
behavior, rather than the imitation of behavior," and its proper use are
what Winters and colleagues are here to teach.
A longtime student of Lee Strasberg, the first artistic director of the
Actors Studio, Winters is using her brief two-week
stay to expose the students to the exercises that helped her mature as an
actress.
"They still think standing on a stage and emoting at each other is
acting," she explains after class. But she wants them to try exercises
like "affective memory," "substitution," "private
moments" and "emotional recall" to gain insight into themselves
and the characters they portray. Each exercise requires the use of the actor's
own emotions and memories in a different way.
"It's difficult," she admits. "You see the kids' resistance
to it."
First at bat, one obviously talented student tries repeatedly to perform a
monologue using affective memory, the process of using a distant traumatic
experience that hasn't been emotionally acknowledged. At its best, affective
memory can be used to keep a performance fresh or to help an actor move past a
problem.
Winters tries to help the young woman set the mood. "Is there some song
that has meaning for you?"
"No, I listen to public radio," the woman responds.
After a few more questions, the student pulls a song from her memory and
begins to hum.
Several attempts later, Winters explains to the
woman, "I'm trying to get you to act with your fear and share your
feelings. I want you to expose yourself."
Finally, the student breaks through, then stops
cold. "I lost it," she whispers. But Winters
tells her, "You did it. Could you feel it? You did something you couldn't
plan."
Winters pushes a bit more, than backs down. After all, these are
undergraduates, not professionals.
Slowly, she breaks down defenses. When two students try a scene from
Tennessee Williams' "Summer and Smoke,"
there are more stops and starts. But even a rank observer can tell that the
interruptions are having the desired effect.
"Take off your shoes, your high heels," Winters orders the woman
playing Williams' character
"David, stop upstaging yourself so much. You're a very giving
actor," she tells the young man playing John.
"You're making it happen instead of allowing it to happen," she
tells both.
At the insistence of the Actors Studio, this is a pass-fail class that would
be difficult to fail. The professionals have also insisted on diversity.
"They didn't want the 16 best actors or the 16 top students," Schvey explained. "They wanted a range of
experience." Students wrote essays explaining why they should be in the
class, then the
When Winters first learned these techniques in the
1950s, she was surrounded by fellow professionals. The Actors Studio, an
outgrowth of the Group Theatre, was founded in 1947 by Elia
Kazan, Cheryl Crawford and Robert Lewis. They wanted to create a workshop where
professional actors could continue to improve.
Like the Group Theatre, the focus was on a personal style of acting
developed by the great Russian director Konstantin
Stanislavsky around the turn of the century. Strasberg, another Group Theatre
founder, joined the Actors Studio the following year. The Actors Studio West
was founded in 1966 by members who had migrated to
Members must audition first, but once accepted are members for life. They
work in front of their peers, often taking risks with very private memories.
Part of the process is a post-performance critique session that can be blunt.
Winters and the others teaching here realize that college students may not
be ready for some of these techniques and procedures. But they're more than
pleased with the results of this experiment.
"The Actors Studio is just about 45 years old now and I think it's very
elitist and insular to just do it in one place on
Not for everyone
Ernie Martin, who has coached Mary McDonnell, Lorraine Bracco
and Harvey Keitel, was so pleased with his part in the program that he returned
Easter weekend with his wife, actress Ann Wedgeworth
of "Evening Shade," and daughter in tow. He sat in on Winters' last class, and took the students to lunch the next
day.
"I see very few people with this desire to learn," Martin said.
"That's why I flipped over these kids. Everybody else is 'put my fingers
on the guitar and I'll play like the Beatles. I don't want to learn.' "
He attributes some of the atmosphere to Henry Schvey.
"I've seen his vision and his passion. If this continues,
Schvey was surprised by the studio devotees'
flexibility. "To be very honest, I was afraid the studio would impose its
will, see the Method as the only method."
Far from it. The teachers realize the Method is not
for everyone.
David Baecker, a 20-year-old sophomore drama major
from
Susan Stolar, 23, a junior from
"She got down to some of the fundamentals of the Actors Studio," Stolar says. "She stripped away a lot of layers and
you feel it. Even after she's gone, you feel the impact of what she's done."