Acting with Adler |
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Author:
| Rotte, Joanna |
Foreword by:
| Adler, Ellen |
ISBN: | 978-0-87910-299-9 |
Publication Date: | Sep 2000 |
Publisher: | Hal Leonard Corporation
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Imprint: | Amadeus Press |
Book Format: | Hardback |
List Price: | USD $25.00 |
Book Description:
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The figure of Stella Adler towers high among the memorable acting teachers in American theatre. Her methods of training, her principles of acting & character interpretation, her analyses of the seminal plays of the modern theatre comprise a legacy for everyone who followed her. In Acting with Adler, that legacy gains the special immediacy & authenticity of her own spoken words. Over three years in the 1970s, Joanna Rotte worked with Adler as a student & as an actress under her...
More DescriptionThe figure of Stella Adler towers high among the memorable acting teachers in American theatre. Her methods of training, her principles of acting & character interpretation, her analyses of the seminal plays of the modern theatre comprise a legacy for everyone who followed her. In Acting with Adler, that legacy gains the special immediacy & authenticity of her own spoken words. Over three years in the 1970s, Joanna Rotte worked with Adler as a student & as an actress under her direction, all the while taking the copious notes that have become the heart of this book. Stella Adler opened her theatre studio in New York City in 1949. Alone among American acting teachers, she had studied with Stanislavsky, & for more than 40 years she taught her own evolving interpretation of the Stanislavsky System. That system, she believed, ventured beyond psychological realism & reliance on "emotion memory" to make "you relive the sensations you once felt," which was the hallmark of Method acting in the United States. To her students Adler recalled Stanislavsky's focus on doing an action within a specific circumstance-the situation of the play, not one's own situation. This became the center of Adler's technique of acting; her teaching stressed discovering the deepest meanings of a play, using imagination to develop ways to express such meanings & grounding the ultimate performance in disciplined training of voice & body. Throughout, Adler speaks about her principles in a tough-minded & demanding way, inspired by her overriding conviction that as a person an actor "becomes bigger through working." Acting with Adler provides an opportunity to sit in on the classes of this remarkable woman of whom her student Marlon Brando said, "My debt & gratitude to her are enormous. As a teacher of acting, she has few peers. As a human being, few equals."