Love and Lee Strasberg

One of my former co-workers used to listen to me explain for long periods of time about some of the activities and work we used to do in Actor's Gymnasium sessions. She always asked me "What did you do this past Saturday at Actor's Gymnasium?" And I would tell her. She would nod her head and tell me she was going to attend the coming Saturday. But never did she. And that didn't matter because our weekly talks became just as important to me. They became a chance for reflection, for new ideas, etc. And I would talk Stanislavsky and talk about Lee Strasberg's work, and all things good like that. My co-worker was a supremely talented actress and singer. She was also a student of and lover of theatre history like myself. But she didn't take to the ideas I would discuss, the practical work and notions of Stanislavsky and of Lee. Which was all fine and good with me at the time. Acting is not an intellectual process as many imagine it. The mind is of course involved, but learning and experience and understanding of the craft on the stage requires the actual body in process.

Skip ahead three years now. My former co-worker has completed her Master's Degree through Pace University and the Actor's Studio. She was of course immersed in the basic teachings of Strasberg during that time. Her recent assesment of her own work was that before she was a disembodied voice on the stage, but feels now that the different aspects of her personality and talent are integrated and more fully functioning on the stage. Her own mother she said, hardly recognized her most recent work, thrilled by the things she was seeing and hearing and experiencing her daughter do on stage. We haven't talked yet about the specifics of the process, but whatever they taught her, she acknowledges was/is inspiring and helpful.

And I'm not surprised. Whenever I see someone with exceptional talents, and see them facing the difficulties and basic challenges of acting, of performing on stage, I know there is one place they can go where their own individual needs as creative artists can be addressed - and that place is Lee Strasberg's work and ideas. The subject came up recently (and I wrote about it on this blog in the "You Don't Bring Sonia Moore in this House" post) about who would I recommend and why. And in fact I am meeting later this very day with the actor in question of the post to discuss his recent discovery and reactions to some of Lee's work. His take so far... "The guy (referring to Lee) is O.K. by me!"