Specific method approaches in the acting colleges?

College Majors Theater/Drama Majors
1

<p>Hi all,</p>

<p>I've leafed through a ton of all those great posts about deciding between schools like Syracuse, Rutgers, UNCSA, Emerson, Purchase, DePaul...</p>

<p>Of those above schools though, my specific question is, is there any one emphasized style or method/approach that is a focus in any of those bfa acting programs?</p>

<p>Anything is helpful, thanks. I know also that there is a meisner emphasis at rutgers but idk how in-depth or lasting that emphasis is.. Also is there some sort of classical emphasis at uncsa? I think i read that somewhere.</p>

<p>Again, thanks, its a ridiculous choice between all of these places but my approach to picking out the best is to get an idea of the training :)</p>

<p>Please answer, thanks!</p>

2

<p>Just as far as “acting technique” … </p>

<p>Not sure about Syracuse although I gather it’s a Stanislavski based “toolbox” approach.</p>

<p>Rutgers is pure Meisner from a top Esper disciple with a Chekhov module second year with Lenard Petit who is one of the foremost teachers of that approach in the world. Then they do a whole year of classical study in London third year. </p>

<p>UNCSA is “toolbox” although there is a strong Meisner influence from a teacher who was actually approved by Meisner himself to teach his technique and there’s a Russian lady who is in Stanislavski’s direct lineage although I understand she mainly emphasizes public solitude and fourth wall work and leaves most of the rest like the animal exercises etc. to an old-school Juilliard grad. Also a very strong classical influence.</p>

<p>Emerson is more or less pure Stanislavski to my knowledge.</p>

<p>Purchase is a very eclectic mix of a lot of things designed for each actor to figure out what works best for him. It’s generally considered more “movement” oriented, but they also teach the full Lecoq progression.</p>

<p>DePaul apparently has a Meisner influence, but most of what I’ve heard involves lots and lots of Spolin games/improv first year before moving onto text.</p>

<p>It’s best to get all this from current students, though. You could probably find a few to hit up with questions on Facebook if you look around. You can also usually tell a lot by Googling the teachers and looking at their backgrounds. It’s mainly parents on here …</p>

3

<p>Thanks very much man, definitely didn’t know a lot of that; i’ll get in contact with faculty and students.</p>

4

<p>Stanislavsky is the foundation for ALL modern theatre training. The different schools of thought all use Stanislavsky as their “jumping off point” and then take it different directions. Many insist “We are doing real Stanislavsky, everyone else is doing it wrong!”. When the debate goes in-depth, it can even involve arguments about how to translate specific Russian words (since Stanislavsky wrote in Russian).</p>

<p>I would therefore be skeptical about anyone who said “We do pure Stanislavsky.” I would be asking which of the interpretations of Stanislavsky they follow.</p>

<p>KEVP</p>

5

<p>@KEVP</p>

<p>Stanislavsky is not the foundation for ALL modern theater training. I can’t speak to the schools listed above, but the ETW studio at NYU is definitely not Stanislavsky. Also, outside of any University, there are a variety of different non-Stanislavsky techniques, like Viewpoints, started by Anne Bogart and Tina Landau. And Jerzy Grotowski’s theater laboratory and poor theater concepts are not Stanislavsky based. I’m sure that those people were exposed to Stanislavsky, but I wouldn’t say that their training methods are at all rooted in Stanislavsky’s methods. And there are many more techniques that are radically different then Stanislavsky. And all this is just with regards to western theater. Eastern and Asian theater, even their modern stuff, is a completely different story. Just saying…</p>

6

<p>^ True dat. Plus you have to understand that Stanislavski’s system was created as a compliment to the presentational styles prevalent in his day. Not as a total replacement like the old Group Theater teachers who misunderstood it and essentially threw the baby out with the bathwater would have had it. We’re really just now getting past all that and it’s one area in which academia is typically lagging a bit behind although most of the good schools now address at least some of it in physical theatre classes. Most commonly Suzuki, Viewpoints, Lecoq, Grotwoski, Laban, Malgrem and Meyerhold. Not to mention Chekhov who actually was connected directly to Stanislavski although with a great deal of divergence. And then you have some other modern approaches to just playing psychological realism which is the goal of Stanislavski’s system like Harold Guskin’s which is very much divorced from it as well as Charles Conrad’s [“Choiceless</a> Awareness.”](<a href=“http://www.backstage.com/advice-for-actors/acting-teachers/something-to-not-think-about]"Choiceless”>http://www.backstage.com/advice-for-actors/acting-teachers/something-to-not-think-about)</p>

<p>Now just for fun’s sake since I can’t help myself, here’s a blurb from one of the top LA “finishing” teachers whose approach is similar to Harold Guskin’ s although it’s geared primarily for tv and film work … </p>

<p>

:slight_smile:
But before any kids get any rebellious ideas about what you’ll learn in college, she expects her new students to already have some kind of Stanislavski based training before you go to her. Hell, she has a BFA from Tisch, an MFA from Yale and basically put the Marymount Manhattan BFA on the map during her time teaching there.</p>

7

<p>Well, that was fun to read. “Blissfully live in the not-knowing”?</p>

8

<p>Fish thank you. That was very enlightening and entertaining. This thread has become a nice survey of various approaches. Class dismissed for a coffee break.</p>

9

<p>Fish, your better then an encyclopedia when it comes to this stuff. Do you yourself still take ongoing acting classes? Or does this sort of education end after college if you’ve been in a BA or BFA acting program?</p>

10

<p>shacherry- I saw an interview with Doris Roberts who played the mom in “Everybody Loves Raymond”- she said she still takes acting classes- even at her age and with her vast experience.</p>

11

<p>“The Method” was not invented by Stanislavsky. “The Method” comes from Lee Strasberg’s INTERPRETATION of Stanislavsky.</p>

<p>And yes, I have been talking about stage rather than film/tv.</p>

<p>But a lot of interesting comments here.</p>

12

<p>

I’ve been out of town working too much to commit to ongoings although I know of a couple I’d dearly love to get into. I’ve mainly had private coaching and taken a few weekend workshops.</p>

<p>But it never ends … Walking across the stage in your cap and gown should be properly viewed as more like walking the plank. It’s no longer your major. Now it’s your livelihood and most new graduates need to at least take some audition classes or get some coaching since most schools - even the top ones - do a pretty sorry job of teaching that. Besides, almost everyone is still going to have some holes in their game and ongoings are a must if you aren’t working. Even series regular types often take them like supportive pointed out. The problem a lot of new college grads have is that they either can’t afford them or wrongly think they don’t need them. There’s even a [“S****</a> People Say” video](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRXVGLDdJv4]"S****”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRXVGLDdJv4) for New LA Actors in which she says, “I don’t need to take classes. I went to Carnegie Mellon!” Yeah, right …

It’s a Zen thing. You’d be amazed at how many parallels there are between Zen practice and actor training.</p>

13

<p>What FBF says is true throughout the arts. After graduation, one continues to learn, to study, to seek mentors. It’s a life-long process.</p>

14

<p>A teaching gig in your future ever FBF? You seem to have a much higher interest in the how and why things work than I suspect most of your fellow actors do and that would seem to be a huge plus in teaching.</p>

15

<p>GH – I suspect that is true in just about every profession. It is certainly true as a lawyer. Nobody even pretends that a lawyer out of law school is ready to do anything except starting to learn what they didn’t learn in law school.</p>

16

<p>Thanks Fish. I’ve saved your list of acting classes and studios in NY and LA from another thread.</p>

17

<p>Glad to have been of help. :slight_smile:

I feel like it’s part of my job to keep abreast of things and I’m kind of nosey by nature, but ME??? TEACH??? CLASSES??? LOL Maybe in about twenty years my blood will have cooled enough for me to have the patience for it. I believe the ability to teach well is a talent all its own that I’m not so sure I possess, but I suppose my teaching style would be somewhere between Lesly <a href=“great%20impersonation%5B/url%5D”>url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQTUCi36RdA&lt;/a&gt; and [Marjorie</a> Ballentine](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed0pX4dSbSI]Marjorie”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed0pX4dSbSI) who puts on quite a show and pulls. no. punches. I met a couple of Northwestern grads when I audited Marjorie’s Master Class, btw, and I thought the work being done was on average a good bit more impressive than in most of the other studios. And Nelsan Ellis who gives her props as his coach in that video is actually a Juilliard grad. </p>

<p>Hell, I’m really not so sure my way of working could be taught to anyone but me. And it’s actually still a work in progress and probably always will be.<br>

</p>

<p>Oh, and KEVP … You’re relying on the most restrictive definition of Method and you’re somewhat mistaken about the version you’ve adopted being merely Strasberg’s interpretation. He along with Adler, Harold Clurman and some others learned it from Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya whom Stanislavski had BEGGED to not teach it to Americans whom had not witnessed the state of Russian theatre at the time of its creation and would surely misunderstand on the basis of cultural differences and language barriers if nothing else. It was also a work in progress and he’d moved away from affective and sense memory as an emphasis in favor of imagination and action by the time he met with Stella Adler in Paris who in turn mistakenly (or possibly intentionally) said that he had completely removed those aspects from his system when he had in fact not. Then Meisner brought his own take after studying with a couple of Stanislavski’s later students whose names elude me at the moment thereby leading to all the infighting and competitive and counterproductive rhetoric that haunts American acting to this day and eventually led to David Mamet serving as a provocatuer and taking it so far the hell over the top in True and False that he actually had the positive benefit of making dialog like this a necessity … [BACKSTAGE</a> Interview](<a href=“http://www.delossbrown.com/backstage.html]BACKSTAGE”>BACKSTAGE Interview)</p>

<p>And in case anybody isn’t already bored to tears by all this nerdy historical technique talk, Dustin Hoffman gave a great clarification as to some commonly held misconceptions about Method as KEVP defines it at [1:12:00</a> in his Inside the Actors Studio Q&A.](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaVwKN8DdkI]1:12:00”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaVwKN8DdkI)

Amen.</p>

18

<p>I think we are saying the same thing. When you are being taught “Stanislavsky” you are always just being taught some VERSION of Stanislavsky. And there are many different versions. There really is no such thing as “pure Stanislavsky”, so make sure you understand which version you are being sold.</p>

<p>KEVP</p>

19

<p>My son’s acting coach says that Stanislavsky based his approach on the acting of Eleanora Duse, who said she followed the dictates of Shakespeare. So it all comes back to him!</p>

20

<p>^ He did see Duse work and it had an influence, but he compiled his system over time by interviewing a lot of actors whose work he admired about their processes along with a lot of trial and error. Like his move away from affective memory as an emphasis in favor of imagination supposedly began in earnest after Michael Chekhov who was one of his students gave a long, heartwrenching monologue about the death of his father that pretty well left everyone in the class in tears. Stanislavski then kicked him out of class for a couple of weeks when he told everyone he’d just made it up and that his father was fine, but the point about which they’d been arguing for awhile was taken. Another funny thing is that all the Method people hold Duse up as an ideal and go on and on about her while at the same time villifying Sarah Bernhardt who was another acclaimed actress of the period with a markedly presentational style when there really isn’t much information available about Duse’s actual process if she even had such a thing set in stone. But yeah … Shakespeare did pretty well lay it out in Hamlet’s advice to the players although he didn’t prescribe any particular “method.”</p>

<p>Oh, and what I meant by “pure Stanislavski” in reference to Emerson was that I believe they simply teach Stanislavski’s system as they understand it instead of one of the named American Method versions. And yes. There will always be differences in the way any system is taught just by nature of the teacher’s skill, preferences and personality if nothing else. I said “pure Meisner,” too, in reference to Rutgers when in fact it’s taught by Barbara Marchant whose approach may differ somewhat from her teacher, Bill Esper, who is known to have occasionally butted heads with Sandy Meisner over the differences in which he approached teaching the technique. These things all evolve, too. Like the Practical Aesthetics approach as it is now taught apparently differs somewhat from how it was spelled out in A Practical Handbook for the Actor although the overall philosophy remains the same. They’re all like that. Hell, Uta Hagen even wanted her first book, Respect for Acting, discontinued from print and removed from the shelves after she published A Challenge for the Actor due to the evolution in her teachings although I found useful nuggets in both. It’s not like there’s any one true recipe …</p>