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Ronald S Adler PhD MD - Hospital for Special Surgery - NYC Dr Adler,... imaginghss.org | Paul Adler Optometrist Contact lenses - Paul Adler Optometrists eyezone.co.uk |
Stella Adler (February 10, 1901[1] – December 21, 1992) was an American actress and an acclaimed acting teacher,[2] who founded the Stella Adler Conservatory in New York City (1949), where she taught acting for over four decades. [3][4] Her Grandson Tommy Oppenheim now runs the schools in both States, operating from his office within the New York Studio at 31 27th St (at Broadway).[citation needed] She began acting at the age of four as a part of the "Independent Yiddish Art Company" of her parents, and concluded it 55 years later, in 1961. During that time, and for years after, Stella Adler taught acting as well.[5]
[edit] Early lifeBorn in New York City's Lower East Side [6], Adler was a member of the Jewish-American Adler acting dynasty, the youngest daughter of Sara and Jacob P. Adler [2], the sister of Luther and Jay Adler, and half-sister of Charles Adler, in fact all her five siblings were actors. Jacob and Sara Adler were two of the finest actors of the American Yiddish theatre. They were a significant part of a vital ethnic theatrical scene that thrived in New York from the late 19th century well into the 1950s. Adler would become the most famous and influential member of her family. [edit] CareerShe began her acting career at the age of four in the play 'Broken Hearts' at the Grand Street Theater on the Lower East Side, as a part of her parents 'Independent Yiddish Art Company' [3][5]. She grew up acting in her parents often playing roles of boys and girls, and her work schedule allowed little time for schooling, but when possible she studied at public schools and New York University. She made her London debut, at the age of 18, as 'Naomi' in the play 'Elisa Ben Avia' of her father's company, in which she appeared for a year before returning to New York. In London she met her first husband, Englishman Horace Eliashcheff, their brief marriage however ended in a divorce. She made her English-language debut on Broadway in 1922, as the Butterfly in the play 'The World We Live In', and also spent a season in the vaudeville circuit. In 1922-1923, legendary Russian actor-director Constantin Stanislavski, made his only US tour, with his Moscow Art Theatre, Adler saw his performances as did many others; this was to have a lasting impact on her career, and also on the 20th century American theatre [6]. She joined the American Laboratory Theatre School in 1925, here she was introduced to Stanislavski's theories, from founders and Russian actor-teachers and former members of the Moscow Art Theater - Richard Boleslavski and Maria Ouspenskaya. In 1931 she joined the Group Theatre, New York, founded by Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg and Cheryl Crawford, through theater director and critic, Clurman, whom she later married in 1943. With Group theatre she worked in plays like 'Success Story' by John Howard Lawson, two Clifford Odets plays, 'Awake and Sing!' and 'Paradise Lost' and directed the touring company of Odets's 'Golden Boy' and 'More to Give to People'. Members of Group Theatre were leading interpreters of the Method acting technique based on the work and writings of Stanislavski. In 1934 Adler herself, went to Paris with Harold Clurman, and studied intensively with Stanislavski, for five weeks, during this period she found that Stanislavski had revised his theories to stress that the actor should create by imagination rather than by memory. Upon her return, she broke away from Strasberg on the fundamental aspects of Method acting [7]. Three years later, in January 1937, she moved to Hollywood, where she acted in films for six years, under the name Stella Ardler, occasionally returning to Group Theater until it dissolved in 1941. Eventually she returned to New York to act and direct, and most importantly to teach, first at the Erwin Piscator Dramatic Workshop at the New School for Social Research, New York City [8], and eventually founding Stella Adler Conservatory in 1949. In the coming years, she taught students like Marlon Brando, Dolores del Río, Robert De Niro, Elaine Stritch, Martin Sheen, Manu Tupou, Harvey Keitel, Melanie Griffith, Peter Bogdanovich and Warren Beatty at her school, the nuances of principles of characterization and script analysis, besides this she has also taught at the New School [9], remained as an adjunct professor of acting at Yale School of Drama and for many years headed the undergraduate drama department at New York University [3][10], and became one of America's leading acting teachers [7]
Adler was Marlon Brando's first professional acting teacher. Brando met her through his sister, Jocelyn, who was studying drama with Adler, and he decided to take drama as well. Brando had been considered unsuitable for the Army and had been expelled from the military school that his father had sent him to. Adler believed when she met Brando that he would be the best American actor in theater before the end of the year. In 1988, she turned author, with the publishing of 'The Technique of Acting' (Bantam Books), with a foreword by her former pupil, Marlon Brando [9]. [edit] Stanislavski and The MethodAdler was the only American actor to be instructed in the art of acting by Konstantin Stanislavski. She was a prominent member of the Group Theatre, but differences of opinion with Lee Strasberg over the correct teaching of the Stanislavski System (later developed by Strasberg into Method acting) contributed to her breaking off from the group. Adler's biggest issue with Strasberg concerned whether an actor should use the technique of "affective memory" (recalling a personal event or sensory experience for more expressive and truthful behavior), or living in the moment, using your partner to create a believable result. It's been said that after Strasberg died, Adler asked for a moment of silence in her class for the famous actor. Afterwards, she allegedly claimed that it will take a hundred years to repair what Strasberg did to acting.[citation needed] The fundamental difference between Strasberg and Adler is in how each approaches the problem of accessing emotion. Strasberg was always a strong advocate of emotional memory, i.e. using the five senses to evoke a past private emotion, whereas Adler thought that if you studied the text and truly believed in the imaginary circumstances, all the emotions in the script would surface organically. At one point Stella said 'Drawing on the emotions I experienced for example when my Mother died, to create a role, is sick and schizophrenic. If that is Acting, I don't want to do it' referring to Lee Strasberg's 'Emotion memory recall method' which is what Lee interpreted Stanislavsky as teaching. To clarify what Stanislavsky meant, Stella travelled to Paris to study privately with Stanislavsky for two weeks. He taught her that it was all about creating the character from the imagination. Stella once told a student 'your life isn't big enough to do King Lear', aluding to the fact he must research and create it from the imagination.[citation needed] [edit] Personal lifeAdler married three times, first to Horace Eliascheff, the father of her only child, Ellen, then from 1943 to 1960 to Harold Clurman, the famous director and critic, and one of the founders of the legendary Group Theatre, and finally to Mitchell A. Wilson, the physicist and novelist who died in 1973. She died on December 21, 1992, from heart failure at the age of 91, in Los Angeles, California, and was survived by a daughter, Ellen, of Manhattan; a sister, Julia, of Englewood, N.J., and two grandchildren including Tom Oppenheim,current president and artistic director of Stella Adler Studio of Acting, New York City [2]. She was interred in the Mount Carmel Cemetery, Glendale, New York. [edit] Legacy In 2004, The University of Texas at Austin's Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center acquired the complete archive of Stella Adler to be preserved for future research, it included correspondence, manuscripts, typescripts, video and audiotapes, photographs and other materials, tracing her career, from her start in the New York Yiddish Theater in 1906, to her encounters with Konstantin Stanislavski and the Group Theatre in the 1930s, to her lectures on the Adler technique at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting [13]. In 2006, she was honored with a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in front on the 'Stella Adler Theater' on Hollywood Boulevard [14]. [edit] Stella Adler Studio and the IlluminaryThe acting studios Adler founded still operate in New York City and Los Angeles today. Her method, based on use of the actor's imagination, has been studied by many renowned actors, such as Robert De Niro, Martin Sheen, Roy Scheider, Vincent D'Onofrio, Mark Ruffalo, Warren Beatty, Michael Imperioli, Barbara Stuart, Joyce Meadows, Stephen Bauer and Benicio del Toro, in addition to Marlon Brando, who served as the studio's Honorary Chairman until his death, and was replaced by another pupil Warren Beatty. Adler's legacy continues with the work of the Stella Adler Conservatory, and with the Actors Circle Theatre, established by Arthur Mendoza, a former pupil and founding principal instructor at her studio in Hollywood. [edit] Career on BroadwayAll works are the original Broadway productions unless otherwise noted.
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