“The landscape has to inspire you with awe”

Along with The Screwtape Letters (Emily! I start it tonight!), I am also re-reading one of my favorites: Stella Adler on Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov.

Adler deserves a whole post of her own at one point – but suffice it to say this:

Stella Adler was one of the premier actresses of her generation. She came from the “Adler” family, a famous family of actors, she came out of the Yiddish theatre tradition (which was hugely formative – centered in lower Manhattan).

She was one of the founding members of the Group Theatre, in the 1930s.

And she went on to become one of the best teachers of acting this country has ever known. The Stella Adler Conservatory, established in 1949, is still going strong, although Adler died in 1992.

She taught Marlon Brando. (Although, to be precise, here is what Stella Adler said about the young Marlon Brando: “Brando was in my class, yes. But I did not teach him anything. Marlon Brando in an acting class was like sending a tiger to jungle school.”)

She taught Robert DeNiro, Harvey Keitel, Benicio del Torro.

Her main strength as a teacher, and what she will probably be remembered for, is her “script analysis” class.

Robert DeNiro, when asked what Adler taught him, always mentions that “script analysis” class.

American actors are very strong on emotional truth, the strongest actors in the world on that point, actually, and yet we are weak on script analysis.

The focus in acting, for the last 50 years, has been on emotion.

Stella Adler, who was part of the beginning of that movement, eventually thought it was all bogus – she thought that there was too much emphasis on emotion, and not enough emphasis on the script, and on imagination.

We, as actors, must dream our way into the play – through research, through learning – We can’t just sit around and be concerned with crying cry on cue, because that is an insult to Shakespeare, to Ibsen, to whomever. We must enter the world of the play.

Kimber, my great acting teacher in college, said, “You have to find the pulse of the playwright.”

Many actors are more concerned with finding their OWN pulses, as opposed to the pulse of the playwright. I have been there, myself – and it is a very important part of any actor’s process. You MUST be able to access your own emotions, you MUST not be afraid of tears, of rage, of sexuality – at least in the expression of these things. So you do have to focus on finding your own pulse, and cherishing it, too, because this business is so brutal it won’t cherish your individuality at all, and so you BETTER cherish it!! Do not let anyone damage what is valuable and precious in you!

However – for many actors – the process stops there. To me, that is still amateur league acting.

The TRUE test of an actor is not whether or not he or she can cry on cue – but whether or not he can come fully alive under imaginary circumstances.

And to do that, you need more than just access to your emotions. You need to light up your imagination, and you need to be interested in the world of the PLAY. Not just your own world.

Stella Adler’s father, Jacob Adler, a giant star in his day said this:

…unless you give the audience something that makes them bigger – better – do not act. Do not go into theater.

Stella Adler took this advice very seriously. She was a celebrated actress. She must have had quite a gift – everyone who saw her act talked about it. When she did Success Story with the Group Theatre in the 1930s – even giants of the theatre were blown away. John Barrymore (a veteran, a giant) came to the play repeatedly, in order to study her work in the last scene. Noel Coward came to see the show 7 times, because he could not get enough of watching her work.

The book I am reading now is a collection of tape recorded lectures she gave, and talks, on Ibsen, Strindberg and Chekhov.

It absolutely captures the GENIUS of her level of script analysis.

She doesn’t just want to do a bit of research, to know what the politics were like in Norway at the time of Doll’s House – to give an example. She wants to make Norway in the 1800s come alive for herself. No stone left unturned. EVERY SINGLE LINE examined. What does it mean when Nora says they have to “economize”? What was the economy like in Norway then? And what, exactly, did Nora have to economize ON? What is Nora doing without? Religion – what role did religion play in Norway then? How would it affect things?

If you like this kind of reading, if you like plays, then this is an exhilarating book.

With each playwright, she starts off in a more general tone, and then – gradually – circling her way in closer and closer to closer. She always starts with the outer world, the “context” of each play – because without that context, you are not a good actor. She says, “You cannot be in a play that takes place in the 1930s and act like you are in the 1940s.” Her research is exhaustive, she is tireless. And to her, this kind of work is not drudgery. To her, it is THE THING, the MOST important work any actor can do.

Stella Adler thought that the word “actor” was inappropriate, anyway. She thought the real title of the job was “script interpreter”.

There’s so much more to say about Stella Adler. I will, someday.

But for now, I will leave you with an example of her script analysis technique from the book. These were lectures she gave at 90 years of age. Amazing. Her speech so vibrant, so real – her ability to communicate her passion, her knowledge – She doesn’t come off as a know-it-all. The effect on me, an actress, reading these lectures, is that I immediately want to leap up and try it out – I want to DO. That is the mark of a great teacher..

She discusses Ibsen’s plays. Doll’s House in particular. She goes into the growth of the middle class, the conservative small-town atmosphere of Norway, the lessening importance of religion … the birth of realism in the theatre (which began with Ibsen) – how he changed all the rules, and what realism really means … All of these questions MUST be asked by any serious actor.

Adler talks about Norway itself, and how, if you are going to play Ibsen, you MUST understand what Norway is like – the sensory details, what the characters see when they look out the window – how, essentially, you cannot be just YOU playing the part. You MUST enter Ibsen’s world. If you do not, then you have no business calling yourself an actor.

She speaks in generalities about Norway – because theatre (Ibsen especially) is about archetypes. Not stereotypes, but archetypes. Archetypes are extremely important in Ibsen.

Adler says:

If you say in an Ibsen play, “I am unhappy”, it is not that you are unhappy but that millions of people like you in the world have the same problem and are unhappy. To play it without lifting up the cosmic problem is wrong. You have it in you but you must know that within you as work on it. Knowing that it has this size will make you not play it as if it were personal.

And here is my favorite excerpt from her “learn about Norway” lecture. These transcrtips are word-for-word – so they have an immediacy that an edited text would not:

Adler on Ibsen

The sense of place – nature, the scenery – had to be truthful in realism. Where you were had to be as truthful as the new dialogue.

Ibsen desired to replace stilted language by the unbeautiful, unemotional language of every day. To tone down the loudness of tragic, classical acting. To tone down the stage effects with the bourgeois fondness for the intimate and homey.

This is the end of the reign of complete illusion in the theatre. From now on, the effort is to conceal the fictitious nature of how a play is acted and presented. Classical acting portrayed a man with contact to the exterior world but never influenced by it. The bourgeois drama portrays him as a part and function of his environment and shows him not to be controlling reality, as in classical plays, but being controlled and absorbed by it.

From now on, the place where the action happens isn’t just background. It takes an active part in shaping him on stage. There is no more break between the inner and outer world; now all action and feeling contain powerful elements of the external world.

In most of Norway, there are only two real months of daylight. People live without the sun – seventeen hours of night. This affects their temperaments, how their houses are lit. How do you light your house when it’s dark outside all day? That is up to you to find out.

Ibsen says the lines should sound different depending on whether they are said in the morning or evening. You must know whether your scene is taking place in day or night. Otherwise you will just walk in, out of – and into – nowhere.

An actor who gets up to act without knowing when and where he is is insane. Everybody is somewhere. Except an actor, often. He’s the only one who can be somewhere and not know where.

Navigation in Norway is very dangerous. It is continually stormy. The nervousness of the weather affects the personality of the people, dating back to the Vikings. They are dominated by darkness and blackness. The plays are influenced by that. There are very few musical comedies that come out of Norway.

What does “twenty miles south of Oslo” mean? [Ed: Doll’s House takes place ’20 miles south of Oslo’] I could say, get fifteen books on Oslo, on the Vikings, on the history of the royalty there. I’ll give you this free of charge.

But for Christ’s sake, learn where you are going to do your acting.

Be interested in the fact that Norway has the largest ice fields in the world and that it’s very difficult to travel except by sleigh.

I like that. I like knowing that Nora comes home by sleigh. People pass each other on the narrow road. I know that a sleigh has bells and that sleigh bells have a kind of gaiety in them. If it is dark eight months of the year, they must give themselves something to make them happy. They recognize each other’s sleigh bells. Twilight is at noon. That affects you, if night lasts seventeen hours.

If you know this, it will affect your acting. It will make you understand certain things you need to understand.

They have hailstones of a size we can’t imagine. These hailstones will be used in the last act of Enemy of the People. People throw them at Dr. Stockmann’s house. You have to know such things. You must not be so much with you. Whatever is left of my me, you can have. I do not give a goddamn about my me, only what I can give you. That is what is important. That is why my life has been important.

I am interested in acting, not “being a professional”.

When you look out your stage window, you must see water – fjords and water running along the streets. It’s 1880, but it’s not an 1880 street. It’s a 1780 street with planks. The water runs along those planked streets. You can only cross them a certain way. It is not easygoing. You can go by horse or maybe by stagecoach. You come home late because you had to catch the coach. If you’re late just because the words say so, you are in trouble. But not if you know that it’s because there was too much baggage to put on the coach. [She’s talking about acting here. If you walk in, and say your lines obediently, “I’m late”, without knowing why you are late, and knowing where you were coming from, then your acting is no good.]

Don’t act from the words. Act from knowing whether you arrive by coach or whether you have money enough to hire a sleigh.

The fjords are very threatening. They are black and contain bodies that have been disintegrating very slowly for years because the water is so cold. It is a country with a great many psychological problems. Everybody is in trouble. The churches date from the twelfth century. The twelfth century in this crazy Scandinavia produced a very special kind of architecture. It’s a big thing about the churches there. Look them up. They have great gargoyles. Do not think of your own pretty little church in East Hampton. You have to see that church people go to with the gargoyles and the frightening things inside it.

Their unique landscape is unduplicated anywhere on earth.

What made Ibsen so great is that he used this unusual place to give him such great truths. So when you think of this space, think of it not as your space. Think of the mountains, the water. It must inspire awe in you, so when you get to a difficult scene you will have the help of the landscape.

So that if you get to a scene where someone has to flee, you will see the waterfalls, the difficulties.

All of a sudden now, I want to cry …

The landscape has to inspire you with awe!

The fingers of water reach seventy miles into the land from the sea. That makes quite an obstacle if you are thinking of leaving Norway. To cross the sea from the north and come south means that you have risked death to get there, and when you arrive you must arrive with death in you.

In Mrs. Linde’s entrance [in Doll’s House], when she says, “I have just arrived from the North,” and somebody says, “How did you do it?” — it does not mean by what conveyance. It means, “How did you survive?”

If the country has no railroads, what do you think a doctor has? He does not have anesthetics, he does not have machines and technology.

Always try to see the difference between you and him – beteween then and now. Try, all through the play, to see how this can open things up to you. You cannot do without it. If you do not know these things, you cannot act. You must know.

What does it mean to live in a small town in Norway 110 years ago?

What is it like in summer and winter there?

What does ‘Norway’ mean?

Norway is three quarters water, surrounded by dark sea. It is different from any concept you have. Look up pictures of its water and mountains. Get an idea for yourself where these people live. Understand that the landscape is always used by the author.

Before Ibsen, actors had never been told that – never knew it, never thought about it, never learned how to use it.

Chekhov and [Eugene] O’Neill always use the landscape. You cannot move without it. You must know how to behave inland – know what O’Neill means by inland when his captain in Anna Christie keeps saying, “I want to get to the sea!” You will have to understand Mr. O’Neill’s sense of inland like you have to understand Ibsen’s sense of rain and water.

From now on, the landscape always plays an important part.

Your responsibility is to find out how it is different from your own.