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, by Susan Strasberg<\/p>\nThere is much to say here, about the smothering psychodrama of the Strasberg family – and the introduction of Lee Strasberg’s most famous student – Marilyn Monroe – as practically an adopted daughter into the family.<\/p>\n
Lee Strasberg had been one of the founding members of the Group Theatre in the 30s. It soon became clear that his gift was not in acting or in directing – but in teaching, and theorizing. People came to him for help with scenes – he was a close student of the Stanislavksy “system” (known, in its American version, as “the Method”) – and he put his own spin on it very early on, by introducing what is known as “affective memory” [corrected!] into the pot.<\/p>\n
“Sense memory” is when you, the actor, concentrate on creating, say, a coffee cup full of coffee. You work at it with your hands, you try to feel the weight of the cup, you try to feel the heat emanating, you try to create for yourself the smell of coffee. These exercises are meant to unleash the actor’s creativity and imagination. The point of acting is to come alive under imaginary circumstances<\/i> and for some actors that takes practice. Strasberg was always fascinated by those who did it anyway, who did it easily – who did it naturally, with no training. What was it in, say, Eleanora Duse – or Paul Muni – that was so authentic? Duse is famous for blushing on stage when a blush was called for (it was George Bernard Shaw who first noticed it and commented on it, how it seemed to him to be the purest example of imagination and creativity he had ever seen). Her sense of reality and being in-the-moment was so intense, so unshakeable, that she would blush. On cue. No one alive today has seen “Duse’s blush” – any audience member from her time is now long dead – and yet the impression it made has remained famous, and you will still hear people reference “Duse’s blush”.<\/p>\n
Strasberg wondered if such authenticity (which came natural to the geniuses of the world – the Duse’s, the Brando’s) could be taught. Could an actor train his concentration so that the world of the play would be so real that all kinds of involuntary things (like a blush) could be possible? The “affective memory” exercise that Strasberg developed is the most controversial aspect of the Method, and I have pretty mixed feelings about it (mainly because it didn’t work for me). You go back in time (in your mind) to re-create a memory, something from your past … trying to not just think about it, or remember it intellectually – but re-live it. This is not meant to be a general<\/i> experience, a re-hashing of an old familiar narrative from your life – that would do you no good as an actor. The point is to use that concentration you have been training – on creating coffee cups and taking a shower and a hot humid day – in the services of resurrecting that old memory – but you do not do it by focusing on the emotions of the old memory, you do it by focusing on the sensory details. For example, one day when you were 6 years old, a phone call came, and your mother answered, and the news arrived that your beloved grandmother had died – and it was your first moment of grief, loss, fear, whatever … It was an important moment. For “affective memory”, you don’t go straight for the jugular, and think about your grandmother dying. No. You focus on how the light looked on the kitchen tile that day, and the smell of breakfast on the stove … the shoes your mother was wearing, the sound of the telephone ring … and through focusing on those sensory details, you can get closer to the actual source<\/i> of the memory. Because, of course, our bodies remember sensoral details better than it remembers actual information. You touch a hot stove once, you never do it again, to use an obvious example. Much of this is at a primitive level, an animal level … but we, as complex intellectual creatures, tend to distance ourselves, or we forget … But to quote Metallica: “the memory remains” – not in the brain, but in the sensoral apparatus at our disposal. I have been in classes where everyone is doing an “affective memory” at the same time and it is literally like sitting in the main room of a psych ward. People babble, weep, moan, talk out loud – some people freak out so badly they have to stop the exercise. Just because it never worked for me is not to say that it is not a useful exercise, or that some people were really set free by it. Actors are not cookie-cutters. We are all different.<\/p>\n
For me, I certainly could do<\/i> the exercise. It wasn’t that I was blocked or anything like that. I could re-create anything. I live in a fantasy world half the time, anyway, this shit is old hat to me. The problem (for me) came when I had to “use” it in my acting. As an exercise it was fine, but I never seemed to use it when I was actually onstage acting. Now, much of the purpose of sense memory and effective memory IS just for training. It helps you hone your skills, it’s a craft, you have to practice – it’s like practicing giving yourself permission to enter an imaginary world. Sense memory helps you do that, and it also helps you to be specific, as opposed to general. Actors who are good are good because of all kinds of reasons – but actors who are bad all have one thing in common: They are GENERAL. Generality is death to good acting. But people working on sense memory DURING a scene had a tendency to look like they were in a fog, they were unable to connect with their scene partner, they were so busy creating the damn sound of rain on the windows. It had a tendency to look belabored. I would rather be an actor who is not, perhaps, transported to another dimension by a sense memory exericse – but is able to listen and talk in a believable manner onstage. However: it doesn’t have to be either\/or. It actually shouldn’t be either\/or. I ended up basically just using sense memory as strictly a training exercise – like practicing meditation … which can be difficult. It was a way to leave the workaday everyday world, and surrender to the moment. It was about giving myself permission<\/i> to be a little kid again. Again: this is not to say my experience is right. It was just my experience. Judging other people’s acting processes is, to me, a little bit like judging how other people have sex. There cannot be a more pointless and idiotic way to spend your mental energy. If it works for someone, who are you to say it shouldn’t? What kind of an arrogant insecure son-of-a-bitch are you anyway? But you see that a lot. Young actors, perhaps not as knowledgeable as they should be, try to assert their own process as THE way to do things. I have noticed this, too, with my friends who have become mothers. Other mothers can’t just be like, “I do things THIS way with my baby – maybe that would work for you …” They have to be like, “I do things THIS way with my baby, and if you DON’T do it that way, then you are abusive and selfish.” It’s retarded. So because Spencer Tracy didn’t consciously sit around using sense memory, that means he’s somehow lesser? How fucking condescending. You use it if you NEED it. But there can be a rigidity in acting training – because it’s such an uncertain pursuit – there are no guarantees – and so actors (some actors) want to believe that there is only one way to do things, and if they could just “do it right”, then all the glory in the world will follow.<\/p>\n
There are also teachers out there who are charlatans – of the New Age Deepak Chopra variety – who insist that THEIR way is the only way, if you follow THEM you will succeed … It’s almost like a cult. Like, if you decide to switch teachers, or stop taking class altogether, it’s seen as you leaving the fold, going beyond the pale. Acting careers, like any other, have pressures, and people are looking for the magic bullet, the golden goose, whatever it is.<\/p>\n
My process usually involves music (I always have a “mix tape” for whatever show I’m in … stuff that gets me into the world of the play) – and then just practical concerns – like learning my lines, and doing what the character does, whatever that may be. I like things like costumes … they help set me free and launch me into another person’s psyche as opposed to my own. Things like shoes are very important. How you walk, and how your feet feel … it’s something palpable, tangible. And then, I’m a huge fan of what I call the “Bang Bang You’re Dead” school of acting. I go into that a bit here, in my piece on William Holden<\/a>. Meaning: when a little kid is playing cops and robbers and shouts at his friend, “BANG BANG YOU’RE DEAD”, the other little kid will launch into a swandive of death more convincing than any seasoned actor could ever hope to accomplish. There is no gap between impulse and action, there is no questioning of “how” to do it … You know that you have to die, and you have been shot, and so you throw your body into the void. Much of acting is remembering what it was like to be a child playing make-believe (at least it is for me) – when you are unselfconsciously in the world you have created … and so much of my process involves doing whatever I have to do to get into that state. This (for me) never involved sense memory. Or, maybe I’m stating it too strongly. There were moments, yes, when it came in useful. Working on Summer and Smoke<\/i>, and doing a scene that happens on a hot humid night, where the air sits there like soup, making you sluggish and tired. I would use sense memory for that … to create the sensation of humidity, and still thick air. Often, though, it seemed to me that it came easier if I would just give myself the cue, the “Bang Bang Youre Dead” cue – only this time it was, “Hot Humid Night – GO” … and, because I’m a human being, aware, and open, my senses would jump into action. I remember humidity. I didn’t need to turn myself inside out to get there. However, that could just be a matter of practice and talent … You don’t always need to turn yourself inside out (and I very much disliked teachers who were suspicious of ease<\/i>. Those people have a vested interest in you, the student, being in their thrall, of needing<\/i> them … so they keep you weak. They don’t like ANYTHING to come easy.)<\/p>\n All of this is to say that Lee Strasberg was THE teacher of “The Method” for 20, 30 years – and even with the controversies, having ringing endorsements from people like Al Pacino did much to maintain his mystique (and the mystique of the Actors Studio- with which Strasberg was forever linked – as though they were one and the same).<\/p>\n Lee Strasberg remains a controversial figure (and his third and last wife Anna Strasberg even more so_, a very important man in American theatrical history, but there is no “official” version of him. Some people hated him, some loved him, some felt liberated by his teaching (Ellen Burstyn), some felt stifled. There is no right answer here.<\/p>\n But when we get into the Marilyn Monroe connection, things get even more murky. I have read both of Susan Strasberg’s books (Marilyn and Me<\/i> and Bittersweet<\/i>) – and I have to say: they make me feel stifled<\/i>. Susan Strasberg, daughter of Lee and Paula Strasberg, was an actress. Because of who her parents were (and Paula had been an actress in the Group Theatre – she became Lee Strasberg’s second wife – they had two children) – it was expected that she would go into the theatre, but it was also expected that she would study with her father, join the Actors Studio, take that route. They were unbelievably pushy parents. Or, Paula was pushy … a very ambitious woman, bloated with her own thwarted dreams … Paula was an acting coach herself (and she ended up having a very close relationship with Monroe – which caused all sorts of problems on movie sets – with Monroe deferring to PAULA’S judgment as opposed to the director’s) … and she wanted her daughter to thrive. However, I can’t help but get the sense that she wanted her daughter to thrive on HER terms. She didn’t REALLY want Susan to be free and independent. Whatever Susan had as an actress (and she had a pretty fine run!) would be OWNED by her parents. Just the thought of that makes me a little sick to my stomach.<\/p>\n Lee Strasberg was, famously, a very remote man. He was cut off, somewhere deep inside, and while he obviously had a gift of insight into acting – and into other people’s processes – he wasn’t as good with his own family. The house was always full of actors, all toadying up to Lee, and Susan grew up in that heady atmosphere, a little dark-haired girl on the sidelines, watching movie stars suck up to her father. Would there be room in that for HER? The thought of breaking free of her parents was unthinkable. They were too powerful. However, Susan started studying at the Actors Studio. Of course that meant that she was studying with her father<\/i> – which, naturally, would make her freeze up … If he treated her like he treated the other students (pushing at them, shouting at them, slicing through their defenses) … how would she take that home with her? How would that affect their relationship? But even with these struggles, Strasberg started working. Very early. She got the role of Anne Frank in the Broadway production – she was just a teenager – and it was a giant smash hit. She was the toast of Broadway. Here’s a picture of Susan from that time – and you can see, smiling above her – the mouth of Marilyn Monroe – one of the oddest things to see – because Marilyn Monroe is always the focus of any photo she is in. But here – in this case – she is not. It’s Susan Strasberg’s night.<\/p>\n![\"calh.184.1.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/calh.184.1.jpg\")
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