Over the last century, the training of actors has become an industry, with hundreds of programs and private studios offering everything from night classes to the highly sought-after MFA.
Prior to this development, actors trained mostly by informal apprenticeship in the business, studying the technique of masters from the wings or on set, practicing in the ranks, and perhaps working with private coaches. Then, in mid-century, great teaching artists such as Harold Clurman, Stella Adler, Sanford Meisner, Lee Strasberg, and others began developing methodologies and opened private training studios to offer more formalized training to actors. Most strove to translate Konstantin Stanislavsky’s naturalistic approach to acting into fundamental craft principles. In so doing, they developed distinct, profound approaches to acting technique. They helped to define an actor’s craft in a way that addressed multiple skills, including voice, speech, movement, rigorous approaches to texts, sensitivity to internal and external stimulus, and spontaneity and authenticity of expression combined with specificity and repeatability—all with the aim of an integration within the actor’s art. These teachers transformed
Over the last century, the training of actors has become an industry, with hundreds of programs and private studios offering everything from night classes to the highly sought-after MFA.
Prior to this development, actors trained mostly by informal apprenticeship in the business, studying the technique of masters from the wings or on set, practicing in the ranks, and perhaps working with private coaches. Then, in mid-century, great teaching artists such as Harold Clurman, Stella Adler, Sanford Meisner, Lee Strasberg, and others began developing methodologies and opened private training studios to offer more formalized training to actors. Most strove to translate Konstantin Stanislavsky’s naturalistic approach to acting into fundamental craft principles. In so doing, they developed distinct, profound approaches to acting technique. They helped to define an actor’s craft in a way that addressed multiple skills, including voice, speech, movement, rigorous approaches to texts, sensitivity to internal and external stimulus, and spontaneity and authenticity of expression combined with specificity and repeatability—all with the aim of an integration within the actor’s art. These teachers transformed
Leave a Reply