City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Graduate Center 1983 The rP inciples of Acting According to Stella Adler Joanna Helen Rotte The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! Follow this and additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds Part of the Theatre and Performance Studies Commons Recommended Citation Rotte, Joanna Helen, "The rP inciples of Acting According to Stella Adler" (1983). CUNY Academic Works. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2209 This Dissertation is brought to you by CUNY Academic Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects by an authorized administrator of CUNY Academic Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This reproduction was made from a copy of a document sent to us for microfilming. 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Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 8312371 Rotte, Joanna Helen THE PRINCIPLES OF ACTING ACCORDING TO STELLA ADLER City University of New York PH.D. 1983 University Microfilms International300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, M I 48106 Copyright 1983 by Rotte, Joanna Helen All Rights Reserved Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PLEASE NOTE: In ail cases this material has been filmed in the best possible way from the available copy. Problems encountered with this document have been identified here with a checkV mark. 1. Glossy photographs or pages______ 2. Colored illustrations, paper or print_____ 3. 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THE PRINCIPLES OP ACTING ACCORDING TO STELLA ADLER by JOANNA ROTTE A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York. 1983 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ii © COPYRIGHT BY JOANNA ROTTE 1983 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. iii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Theatre in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. [signature] (g date irman of Examining Committee [signature] data Executive Office^ Professor Glenn M. Loney [signature] Professor Benito Ortolani [signature] Provost St Supervisory Committee The City University of New York Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PREFACE ’’You must travel ten-thousand miles to find the person who can give you a technique that makes you secure,” Since 19^9, when the Stella Adler Theatre Studio opened in New York City, new students have come each fall to test their histrionic talent and commitment to the way of life of an actor. Their teacher, Stella Adler, intro­ duces them to the historical fact that they have selected a profession steeped in myriad methods of education. In her approach to actor-training, she might recall the initiation rites common in the early days of this century, when she earned her own passage onto the stage: In those days they called it the business of acting. They never called it an art. Persons who wanted to act walked around and went to matinees, and from that they went and knocked on the back-doors of stock companies, asking, "Is there any room for me?” The young actors hung around and listened. They carried a spear, a sword, and they played a monk, a young man, an old man, a little comedy. They learned a scale, a range. They watched other ac­ tors at work. But these approaches are no longer available, and this kind of "hit-or-miss" methotjl is inadequate to meet today's theatrical demands. All of Stella Adler's theory and direct quotations contained in this "Preface" derives from notes and tapes of Studio classes in Technique I taught by her in 1966, and from Stella Adler, "The Art of Acting (The Actor's Needs)," The Theatre II (April 1960):16-17» Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. V To replace adequately the old way of learning In the field, Stella .Adler suggests studying a technique of acting In a studio before entering the theatrical market-place. As Stella Adler has conceived it, the studio is the place in which the student commences to become a person equal to the times in which he lives, and an actor equal to the demands of the theatre of his time. He is given the opportunity to cultivate the habit of looking at himself, not as a person scooped along by the manners of convention­ al life, but as one who actively wants and pursues a crea­ tive life. It is the place in which he is allowed, even encouraged, to fail, so that he need not be' pressured, nor his work crippled, by a requirement to succeed. It is the place in which he receives the guidance and support of a teacher who cares less for the result of his work than for the effort put into it, and who cares about him. It is the place to become secure in a technique that will give him the craftsmanship to solve any artistic problem that might confront him in his profession. The studio training is, in Stella Adler's opinion, the preparation most likely to insure his artistic survival. The technique that Stella Adler teaches is based upon her own life-experiences and observations, her work as an actress and director, the influences of her parents, and the teachings of Konstantin Stanislavsky, which in this Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. country have come to be known as The Method or the Stanis­ lavsky System. She may begin revealing the System to her students by outlining what it is; whence it came; how it might properly be used) and how it has been misused. Such a summary from Stella Adler would explain that the teachings of Stanislavsky derived from his need to en­ able himself and the actors under his direction to become articulate, independent artists, capable of producing, with­ out merely reproducing, an inspired performance night after night. Systematically culled from his research into the personal approaches to acting by fine actors, both dead and living, and from his study of various foreign acting styles that have served the dramaturgy of several nations, a description of a technique of acting was finally real­ ized. Because he recognized the danger of someone*3 ex­ propriating without first experiencing any aspect of an artistic theory, Stanislavsky hesitated to write down the principles he had discovered. However reluctantly he did so, it was with an insistence that the application of the principles necessarily remain fluid. Any misunderstanding of the System, confusion over its interpretation, or even hostility toward it, as has existed in this country, is traced by Stella Adler to the same pitfalls inherent in "religiously co-opting religion." That is, the proponents of one segment might be willing to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.