Volume 12 No. 2 
LIFE AND ACTING: Techniques for the Actor
by JACK GARFEIN
If I were ever to stop learning about acting, I would stop teaching. So much has taken place in my education; the changes in fate during my early training as an actor led me to discover in myself an innate ability to recognize true spontaneity and an actor’s work. I searched over the years for the practical means to instigate that intuitive process and actors as well as in myself.
Let These New Plays Happen to You
Over the years The American Place has given room to contemporary plays and their authors. As Director of the Theatre, I am prompted to share my thoughts on the difficulties currently experienced by playwrights, critics and audiences.
Celebrating Uta Hagen Centennial at the HB Studio
by EDITH MEEKS
In 2019, HB Studio celebrated the Uta Hagen Centennial year with “Artist and Activist: Uta Hagen at 100,” presenting a special slate of programs highlighting Miss Hagen’s career and influences. For actors, there were a series of workshops on key plays, playwrights and advanced applications of Uta Hagen’s exercises, along with public talks, readings and special events. All the programs took place at HB Studio on Bank Street, as well as across New York City, and the country.
Taking the Business of Acting Online
by TERRY KNICKERBOCKER
On Friday March 13th, (a fitting date it would seem), I was sitting in class with my students for what would be the last time in a long time. Some students didn’t come that day. Not a lot, but a few who were practicing social distancing, or felt sick. We were heading into ‘spring break’ the next week. I had been planning to go to Mexico with my family. We had tickets. We had an Airbnb. Everything was set.
by WENDELL BEAVERS
I met Mary Overlie in 1976 when we both awoke, about twenty feet apart, in our sleeping bags on the floor of Cynthia Hedstrom and Terry O’Reilly’s loft on the Bowery.
The “Real” Illusion of MimeWhen an audience left the theatre after a performance by Marcel Marceau, they would marvel about the world of invisible illusions he created. However, no one even realized that for two hours, this actor who performed without a word, conveyed every thought he had, or words his characters would have been speaking.
Art is the Means by which We Make Ourselves Visible
Scratch an American today and you will find worry! At first it seems only concern about economic security – the fear of hard times, the disgrace of a lower standard of living.
Theater - A Celebration of All Life
IT CERTAINLY FEELS LIKE TIME is flying faster these days. Don’t you think so. Every day is like the first read-through of a play – a complete jump into the unknown. You don’t know what’s going to happen. This moment carries within it nothing even remotely to anything any of us have ever experienced before.
To Think the ThoughtA physicist is walking along a beach and sees a child throwing stones into the sea, trying to make them skip. Each stone makes no more than one or two little skips. The child is perhaps five years old, and the adult, the physicist, remembers that he too, in his childhood bounced stones over the water. Indeed, he was very good at it. So, the adult shows the child how it is done. He throws the stones, one after another, showing the child how to hold them, at what angle to cast them, at what height over the surface of the water. All the stones that the adult throws skip many times, seven or eight even ten times.
Yat Malmgren and the Drama Centre, London
“Teachers are more essential than anything else, who can give the young the ability to judge and distinguish, who serve them as examples of the honoring of truth, obedience to the things of the spirit, respect for language.” Herman Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
Directions for Directing: Theatre and Method
We all carry a director in us.
In our family routines, our workplace, our social interactions, conversations with friends, mundane dealings with the outside world, or during those rare moments of solitary clarity, when our sharp focus on reality begins to merge with softer forms of perception, we tend to direct our lives, filtering facts that have already occurred or recalibrating thoughts toward imaginary possibilities.
I grew up shy. I went to a very competitive (though public) high school. I didn't do very well. But once in a while there were little successes that showed me some deeper aspects of myself. One came as a result of a story I wrote in the seventh grade about a little girl, obviously me, who wanted to be a ballerina, but she was very clumsy; she just couldn't keep up with the others, despite all the years she'd been taking classes.
by VIC PERILLO
As actors, writers, directors, producers and all of us who work in the theatrical world must have a theatrical conscience that tells us that it is our moral and ethical obligation as practitioners of this craft to depict and dramatize the human spirit and the soul.
Strolling Player: The Life and Career of Albert Finney
When Finney celebrated his ninth birthday, his home city of Salford, within the Metropolitan borough of Manchester, was ablaze with bonfires and fireworks. The festivities were not to commemorate his birthday. Even Finney was not so precocious as to be feted at the age of nine – although given his subsequent achievements nothing would surprise me! It was, of course, to mark VE Day, the end of the Second World War. May 8th,1945 – which fell the day before his birthday.
I just got the wonderful information you sent about your new opera “IBSEN”about Henrik Ibsen, and your gracious invitation to be on the Honorary Committee.
H20 – Paintings of and About Water
“Let the most absent minded of men be plunged into his deepest reveries – stand that man upon his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region…meditation and water are wedded forever.” - Herman Melville, Moby Dick
A New Way of Professional Theater
The country I belong to is India, home of 1.32 billion people. Once India had one thousand six hundred and fifty-two languages, today India has one hundred and fifty regularly spoken languages. There are twenty-nine states, including West Bengal, where I live.
“Let Thousand Flowers Blossom”
In the background of this happiness overflowing within me for being presented with the honorary award this year at the Colombo International Theatre Festival 2019, there are so many things that comes to my mind.
A Double Life: My Exciting Years in Theatre and Advertising
Many moons ago, I read in a translation of The Upanishads, “Who does not enjoy the journey will never reach his destination.” That explained, to me at any rate, what is the meaning of life. Up to that time, thanks to my Western education, I was entirely goal oriented. I had not learnt that the cosmos is interlinked. To me there was only cause and effect within a narrow spectrum. You put the coin in the slot and out comes the packet of chocolate. What happens along the way was of little or no concern for me. Thank God it finally dawned on me that enjoying the work you do is as important as the result.
ENCORES
Where Should the Theatre Be Now?
An essay we find so important we have been making it available since we first published it in 2001. A must read...
The Time Has Come to Build a National Theatre Center
In 1963 President John F. Kennedy reminded us with these words:
“I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of our artists. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him…Art is not a form of propaganda, it is a form of truth…Art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstones of our judgment.”...
Speech To The American Council For The Arts
by EDWARD ALBEE
I LIKE BEING A PLAYWRIGHT, which is fortunate, since that’s one of the few things that I can do with any competence. And it is nice to be able to pass your life doing that which you feel that you might be doing with some competence, and possibly, possibly even communicating with a few people. Because the function of the arts, is it not, absolute communication – to put us in greater contact with ourselves and with each other, to question our values, to question the status quo, to make us rethink that which we believe we believe. ...
Noted down by Rinda Frye and James Lundstrom
On two evenings, November 8 and 9 of 1977, Jerzy Grotowski held a conference in Portland, Oregon on the Lewis and Clark campus. During those two evenings, a Tuesday and Wednesday respectively, he answered questions from the audience. The first session began at eight in the evening and ended at two in the morning. The second session began at eight but at midnight Grotowski began individual interviews with people who were interested in going to Poland that year for a longer paratheatrical event there. This record is of the conference prior to the interviews. ...
Acting from the Heart and Soul
by RONALD RAND
Every time I walk out onto the stage I surrender more and more of myself – trusting and swimming in the freedom of the moment with a deeper consciousness. I tap into the energies of my soul, knowing I’ve come to breathe with those in the audience. Quieting my mind I share with greater clarity and sincerity in the eternal moment. ..
INTERNATIONAL SCENE
Theatre around the world
SPOTLIGHT ON ARTISTS
Zana Marjanovic, Dr. Ashley William Joseph,
M. Safeer, Kevin Kimani Kahuro, Ilire Vinca,
Avra Sidiropoulou, Sujatha Balakrishnan,
Mihaela Dragan, Farah Deen Katy Lipson,
Juan Maldonado, Odile Gakire Katese,
Hartmut von Lieres, Dragan Jovicic, Sachin Gupta,
Jill Navarre
Hirshfeld Drawing of Laurence Luckinbill reproduced by special arrangement with Hirschfeld's exclusive representative, The Margo Feiden Galleries, NY.
