Adler, Stella

Early life

Stella Adler was born on the Lower East Side of New York. She was the youngest daughter of Sarah and Jacob P. Adler , sister of Luther and Jay Adler, and half-sister of Charles Adler and Celia Adler. All five of her brothers and sisters were actors. Adlers made up the Jewish-American acting dynasty Adler, which began in the Yiddish theater district and was a significant part of the vibrant ethnic theater scene that flourished in New York from the late 19th century to the 1950s. Stella Adler has become the most famous and influential member of her family. She began performing at the age of four as part of her parents' independent Yiddish art company.

Career

Adler began her acting career at the age of four in the performance of Broken Hearts at the Grand Street Theater in the Lower East Side, as part of her parents' independent Yiddish art company Independent Yiddish Art Company ^{[6] [7]} . She grew up speaking with her parents, often playing the roles of boys and girls. Her work schedule allowed her to devote only a short time to study, but when it was possible, she studied at public schools and New York University . She made her debut in London at the age of 18 in the role of Naomi in the play Elisa Ben Avia with her father's troupe, in which she was a member for a year before returning to New York. In London, she met her first husband, the Englishman Horace Eliashev; their short marriage, however, ended in divorce.

Adler made her Broadway debut in 1922 as a butterfly in The World We Live In . In 1922-1923, the famous theater figure Konstantin Stanislavsky made his first (and last) tour in the USA with the Moscow Art Theater . Adler, like many of her other compatriots, saw these performances, which had a powerful impact on her career and the American Theater of the 20th century ^[8] . She joined the American Laboratory Theater in 1925; there she met the teachings of Stanislavsky, Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Uspenskaya . In 1931, along with Sanford Meisner and Elia Kazan , among others, she joined the troupe of the Theater , founded by Harold Clurman (Clurman became Adler's second husband in 1943), Lee Strasberg and Cheryl Crawford . With the theater troupe, she worked on plays such as Success Story , Awake and Sing! , Paradise Lost, Golden Boy and More to Give to People . The theater staff was the leading interpreter of acting techniques based on the work and work of Stanislavsky.

In 1934, Adler visited Paris with Harold Clurman and attended Stanislavsky's acting classes for five weeks. During this time, she found out that Stanislavsky revised his views on theatrical art, emphasizing that the actor should create with imagination, not memory. Upon her return, she broke with Strasberg on the fundamental aspects of the method of action ^[9] .

In January 1937, Adler moved to Hollywood. There she starred in films for six years under the name Stella Ardler (Eng. Stella Ardler), periodically participating in the productions of the Strasberg Theater, Klurman and Crawford, until he broke up in 1941. In the end, she returned to New York to play, supervise and teach. She taught teaching in the building of the new school for social studies, New York ^[10] , until the founding of the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in 1949. In subsequent years, she taught Marlon Brando , Judy Garland , Elizabeth Taylor , Dolores del Rio , Lina Horne , Robert De Nero , Elaine Stritch , Martin Sheen , Harvey Keitel , Melanie Griffith , Peter Bogdanovich and Warren Beatty . She also taught at the new school ^[11] and the Yale School of Drama . For many years, Adler led the Department of Drama at New York University ^{[6] [12]} and became one of America's leading acting teachers. ^[9] and has become one of America’s leading acting teachers.

In 1988, she published The Technique of Acting with a preface by Marlon Brando. From 1926 to 1952, she regularly appeared on Broadway. She appeared in only three films: Love on Toast (1937), Shadow of the Thin Man (1941) and My Girl Tisa (1948). She completed her acting career in 1961, after 55 years. During this time, and also for many years after that, she became a famous acting teacher ^[7] .

Personal life

Adler was a relative of Jerry Adler (Edler) , an actor and theater director ^[14] .

Adler was married three times:

1. Horace Eliashef, father of her only child, daughter Ellen. Dates of marriage and divorce are unknown.
2. Harold Clurman ^{[15] [16]} , from 1943 to 1960
3. Mitchell Wilson Stella Adler married Wilson, a physicist and writer, and was married to him until his death in 1973.

From 1938 to 1946 she was the daughter-in-law of actress Sylvia Sidney . At that time, Sydney was married to Stella's brother Luther and gave Stella a nephew. Even after the divorce of Sydney and Luther Stella, Adler and Sylvia remained close friends.

Death

Stella Adler died of heart failure on December 21, 1992 at the age of 91 in Los Angeles, having outlived all of her siblings ^{[17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22]} . She was buried at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Glendale, New York.

Adler was the only American actress who studied with Konstantin Stanislavsky ^{[13] [23]} . She was a prominent member of the Theater, but disagreements with Lee Strasberg over the Stanislavsky system (later developed by Strasberg into the acting technique) forced her to leave the troupe ^[23] . She once said:

Adler later met again with Stanislavsky and questioned him about Strasberg's interpretation. Konstantin Stanislavsky told her that he had abandoned the emotional memory that was Strasberg’s dominant paradigm, but they both believed that the actors did not have what it takes to play the different roles already laid in them, and that extensive research was needed to understand the experience characters who have different spiritual values, originating from different cultures.

Like Stanislavsky, Adler understood the “gold” hidden in the character’s demonstration. Actors should stimulate emotional experiences by presenting “given circumstances”, scenes, rather than recalling experiences from their own lives. She also understood that 50% of acting is internal (imagination, emotions, action, will) and 50% is external (characterization, way of walking, voice, fencing, sport). To make the character on stage realistic, the actors must study the role and make their choice based on what is obtained from the material received.

For example, if a character talks about horseback riding, the person must know something about horseback riding as an actor, otherwise he will pretend. More importantly, you need to study the values ​​of different people in order to understand what situations would mean for people when these situations might mean nothing in the actor’s own culture. Without this work, according to Adler, the actor enters the stage “naked”. This approach became known to both Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro.

Adler also trained the sensory imagination of the actors to make the character's experiences more vivid. She believed that the actor needed to master the physical and vocal aspects of acting to control the stage, and that the whole body language should be carefully processed, and the voices should be clear and expressive. She often called it the virtue of the scene.

Singer Janis Jan became a student of Adler in the early 1980s, wanting to feel more comfortable on stage, and the two women remained close friends until Adler died. In her autobiography, Society's Child (2008), Ian recalled that Adler did not put up with students' lack of progress. Once she gave one of her students a dime and asked him to call his mother to pick him up, because "he has nothing to do in the theater." Another time, Adler forcibly tore off a dress from an actress to make her play the scene in a different way.

Stella Adler Studio of Acting ^[24] (formerly Stella Adler Conservatory ) is a prestigious acting school founded by actress and teacher Stella Adler ^{[25] [17]} . Acting Studio Stella Adler has two locations: its original New York Conservatory, founded in 1949, and acting studio in Los Angeles ^[26] . Stella Adler's acting studio is not affiliated with the Stella Adler Conservatory, established in Los Angeles in 1985 ^[27] .

Ground

In parallel with working as an actor and director, Stella Adler began teaching at the beginning of the 1940s in the workshop of Erwin Piscator in the new school for social studies in New York. She left the faculty in 1949 to create her own studio in New York in the same year ^[28] .

Combining what she learned from Yiddish theater, Broadway, Hollywood, and Konstantin Stanislavsky, Stella Adler created the Stella Adler Theater Studio, later renamed the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting and most recently, the Stella Adler Studio of Acting ^[17] where she taught acting for many decades, ^[29] where she taught acting for many decades, and in 1985 she opened the Stella Adler Academy and the Los Angeles Theater ^[8] .

The studio offered courses in acting, voice and speech, movements and makeup, as well as workshops on the analysis of the game, character, stage preparation and acting style. Stage experience gained stage productions and performances in front of the invited public. Among her first students were Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Warren Beatty, Elaine Stritch, Mario Van Peebles , Harvey Keitel and Candice Bergen .

Adler’s grandson, Tom Oppenheim, who runs Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York and Art of Acting in Los Angeles, summarizes his approach to acting as such: “Perfection as an actor and perfection as a person are synonyms.”

New York Institution

Stella Adler's acting studio in New York was founded in 1949. In 1969, it became the first professional educational institution to join the Tisch School of the Arts. In 2000, the studio became a non-profit organization 501. Stella Adler Studio of Acting aims to create an environment for the education of theater artists who value humanity, their own and others, as their first and most valuable priority, providing art and education to a large community.

Stella Adler Studio of Acting is an official West Coast affiliate in New York. The Stella Adler Acting Studio is not affiliated with the Stella Adler Academy in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles Institution

Adler’s long history in Hollywood meant she had close and strong connections in Los Angeles. She taught for many years at various locations in Los Angeles, and eventually opened the door to the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting on Hollywood Blvd. Some of the famous people who went through the Hollywood Conservatory include Nick Nolte , Salma Hayek , Eric Stolz , Sean Astin , John Charles Jopson , John Ritter , Sybill Shepard , Michael Richards , Benicio del Toro , ^[9] and Mark Ruffalo .

The protégé Adler, Joan Linville and Irene Gilbert , convinced her to open an academy in 1985 in Los Angeles. Together, Gilbert and Linville are considered co-founders of the school, and Adler gave them permission to use her name ^[30] . Gilbert has been the principal for 20 years since its founding. ^[31] Gilbert remained the director of the school for 20 years. ^[31] .

The primary school was located in a small theater on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Argyll Avenue ^[31] . The fire forced a temporary closure of the school in 1991 ^[30] . At the time of Stella Adler's death in 1992, the building was threatened with demolition to make way for the proposed metro line ^{[31] [30]} . In 1994, Irene Gilbert reopened the school at 6773 Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue ^[30] . The new school was renamed, was renamed the Stella Adler Academy of Acting, and celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2010. In this historical place in the 1930s the famous Ambassadorial Club was located.

The school is an acting studio offering extensive training for theater, film and television actors. The building houses the non-profit Stella Adler Theater, the Irene Gilbert Theater, a theater studio, classrooms, a dance studio, a music studio, a library, dressing rooms, a video technical room, scenography and administrative rooms designed for teaching on the Stella Adler technique.

Linville continues to teach at the academy as a lead instructor for the past 25 years. Irene Gilbert died in 2011 ^[30] .

In 2010, graduates of the school formed the theater group Stella Adler Los Angeles ^[32] .

The Adler technique, based on a balanced and pragmatic combination of imagination and memory, is largely attributed to the introduction of subtle and penetrating details and the deep physical embodiment of the character ^[33] . Elaine Stritch once said:

In the book Acting: Onstage and Off , Robert Burton wrote:

In 1991, Stella Adler was admitted to the American Theater Hall of Fame ^[34] .

In 2004, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin acquired the complete Adler archive along with a small collection of her documents from her ex-husband Harold Clurman. The collection includes correspondence, manuscripts, lecture notes, photographs and other materials ^[35] . More than 1,100 audio and video recordings of Adler’s training from the 1960s to the 1980s were digitized by the center and available on the site. The archive traces her career from the very beginning in the New York theater district of Yiddish to her meetings with the Stanislavsky and collective theater, to her lectures in the acting studio Stella Adler ^[36] .

In 2006, she was honored with a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in front of the Stella Adler Theater on Hollywood Boulevard 6773 ^[37] .

• Konstantin Stanislavsky
• Lee Strasberg

• Stella Adler Acting