Author: Joshua Sklar

Introduction to Annotating Adler

In the popular imagination, method acting is often associated with physically and emotionally extreme immersions into character. The most notorious adherents to this approach include Daniel Day Lewis, who famously refused to leave his wheelchair during the production of My Left Foot, Christian Bale, who is as notorious for his feats of weight gain and loss as for his emotional intensity as a performer, and most recently Jeremy Strong, who once said that he took Kendall Roy, the character he played on TV’s Succession, “as seriously as” he took “his own life.” This approach, the thought goes, allows the actor to replicate the emotional state of the character. The locus classicus of this tradition is often taken to be Robert De Niro’s performance as Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, for which he gained sixty pounds.

The truth of the matter is that there is no single “method,” but rather a collection of approaches all inspired by Russian theater director Konstantin Stanislavski, the progenitor of method acting. Within the American tradition, the main exponents of method approaches were initially the teachers Lee Strasberg, Sanford Meisner, and Stella Adler, the central subject of this project. Each of these teachers promoted a distinct philosophy of performance.

Of the three, Strasberg’s approach best approximates the method of the popular imagination. Strasberg advocated for a psychological approach to method acting rooted in “affective memory.” By using experiences from one’s own life, one could replicate the character’s emotions by reliving one’s own, earlier emotional states. However, Strasberg explicitly rejected the notion that actors should live as their characters offstage. Emotional replication was not to be achieved through lifestyle replication. What is also worth noting is that DeNiro’s mentor was not Lee Strasberg but Stella Adler.

Adler’s approach stressed research of the character’s social circumstances and conscious attention to the physical details of performance. In many of the recently digitized videos on this site, which were sourced from the Harold Clurman and Stella Adler Papers at the Harry Ransom Center, Adler goes into great detail while deconstructing scripts, paying close attention to class and historical circumstance as well as the psychology of individual characters. Adler’s approach to performance is reflected not only in the content of her teaching but in its style. While approaches such as Strasberg’s risk rendering performers inflexible by forcing them to rely on total emotional engagement, Adler’s thoughtful, intellectual version of method acting engenders a certain emotional agility. In many videos, Adler flits between multiple perspectives, including those of the characters, that of the author, and the cool, distant viewpoint of script analysis, embodying each in her gestures and vocal intonations.

What lay behind Adler’s approach? One is tempted to look toward identity. There is a long history of women who turned an analytical eye upon the male world. Sylvia Plath famously wrote of a “consuming desire…to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, barroom regulars—to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording—all this is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always supposedly in danger of assault and battery,” expressing a passion for a certain kind of vigorous, traditionally masculine life, but also her identity as an observer and categorizer of male experiences.

One may also look to Isaac Deutscher’s concept of the “non-Jewish Jew.” These were nonreligious Jews who left Judaism behind but nonetheless “dwelt on the borderlines of various civilizations, religions, and national cultures” as a result of the outsider status conferred by their heritage. This position, according to Deutscher, made non-Jewish Jews analysts of multiple ways of life. Adler came from a Yiddish acting dynasty, and rose to stardom trotting the boards in plays like Elisha Ben Avuya, but it was the Moscow Art theater that opened her eyes to the possibilities of acting, and many videos in the collection display her allegiance to the Scandinavian greats.

Both of these traditions are characterized less by identity per se than by the loss or rejection of identity. The actor, for Adler, is an empty vessel, driven to find attention by an internal lack: The default message of performance, as she says in one video, is “watch me!” The actor’s emptiness is both a curse to be overcome, and the blessing that makes acting possible in the first place.