Stella Adler and Her Technique of Acting

Stella Adler (1901-1992), an actress and teacher, is the only American ever to have been instructed by Stanislavski himself. She first studied at the American Laboratory Theater (later called the Actors Studio) when it was founded by two of Stanislavski’s former pupils in 1923. She went on to become a member of New York’s Group Theatre, founded in 1931 by fellow actor and ALT student Lee Strasberg and two prominent stage directors. The Group included many of the foremost actors, directors, and playwrights of the day - it was primarily Adler’s disagreements with Strasberg over the correct way to teach Stanislavski’s system that led to the break-up of the Group in 1940.

Adler, upon her return from a stay in Paris, where she had taken private lessons with Stanislavski himself, took issue with Strasberg’s use of substitution - that is, the technique of drawing on personal experiences to produce a believable emotional result. Adler advocated instead a practice of “living in the moment,” using your partner and a belief in the imagined circumstances to create an emotional result. Strasberg’s dogmatic insistence on the use of Emotional Memory (an early method of Stanislavski’s that involved using the five senses to evoke private emotions from one’s own past) was where he fundamentally differed from Adler, who believed that if an actor studied the text and stayed “present” in the imaginary conditions of the play, the emotions in the script would eventually surface organically.

The list of famous actors who have studied Adler’s Technique is too long to include in its entirety - but by far her most notable pupil was Marlon Brando. Stella Adler was his first professional acting teacher, and such an influence on him that he became honorary chairman of her Studio of Acting - a position which he held until his death in 2004. He said of Adler,

“To me Stella Adler was much more than a teacher of acting. Through her work she imparts the most valuable kind of information - how to discover the nature of our own emotional mechanics and therefore those of others. She never lent herself to vulgar exploitations, as some other well-known so-called ‘methods’ of acting have done.”

The Stella Adler Studio of Acting, which has branches in New York and Los Angeles, offers a variety of full-time conservatory training programs, as well as short courses, workshops, summer classes, and programs for teens - on every topic from voice and movement to script breakdown, stage combat, and Shakespeare. The studio in New York also runs a program in conjunction with New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

The Stella Adler Studio of Acting
http://www.stellaadler.com
31 West 27^th Street, 3^rd Floor
New York, NY 10001
Phone: (212) 689-0087 (or) (800) 112-1111
Email: info@stellaadler.com

Stella Adler - Los Angeles
http://www.stellaadler-la.com
6773 Hollywood Boulevard, 2^nd Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90028
Phone: (323) 465-4446
Fax: (323) 469-6049
E-mail: TheAdler@stellaadler-la.com

Notable students of the Adler Technique:
Alvin Ailey, Sean Astin, Antonio Banderas, Warren Beatty, Candice Bergen, Peter Bogdanovich, Marlon Brando, James Coburn, Chris Cooper, Bud Cort, Kevin Costner, Vincent D’Onofrio, Benicio del Toro, Robert DeNiro, Laura Dern, Phyllis Diller, Richard Dreyfuss, Tovah Feldshuh, Frances Fisher, Teri Garr, Melanie Griffith, Christopher Guest, Salma Hayek, Bryce Dallas Howard, Lauren Hutton, Michael Imperioli, Harvey Keitel, Sally Kellerman, Bruno Kirby, Cloris Leachman, Robert Loggia, Karl Malden, Christopher McDonald, Jayne Meadows, Matthew Modine, Kate Mulgrew, Donna Murphy, Judd Nelson, Edward Norton, Bill Paxton, Sidney Pollack, Anthony Quinn, Judge Reinhold, Michael Richards, John Ritter, Jerome Robbins, Mark Ruffalo, Eva Marie Saint, Roy Scheider, Liev Schreiber, Martin Sheen, Cybill Shepherd, Talia Shire, Connie Stevens, Eric Stoltz, Elaine Stritch, Holland Taylor, Naomi Watts, Henry Winkler, Adrian Zmed

Further reading:
Adler, Stella
The Art of Acting
(with preface by Marlon Brando)

Adler, Stella
Stella Adler on Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov

Note
The following are common misspellings of Stella Adler's name: Stela, Stale, Stala, Adlar, Eldler, Addler, Addlar, Addled