 Okay. Now there is one and only one piece of bad news which is that Barry Parris is sitting in an airplane waiting to get off the ground and may or may not arrive in time to part of this event. The good news is that that means you're going to hear even more from these people here. And these people are special. In the center there is Ella Badler. Amy, are you waving at me? Yeah, I am. Oh, that's right. You're saying something first. Ignore that. Story of my life. Yeah, so as you guys know already, hi, I'm Amy Yvonne Vett. I'm the executive assistant to business affairs, filling in for Terry today. I'd like to welcome you to our first DG Academy of 2013. We're so happy to co-host this event with Harvard Wood. This is our third event together and they've all been a really huge success. So thank you so much for that. As always, if there are any speakers or events you're interested in, feel free to email Terry at any time. And at this time I'd like to remind everybody to please turn off your cell phones and any other electronics. And without further ado, here is Spence Porter, dramatist skilled member and head of the New York chapter of Harvard Wood. Don't I look oddly similar to you? Thank you to the dramatist skill. I love doing these joint events here. So let me give you a quick outline of the sequence of events for this evening. We're going to start with about 40, 45 minutes of talk. And then we're going to have about 15 minutes of questions for you guys. And then we're going to have half an hour of video of the real authentic Stella Adler. And so you definitely want to stick around for the end. And in the center is Ellen Adler, Stella Adler's daughter, a painter of considerable distinction, Joe Wright, and a member of the board of the Stella Adler studio. And over here is one of my favorite people, Vicki Wilson. Vicki is a very impressive lady. She's a vice president and senior editor at Knot, where she was the editor in charge of this book. She's also an author. She has a book coming out. I think of a fall about this is going to be volume one of her two volume biography of Barbara Stanley. And I think that's going to be wonderful. And Vicki is distinguished in so many ways. I'm just not going to bother, just take my word for it. Because it's too much time when it's a panel. Really? I could dawn about it. And our moderator is another of my favorite people, Foster Hirsch. I've used him as a moderator many, many times. And he's just wonderful. He's a professor of film at Brooklyn College. He's the author of 16 books. Oh, I was a little more about Vicki. Okay. As an editor, she's worked with people like Arthur Lawrence, Christopher Plummer, and Sapphire, and Rice. I mean, big deal. Big deal. And Foster, the author of 16 books. Thank you for the props, Kevin. Foster. Hi, Lawrence. The introduction was going to be whatever came out of my mouth. And Foster is the author of 16 books, including the classic study of film noir, the dark side of the screen, and most recently, a biography of auto-premature. So I'm looking forward to this. Thank you all for speaking. Thank you for coming. Let's welcome him. Actually, I want to start first, because we are talking about a book tonight, Stella Adler on American Playwrights. So I want to talk first with the publisher of the book, Vicki. What was your inspiration for publishing this book? And it is volume two that we have before us now. First of all, I'd like to thank everybody for coming out on this very bomby weather and braving the cold. The inspiration was Stella herself. I had taken classes with her. I had audited classes, and really, in many ways, changed my life. And one night, we were having dinner, and I asked her about publishing some of her lectures. And she said, well, go into the hall closet and open the door. And instead of coats, there were shelves of all of her lectures in notebooks from Escalus to Arthur Miller. And I suggested that we do two volumes, the first on Ibsen-Stringberg and Chekhov, on the European Masters, and the second on the American Masters. And the great gift was that she had agreed to do it. Many people had asked her if they could publish her lectures and she had always put them off. But, you know, family was important to Stella, and she agreed. I think what Spence left out is tonight, this is really special, Ellen is Stella's daughter, but Vicki is Stella's stepdaughter. And my sister is here, and she's a stepdaughter. So we're hearing about Stella from within the family. So she wouldn't say no to you. She may have, but I think that we had developed a very interesting close relationship. And I reconnected with Stella as a result of Ellen. I think we ran into each other on the subway or something, and Ellen said, come for dinner. And when our father had died, Stella was very suddenly of a heart attack. He was much younger than she was. And she was basically not great after... Well, she was not great, but she was also not great to us. And the children. And so I hadn't seen or heard from her, nor did I want to, for many years. And then I was thinking of writing a biography of Alan Azimov. And I went and interviewed her about Nazimov. And I don't know, there had been a pass between them. I'm not sure what it was, because there was some kind of edge, probably because Nazimov brought Chekhov and Ibsen to this country. And anyway, it... I was then publishing the letters of Tennessee Williams to Maria St. Just. And I went to see Stella, and I said, could I take the classes, your master classes on Tennessee Williams? And she said, of course, darling. And so I went and showed up, and she walked in, and everybody stood up, the queen has arrived. And she proceeded to talk, and it completely... I was shocked and stunned and amazed, and it was like a religious experience. And she very well may be the greatest teacher of acting of the 20th century. But she also, as this book proves, was a great interpreter of plays. Well, what she really was, more than anything else, was a great, great thinker. And she really was talking about art, about life, about thinking, about understanding, about how to move ahead, about really how to think. And she was talking in a way that nobody else talked. Nobody was talking that way. Nobody thought that way. And I thought, I have to be here to hear this. And it is an interesting story, because the time of my childhood when I met her, and I could not understand... Let's put it this way, it was slightly unhinging. And the cupids were everywhere, and my father, who was a very elegant man, but who was actually quite simple in his affect and what surrounded him, was suddenly cloaked in gold. And I basically, it was like, who are you and where are you and where am I and what has happened? And long after, all those years later, I realized that this was, in a way, a legacy. And that it was my... That I had received this huge gift from this woman, as monstrous as she was when I was a child. And I had received this huge gift, and it was my honor and obligation to bring this to fruition. And what's amazing about the book is her voice comes through, because there's one thing to hear the voice, and there's another thing to read the voice. They're two very different things, but Barry's editing is so skillful that I kept hearing her as I was reading the book. Well, what he did, and I wish he was here, but you know, just let's all send Barry some white light, because he's on a tarmac waiting to be de-iced, which he's been for two hours. And what he did was, he took, I mean, these were not, you know, narrative essays that had a beginning and a middle and an end. They were notes, thousands of drafts of notes that were taken together, that were put together, and then were taken apart and made into a narrative essay. And at the same time managing to hold on to that voice. The unique voice and the unique point of view. Now, Ellen, I'm so grateful for your candor. I was talking about Stella being somewhat deficient as a mother when you were a kid. No, no. What was your experience of her as a mother? My experience of Stella as a mother, I had difficulty when I got older, because she was a very prominent person. And you couldn't get through as he is when done. Can you hear? No. Can you hear this? Can you hear this? Is this on? Is this on? Okay. Are the mics on? No. They're for the live streaming offer. Oh, all right. I hear you. You hear me. Okay, so for in the room, we're just talking loud. All right, Ellen. You have to speak up. My mother, my grandfather, Jacob Adler, was one of the great Yiddish actors that ever lived. I mean, he's even mentioned in Kafka. And he had, and my grandmother was a very, very extraordinary actress. They both were from Russia, from Ukraine. And they played on the lower side. Jacob was part of the Huskala in the sense that he brought plays into the Yiddish theater. They came from the outside world. So his idea was to educate the Jews and let them be a part of the West. But he was a very great actor. And the family, everybody in the family was in the theater. I'm the only one that didn't go into the theater. And I think it's because my mother was so, as I said, awesome. Couldn't do it because I remember with Bergner, Elizabeth Bergner, this great German actress. And Stella was in a play with her. She took a small part because she wanted to see how this woman worked because she was a child. She came out of my Reinhardt theater. And she asked me to come in her dressing room and talk to her. Now, this was the great, great actress. And I was sitting with her. And as I was sitting there, I thought, if my mother were more like this, I could have been an actress. But she was a big show off, I mean. And she was gorgeous. I mean, she was absolutely extraordinary. And very public. She would walk down the street when she'd come to Paris with people sitting in the German goal. She had great clothes. And everybody would go, Chapeau, Chapeau, Bravo. So she was something extraordinary. But I was the only child in a family. All the other people in the family had stayed in the theater. And Stella, I have to say that she was a very, very brave woman. Because in those days, to go out on your own in any way at that time was really extraordinary. Anyway, my grandmother was there. She was in the Yiddish theater. And then she found out that there were Bolaslavsky who had worked with Stanislavsky. She was giving classes. And she went to Bolaslavsky and worked with him in this other thing. Because the Yiddish theater had one wife. She had worked. She was in the group theater with Leigh Strasberg, but she denounced him altogether. Because Leigh felt that you should use yourself and your experience and your feelings and bring that to the role. And that's how you could get the emotion. And she said, that's just too small. You're not interesting enough. You can't get the emotion. Who are you? So she worked. Then she worked with Stanislavsky in Paris. She met Stanislavsky and she worked with him. And, of course, everybody knows that the greatest part of art comes out of the artist's imagination. And Stanislavsky trained her to use her imagination on these parts. And so she then discovered how to create an environment for these people where the desk was, where the thing was, everything. To make a surrounding and to go into the character in a much larger way than Mr. Strasberg had asked. Anyway, they remained enemies till the end. When he died, she said to her class, an important man in the American. We'll have a moment of silence. An important man in the American theater has died. And then at the end she said, it will take the American theater 100 years to get over his rotten influence. I was in the class that day. I was there that day. It is the truth. It is the truth. The class gasped when she said it. They gasped. And the thing about Lee that made him different from Stella and from my stepfather, I was married to Harold Flurman and he started the group theater. And they were enormously idealistic and they did 10 years of working on technique, working on speech, working. And mainly the playwright that came out of that was Clifford Odette's. And they did those parts. So she has worked on that. And Lee, of course, said you have to use yourself. Then she gave the speech. She said, you know, you're just too small. You're not big enough. You have to go. And I think every artist and anybody studying art knows that the whole thing that moves the world forward is the imagination. Einstein, wherever it was, brings it further out, further out from the me. So she changed the acting teaching. She only started teaching because she had been an actress and then she joined the group theater. And that was from 1929 to 1939. And then that was, you know, that fell apart. And everybody, I have to tell you then, everybody was poor. My mother was poor. Everybody was broke. We lived in an apartment on 58th Street with a big, long, beautiful table like this, the dining table. And that was from the House of Connolly, a playbook. And everything. And then she met Harold Flurman and he was starting the group theater, which was a very extraordinary adventure that they... What did you say? The most important experiment in the history of American theater. Yes. And Foster wrote this wonderful thing and they took the bus and they just say that line. They took the bus on 47th Street, this group of actors, and changed the American theater. And changed the American theater, yeah. That one ride to the country changed the theater. The thing about Stella is that to the end she was a student. She was always, always studying. She had books on the bed and she was studying. And she went to study at Columbia to study with Maya Shapiro about painting. And she studied and she went to Europe and she looked at everything. She studied all her life. Self-educated, not formally educated. No, no. But the people who she surrounded herself with, Harold and everything, they... I mean they were very, people, people were really engaged in those days, very, very much so. But Ellen, we want to know. We know your mother was very flamboyant in class, very theatrical. What was she like as a mother? She was... Flamboyant and theatrical? No. When I was little, she sent me away a while. I went away to boarding school and I was three years old. And she was in this, and at that time she was still in the Yiddish theater and she had to go down to South America with the Schwartz and the Yiddish theater. And I was away at great deal. So that was the thing. So being home was extraordinary. And the family were all actors, most of them still in the Yiddish theater. And the house was filled with actors. And there are no better people in the world. Actors are fun and they're nice and they're generous. And I've been with a lot of different people, including many years spent in Paris with 12-tone composers of Schoenberg. And there's nothing nicer and more generous than a group of actors to grow up with. So the whole family, everybody in the family were actors. And we had fun. We had fun sitting and talking. But she sent you away to boarding school at three. Was she an attentive mother? Even so? I remember she came back and she did this thing. I told this to a therapist many years later and this is what he did. She came back and I was in this little boarding school in Brooklyn. Is there a boarding school in Brooklyn? It was run by somebody from the Yiddish theater, the woman. Shidlofsky was the name. How's that for a name? And I was the youngest. I was three in the rest of the world, six years old. And Stella came. But what she did, this is what the analyst wrote, is that she hid. So she saw me and she hid. She was a very good mother. We got along. Why did she hide? I don't understand. To be playful. Oh, wow. She was a very good mother. In the end, I found it to be heavy. I couldn't lift it up to where we'd been when she was young. I don't know why that was. She talked about the theater and she was serious. She had been with her. They would not have gone into the theater because the theater came this thing. It was so serious. But she was an intellectual giant. And she had two things. She was probably one of the most beautiful women of her time. And she had these brains. And they were big. And Vicki has the book and everything. And she had this thing. So she wanted two things to go up once. She wanted you to know that she was beautiful and she was very flamboyant. She wanted you to know that she was very intelligent. So, yeah. I didn't tell her about it. Anyway. And she was very extremely. So her breakdown of plays and all that is absolutely... Because the French express is so empowering. Did you see her as she was teaching? Did you go to class? Were you welcomed in class? Did she encourage you to go to class? I didn't go a lot because it would be too hard to make the relationship between her as a mother and then see this thing go on. I went, but I didn't go as much. And she noticed that. That I didn't go as much. I couldn't... Isn't that an interesting point? That you... The... The relationship between Stella... Oh my God. He's here. Are your arms de-iced? Is that better? That's Barry Parris. Come up here, Barry. Very great. Too introduction. Why don't you move to the... And Barry Parris. Barry, why don't you take this over here? Too kind, as you've heard. It's wonderful, but... He's the author of Biographies of Renegarbo. Come and sit here. Audrey Hepburn. They want you to sit here. Louise Brooks. And the co-author of Henry Curtis's autobiography. And has herobically arrived in the subite of the sleep and ice on the runway at 7. Thanks for having me. Welcome. Thank you very much. From Pittsburgh, but... I think I should mention the point that Vicky and I were making. And I was just reminded of it and looking at the book again today because I had the privilege of going to Stella's classes and hearing that unique voice and that unique presence. And what you were able to do in editing the lectures was to communicate a sense of her particular voice. I heard her in that. And I know it took a lot of work. Tell us about your process. Thank you very much. It's a high compliment. It was hard. It is not hard. It is impossible to replicate Stella Adler's voice. There is only one Stella Adler voice. But what I did actually thank God, Vicky, nudged me to go and meet her and spend at least a little bit of time that we did have together. She and I in California. I was able to... Yeah, it was sadly brief, but it was several days that were fascinating, of course, for me. And she was extraordinary, even though she was very old. She was 90. But very sharp. Anyway, that voice, and of course I had my tape recorder, stayed with me forever. And what I tried to do, actually, I think if I had any secret at all, of course, Victoria handed me about 3,000 pages of transcribed lectures and said, please turn this into two books. And... Sunny side up. Yes, sunny side up. And it only took about 13 years. But anyway, what I did was, I was trying to amalgamate everything, consolidate, coordinate. I would speak the words out loud when I wasn't sure whether or not they worked. It was an old trick, actually. I learned interviewing people years ago and trying to write articles that sounded like the person I had interviewed. So I knew what her voice sounded like. I didn't know it as well as a student or as a relative, but I knew it. And anyway, I would just speak things out loud. The trouble was that her whole style was so, you know, her pedagogical style was very different from her conversational style. And it involved a lot of repetition, which good pedagogues do anyway, or at least many do, but they can't do too much of it, especially in print. And these wonderful transcripts were not probes. They were transcribed words. And repetition was pretty massive after a while. I mean, I would find five lectures on a certain scene or two from, say, Glassman Ashery, or in the first volume was special. Glassman Ashery, she was particularly brilliant about it. What happened to that great actress? Yes, well, Lorette. Lorette, I love you. But these five lectures would be similar, let's say, but there was always something different or a few things different. So anyway, I was trying to pick and choose things. But I think the, if there was any, my favorite moments were discovery moments of, you know, we needed to have and we decided we'd have, of course, Glassman Ashery and Vicky and I, we decided we would have Glassman Ashery and Streetcar and Summer and Smoke. Just speaking about Tennessee Longs, but we discovered the Lady of Lux Per Loche, which is the most bizarre, extraordinary one act that nobody knows. And so that was a lot of fun to think that we were resurrecting that for people who generally didn't know it, as her students certainly didn't. That play, it makes, that play makes Orpheus descending look like National Velvet. I don't know. It is just beyond, beyond that. Sorry, what I noticed in the book is just a little of it. But if you were in Stella's classes, there was an extraordinary call and response. It was almost like a religious ceremony between her and the students. And there's a little bit of it in the book. But did you not include more because it wouldn't have reproduced what it was actually like to be there? It's hard to translate. You're absolutely right. I'm so glad you mentioned it because that's a good way to describe it. Coral, I thought of it as the, you know, remember from Plato, Glaucon and the Socrates or Plato, anyway. Glaucon, the student's job is to say, yes, sir. Do you agree? Yes, sir. Is that not right? I was in class where she would say, I think she did this very early on, that she would talk and she would say, I want you to respond to me. I'm not just talk. You have to be present. And you will see in the clips that I put together, she'll say yes, do you agree? And they'll say yes. You'll see that repeatedly. She wants to know that. She demanded her response. She insisted that you... She insisted. Yeah. She would say, who agreed or who understands? Right. Who understands. And the, obviously, who agrees. But you do include an unforgettable line when there was an argument between her and Kira Sedgwick. And Stella says, who do you think is going to win this argument? That is a challenge. I mean, it wasn't exactly equality between her and her students. No. And Kira Sedgwick was a little bit... I mean, about studying. Studying. She really... She couldn't take that heaviness and the seriousness of it, you know. She's married to Kevin Bacon. Yes. Yeah. How's that? I couldn't come up with anything. She took, you know, when she wanted to be, she could be Stella. She could be a little on the mean side. Oh, yeah. She was hard. I'm sure I don't need to tell. She was hard. She wasn't hard with me, but she was hard. And she wasn't hard with you, Ella? No. She was not hard with me. She was afraid of me. She was afraid of you? She dictates that at a number of points, including a couple of quotes in the book where she says, my daughter, you know, says I'm a fool. She says I'm, you know... She gets away with it. She says I'm a fool. I don't understand it. She was not easy. A lot of the time. As she got older, she got less easy. When she was young, she was playful. And when she was in the group, they were young and idealistic. I have to say that she was always studying. My mother was a student from the day she was born. And she studied... Well, she studied acting and she went to both. Slavsky, she went and met Stonna Slavsky in Paris and worked with him. She said, I'll tell this. Yes. She had been in the group theater. She had been in the Yiddish theater and she was a completely... When they started the group theater, she was a completely developed actor. She had been in the Yiddish theater since she was three. And it was Jacob Adler and they did old plays. And then came Lee Strasper, who was all coming from the inside and everything. And so she then got very, very serious about finding the imagination, finding in the play but use your imagination. Don't decide what it's going to be. Use your imagination and you then will be part of the playwright. You will subsidize what he hasn't put in. So she did develop that and she tried to do that with all of the students. She was not a teacher in the beginning. She started teaching because in 1939 there was, you know, a depression and she got a job as a new school teaching and that was the beginning. And of course she had some very brandos in that class. And she had some other very, very good students but teaching that she became a giant, that was what, and not what she started out. She started really as an actress looking at parts. But Alan, is it possible, because I felt this when I was in her classes, that she wasn't acting on the stage. Yeah. But she was acting in her classes and that her teaching was, those were some of the greatest performances being given in New York. Nobody knew it but her students. But it was as great as any performance you would have seen on Broadway. She was very fluid. Lee said, you know, she denounced Lee Strasberg all the time. She never finished announcing Lee Strasberg but he said she's very fluid and she had a complete ability to be in that and then be moved and then the tears were there and then she was in the scene and she didn't have to work to do that. That was something that came and Lee said she's very fluid. She just can be in the character at the moment and you could see that when she told a story. She just did, just told a story about something that was happening that she was in the theater. But is it fair to say her greatest role was as a teacher? Yes. And once she became this great teacher there were no more performances on stage. Well, she didn't have the career she wanted. A, she was Jewish when America was far more anti-Semitism anti-Semitic than that was after the war that was over. But she had to change her name and then she didn't get parts and the fights in the house between Harold Cloyman and my mother about her career and what he was trying to do and she was in the group theater and they were terrible fights they really fought. And finally at one point she went to the new school and she worked with Piscataura who was a German director and very symbol. And another thing about Stella is that she studied all the time she studied out with Bertolt Brecht and he was in California she studied with Stonislavsky she went to wherever there was somebody teaching she studied and that was the most interesting part of her she never said I've got it I don't have to I don't have to seek anymore and that was an extraordinary part of my mother. And you feel that in the lectures that are so broad in terms of so talk about just rereading the section on Golden Boy today because of the reason for Bible and if you read the Golden Boy section you learn about America in the 30s you learn about immigrants you learn about art it's incredible you learn about acting the range of her comments is extraordinary a hardcore academic would say she's not telling us what we need to know about the play no she's telling us more than a hardcore academic would give us. But you know she lived with Harold Clerman in an enormous mind and what they had they were not a happy couple but they were married for a number of years but they had the same intense understanding of the theater and that was or any play they would go to see they went to the Soviet Union because everybody knew that that Russian acting was extraordinary they went to Paris to get their study and she went on studying all her life the last was studying with Maya Shapiro at Columbia University painting the art you know and when we would go to Europe she was in every museum she knew every single place everything she studied and she studied and her mind remained no matter what it was in her personal life her mind remained completely interested and engaged but you know in this in the clips that I put together you're going to see a couple of interesting things first of all at one point or actually twice she refers to this which I thought was very evolved of her but I think it was true of her where she talks about she says all right enough with this feminine thinking you know you have to play you know enough with that and she talked about the third sex which is I think how she saw herself and that if she wasn't confined to the way a woman was supposed to think and behave though she was deeply feminine yeah she was but I think it's exactly what Ellen's saying for her time of being beautiful and having this brain and having this curiosity and not being confined to a feminine or female role she did and she certainly did I think Brando many people who studied with her said that she taught not just theater I have a quote she taught history Stella Adler was considerably more than a teacher of acting through her work she imparted this is Brando she imparted a valuable kind of information how to uncover the nature of our own emotional mechanics and therefore those of others as far as I know she is the only American artist who went to Paris to study with Constantine Stanislavski and he himself was a skilled observer of human behavior and the most prominent figure in the Russian theater she brought back to this country a knowledge of his technique and incorporated it in her teaching little did she know that her teachings would impact the theater culture worldwide almost all filmmaking anywhere in the world has been affected by American films which have been in terms influenced by Stella Adler's teaching she is loved by many as an actor we owe her much I am grateful for the contribution she has made to my life and I feel privileged to have been associated with her family professionally and personally throughout my life that's Brando but she taught him and he was he was from Nebraska and he couldn't do anything but he did wind up he was an elevator boy and he wound up in the class he was like in this class which was at the new school and she she worked with him and she opened him up but he was amazing she's had one of the exercises was to pretend you're with chickens so everybody's go over in the class and he was sitting very quietly very very quiet she said what are you doing I'm laying an egg as an editor I'm interested on what basis did you choose the plays because she spoke about so many plays and you do choose some as you say not the top 40 yes well it was tough because she was alive and well not very well but she was alive and we had discussed the first volume it was clear it was her and my joint decision that we do Ibsen, Strinberg and Chekhov being her favorite Strinberg being nobody's favorite but he was important but she was gone and we had planned on discussing with her which American play to answer your question more succinctly I ended up doing it with Vicki's collaboration and consultation pretty much I let her decide Stella that is on the basis of whom she spoke the most about and which plays she talked the most about Odets of course was top well to do it chronologically we had to do O'Neill that sounds a little it was a bit obligatory in the beginning he was the toughest for me personally he's the least compelling I think the section on Morning Becomes Electric is astonishing it's a little tough going through beyond the horizon but anyway we had to do O'Neill the most important beginning of the century and then it was an easy choice of Odets because she was the most friendly with him and had worked with him he was in the group a crucial member of the group it's interesting Golden Boy is the only one of those plays of the only one of any plays in the book that I took out a whole scene from and just to give people an example of what her line by line exegesis was I think it's astounding there's also big controversy going on now in one of those wonderful blogs the Talking Broadway thing there's a guy who hated the book hated Stella I saw it he wrote something very nasty it goes on there was an entry and I made the mistake of responding to well not the mistake but I responded about a 500 well yeah now I know I wrote about a 500 he wrote a 5000 words response it was amazing it turns out I think to be good because Stella would have loved all that fussing and fighting about it it's an ongoing debate but the deaths had to be there and then of course Tennessee and the Thorn Wilder the problem is I was hoping that there would be a section I mean there would be a lot of material on our town and she didn't talk about it with the great play great play and she would have had I don't know why she didn't pick it maybe it didn't lend itself to the it's more of an ensemble piece whereas many of the most of the play she chooses tend to be showcases for the a more kind of a traditional protagonist I don't know why and the same with Saroi and I expected time of your life and there's to my knowledge there's not even as maybe there may be one five page now there's like a two page two or three page one little lecture on that but not enough to even make a chapter but there's this astonishing huge amount of material on this play that nobody knows called Hello Out There which is you know it's a wonderful play it's a tiny little play it's a one act and it's not the play that you choose if you were trying to find or if you were picking Saroi and his greatest hits that would be a slim tone the Williams and the Miller are both extraordinary I said the Williams and the Miller pieces are both extraordinary Miller was then the other one Albie is very interesting that she would have been so fond of him and Zoo Story I think that's wonderful because she could leave straight into an avant-garde a different kind of theater when Edward when he first, Zoo Story I think it was first done in Germany or something and it was completely different and she came really her openness to it it was wonderful and she came from realism that was the thing in the theater at that time Barry what did you decide you needed to translate for us the footnotes every Yiddish word you felt you had to translate I did a lot of I don't know why I didn't do like schlamillo I did schmagaga one of my favorite she said he's no schmagaga my father I grew up with a lot of Yiddish I never heard of schmagaga it's like a I always thought it was a schmagaggy schmagaggy you know we had a very what do you expect he's from Kansas I have to have Catholic from Kansas I have all sorts of issues we should be going to questions from the audience and if you've got really early questions ask them but this is great stuff so if you don't have urgent questions I'm just as happy letting them talk what do you think very encouraging okay keep going but we end with giving Stella the last word nobody can go after Stella nobody ever did about a half hour of fascinating material we're talking about her as a teacher as a presence but we should really give them a sense of her entrance into the classroom I just want to say I wanted to add one thing to it she was the head of a family it was a big family everybody was in the theater and Stella was the head of a family and she believed in family passion and such idealism I mean I have things that she's written family is the most important thing and it was very moving that that sort of sense and of course everything happened no matter what happened it all happened at Stella's house if somebody died and then we went there afterwards if somebody got married we went to Stella's and she had this thing about family I should have wrote it it's really something all these playwrights would come into the house too we had events but that was Harold too Harold too my favorite of those stories is the night she was trying to point out the difference between Thornton Wilder's personality and Arthur Miller and she said Thornton Wilder was amazing he was like a clown he was a great intellectual he was two, three people but he was also a clown he would come in and the room would light up everybody had loved me I had a party once and he was there and I also invited Arthur Miller and he came in and he said it was like death walked into the house I said to the maid for God's sake ask him to leave she just had her stories about when Arthur married Marilyn Monroe which of course was the biggest shock of theater community such a thing but anyway he was married to somebody and they lived in Brooklyn Heights and he left and his wife at the time said because he was such a heavy a heavy passenger his wife said go Arthur go with your life go have a wonderful time Arthur go that's the old story he leaves the room you feel like somebody just came in he's always there but you don't have her talking to students individually very much in the book and a lot of her lectures were very focused to her students but unfortunately the transcripts very few believe me this was a dearth of material that I always kept lamenting as I was going through very very few of the transcripts of all those three thousand pages very few contained the students interaction the students line whoever did them was told just do stolen and well although for that matter she didn't encourage a whole lot of student interaction she didn't she wasn't the kind of person who liked to the kind of teacher that wanted to she also preferred the boys this was part of her problem with absolutely certain with Kaira Sechwe she took a real disliking to her now Kaira also was annoying and you could see why in a way but she took an immediate dislike to her and she said she has in this one this is on video which is amazing one of the video thing most of the stuff I had was audio tape but on the video Kaira does a scene and she really doesn't seem to be that bad or anything but Stella hates it and says it's all about you and this blondness and this incredible blondness and Kaira Sechwe makes the mistake of defending herself saying something in return and then that's when Stella makes the famous darling one of us is going to win which one do you think it is it's chilling it's a chilling moment there were very few exchanges like that but my favorite of them all is in the first book but I just happened to bring it with me because I hoped you would ask me that and if you'll bear with me one second it's worth the wait it's from an Ibsen chapter while you're shuffling let me from my own experience I would see her classes and if a student was showing a deficient imagination her standard put down was everything is hoboken to you don't bring you and hoboken but you know if she got older she was kinder to the females in the class she wasn't as hard on the girls I forgot this one fabulous clip come to the next event and you'll see it where this young man is wearing a scene I can't remember if it's Hamlet but he's a king and he's wearing a house dress it's supposed to be a sort of medieval piece of clothing and he's doing the scene and she interrupts and she talks to him and then she says if you came to the theater dressed like that you would be asked to leave saying I stole it and everybody in the class laughs and you see this sort of smile across her face and then she gets serious and starts pounding the mask and saying you talking about how what an actor's responsibility is and the young man was Mark Ruffalo and he never forgot it he certainly did and he's a fantastic actor I've had emails with him and he has talked about that beautiful actor but you know what Lee and Stella had in common for all their differences they made actors feel important they thought acting really counted in the world and they made people studying acting feel as if they were in pursuit of some higher truth they both get great dignity to the profession there's no doubt about that Marlon said a great thing about Lee Strasberg I'm going to give it all to you he's never talked about Lee Strasberg unless you talk about his post nasal drip laughs because he used to say and now we're going to laughs and that was the thing Brando agreed because Lee claimed that Marlon had studied with him he never did but of course he got that way Lee he got interested and started with him anyway the post nasal drip so that was that well the day he died the famous maybe you've already talked about it well this is one of the very few anecdotes I mean exchanges with students in the first volume they're more in the second because they were more in the American place and I'll make it all condense here but she's ranting and raving about enemy of the people and how they're not the students are just too lazy they're not doing the research they're not doing anything you don't know enemy of the people is about a community a liberal journal a traditional housewife a doctor you don't know them you have to find out about them you don't know anything about the south of Norway you think I bet the south of Norway is like Tennessee well it's not begin to find out about Norway 20 miles where they are 20 miles south of Oslo near the sea or the mountains you have to know where you live so nobody can fool you you'd like to do that you'd like to go to Mr. Strasberg who says take everything you know about yourself and use it to make Oslo it's great like that but you do not know Oslo you have to unless you look up Oslo and find out you live in some dream world of Oslo that you can't use if you do a Russian play during the Napoleonic Revolution it's a good thing to retell story it cannot hurt you your whole thing is words I say leave them alone for Christ's sake find something out about Oslo she goes on and on and finally she says 10,000 feet inquire about those mountains aren't you interested in anything and then she pauses and during her dramatic pause an offended actor in the class makes the mistake of not just interrupting her but challenging her and he said Miss Adler we are here as professional and sometimes you address us as rank students I'm sorry to have to say this and she says and she says listen I'll tell you what we'll do you don't say anything rotten about me and I won't say anything rotten about you I'm talking to you as a professional even though I don't think there's such a thing as a professional America now how do you like that and the student says well I classify somebody who owes his livelihood to act we're in obscenity and dialectics you have your truth I have mine I'm treating you like students because you need this work I don't want to treat students like professionals but I'm going to treat you the way I feel like treating you and one of the things I want to say is I don't have much respect for your ability to call yourself a professional it means something else to you than it means to me it doesn't mean belonging to equity it doesn't mean having jobs when I'm acting and involved with the snow and all slow I don't give a goddamn about it I'm involved with acting with the play with different snow these are different if you want polite people go to England I'll introduce you to them they'll be very nice they'll be very nice to you but I'm a pretty important teacher there's nobody giving this class better than I in America and you're stuck with me so you'd better take what's good about me and shut up about the rest and that's why there aren't a lot of student interaction a couple of those boys and there weren't a lot of students that wanted to subject themselves to she became a teacher because there were no parts she had she was tall and she was Jewish at that time so she had to change her name America was before the Holocaust and before Germany this was a fairly anti-semitic country there were quotas for colleges and all kinds of things way back and that all changed in Hollywood didn't she have to become artler for the movie they put an R in there artler and that made it Gentile immediately took the Jewish Missile of it of course in those days one did expect to go to Hollywood and make movies and she made a couple of movies and she went out there but it didn't work she didn't have the right something was not what she was who she was her beauty was not what it was it was complicated to teach she started to teach and I think she would have had a very hard life being an actress because everybody does and in the teaching the whole entire intellectual you know gold mine opened up of who she really was and it was very fortunate that that happened because kicking around and trying to get a job in the theater somebody does the thing with you go to the theater and the theater is dark an actor auditioning so he's the playwright, the director and the producer is sitting in the row and the house is dark and the actor comes and he says one and trying to next so you know you can be replaced it's very tough out there well and she had been a professional actress since she was three years old Ben there done that for her entire wife and child she worked all through the group but he gave her Jewish older women but she brought that into the class she was the great teacher as the great actress oh yeah definitely she definitely back to your point of the while every class was a performer she went to the point of requiring applause well you're going to see and the clips that were put together can I ask a question sure I'm from India I used to be a lawyer when I read first volume some other things when I read when she was talking about Ibsen when I was in hunger strike 283 exactly the same words my friends were telling me to criticize me and word for word it just like my friends were speaking to me she spoke to me so I couldn't stop reading I spent the whole week reading it finished the book so it kind of made me curious who is this person this is the person I would like to study with and the reason I'm asking is in the Ibsen my friends told me Rao family is an economic institution institution suppress freedom so the question I'm asking you is somehow the problem she had family is it all coming from that intellectual genius of this Ibsen where she thinks this family is an economic institution the institution suppress freedom so is she kind of deal with this intellectuality with the reality of being a mother whatever I'm just curious it affected me personally in my life in my relationships one thing my mother was very anxious about was marriage and I have all kinds of things here why I didn't get married the last I saw of her she said she was six years out in Hollywood and she said to me you're a very beautiful woman she said you always were this is a mother speaking to the daughter and you always will be she said I don't know her last words I don't know why you never married again and then she said very quietly you've done something better with your hair those were her last words she was a mother who was constantly changing and fixing and changing your hair maybe we need to tell us how you chose what we're going to be seeing well I'll just give you the general shape of it there are some funny clips and then at the centerpiece of it is a sort of longish clip extraordinary where you see Stella using her imagination to piece together how to think about a play and the middle class and the setting and you see her actually taking how she puts it together as a way to show students how to think about it and then there are amusing clips after but of course they're always revealing and the one thing to be aware of is the throne she sits in the chair now the chair in different clips sometimes the chair gets as ratty as could be but she is still sitting there like the queen and despite the fact that the chair is sort of falling apart she is still in possession of the kingdom and it's amusing to watch how she transcends it all so now I don't know how to work this so Foster oh the screen is here yeah I know but I mean I guess is the power on or should I just press play yeah just press play just press play yeah so that's so easy where the hell is I have to move so if we want to turn off the lights or down the lights a little bit or just focus on it oh my I'm not oh my god I'm telling the whole world I'm not a player I don't like to lunch I don't chat one of the great political statements that Stella ever made at that time was when she said well of course I could live in any communist country providing I was the queen I probably 37 Hollywood called and Stella answered to a new last name art love I had this long controversy written and at last I remember I said well if I can pronounce it you can spell it any way you like I don't know of anyone I am so happy to see how's that darling little dog Mr. Briney he is a darling isn't he did you say hello to Sam for me Skull pros and thank you you're looking so well you mustn't leave everything you've seen this job this is a great pleasure Linda this is all mine buzzy be seated gentlemen and just relax I don't think I can help you you see I hardly knew Mr. Battle when you didn't miss much he wasn't exactly one of the nature's noblemen really how nice it doesn't need any around you I'm glad you like my perfume she was a lady to start with very elegant and then she turns around and she really really shows the worst side of her which is a gun maul and she's a dirty word and I like that twist in it why did he tour? none of your business I'm not on trial not yet that's what I deserve for letting a double crossing cup in the door get out don't look now but your accent showing how many people are on the TV gasoline is rationed as of tonight how many people say oh god yes yes you have no real power of the government if you have there's revolution now they don't want to create a revolution they want simply to have change to get through to the situation of the middle class in relation to what I call the social situation you cannot play him if you read the play and you don't know that you can't play him unless you know what I told you that we are gradually without your knowing it we are getting to his character yes or no in relation to his ethic if he belongs to a bank and the bank situation is utterly conservative in that time then you would realize that his ethic is absolutely without any leeway now the middle class had always the ethic of honesty and morality honesty and morality and a lot of it early came from god and god told you and he gave you the ten commandments and he gave you what is needed to be honest in your society now with the with these changes from god the institutions took over the moral questions so the institutions the church and the bank would say they wouldn't marry anybody that had any suspicion I don't think they still would hire somebody that had a was arrested for something don't yawn darling don't yawn if you're an actress you will not get tired if you're a pishiker you'll get tired because you'll say well why is she saying I don't understand half of what she's saying because I don't know I only know me so anybody else doesn't interest you very much well it so happens there is no you when you're an actor you're only the character only and if you give up that you I shouldn't say that because I look as if there's a lot of me there is no me believe me I I'm telling you now I'd be the most ignorant person in the world if it wasn't for a character that I had to study I know so much about no way I can't tell you think about no way I think I'll just give this up and talk about no way I am not region you know he doesn't want to what's the dirty word but he doesn't want to well you know I'd like to talk to you about something I want to ask you a straight question where have I heard that before I want to ask you straight that kind of examination law my memory is listen I've got to ask you a straight question husband doesn't talk like that your friends don't talk to that who talks like that I don't know but it's puzzling who understands puzzling then you are there with a couple of puzzles that's the beginning of saying what are impressions who understands they have nothing to do with what somebody told you about the play these impressions are right and some of them are wrong but at least you are not pushing the play you are not forcing this particular type of literature you are not putting into this typical type of literature called the play form the modern play form you are not allowed to push it the skeleton and you have to discover where the bones go it has no bones it has no flesh you have to take it upon yourself to say this skeleton needs me it needs the histrionic side of literature and so forever you must say the play is a theater piece a theater piece is not literature it is a play therefore if you play the literature and leave out the actor you are doing something that doesn't belong to the theater the theater has a balance in the middle is the theater on one side is the actor that's the histrionic side on the other side is the words that's the literary side nobody goes in and says oh I'm dying to read that play sweetheart go down and run down and get me dinner at eight you don't talk like that about a play it's a phony thing when you go into a house and they have a lot of plays they don't read plays it's one of the more ghastly things to do how are you fine when did you arrive ask him it is a form that needs the actor now if you leave out the contribution of the actor then there is no play because it's nothing it's words not making sense if you push it you'll make some crazy sense out of it but therefore you are not contributing anything to the words therefore you have to understand that it is the histrionic side remember that historically histrionic means the acting side of a play and you must use the play you must use it like an ingredient for yourself it's an ingredient that you use for the histrionic side of you and then somebody says it's theater am I clear the forms have to get together now this underlining the past of the play and getting your impressions the way I did is your first job when you get a text that's a play get the impressions then go over them now I'm going to take the time a little bit to go over them shall I excuse me Mrs. Helmer I don't know that name it's not used very often in America or London or Paris and it gives me no memory so I have very little knowledge of the of people who are called Krogstadt and no memory at all I can't search for it I've never met that before I wonder where this is taking place who understands me who understands me wonder where this is taking place what do you want I beg your pardon it is polite somebody's very polite someone must have forgotten to close the door that gives it already a closed in quality it's inside it isn't in a garden it isn't a palace it seems to get a little closer we say close of the door it gets closer already that it isn't too far away I begin to see apartments with doors I begin to see a front door I begin to see stoops in a front door and doors and apartments but I don't feel elevator somebody must have forgotten to close the door is already steps it's not I'm riding up in an elevator so I have to work to see something about walking up steps or I already am not in elevator bill I'm not with us, who understands this is very good isn't it to know that somebody to get somewhere has to walk up some steps people do not live on the ground floor then it begins to say yes the best apartment in the Italian is called the piano nobile that's on the second floor and the servants I have to get to myself you know I have to use what I have now the second floor is the best floor the third floor is next to the bed I'm beginning to contribute that the ground floor is used for the concierge yes always people do not live in the ground floor so this home must be either second or third floor no elevator and now I begin to think of dickens and houses and I begin to see houses that are made for family houses with three, four stories and I yes there's always a street and then you go up and then somebody has a window and you say what floor is so and so on yes yes yes yes it's another time and and you have to bring in yourself who understands I don't know one thing you mustn't do is say it's a door it's like my door now the moment I say it's not like my door I begin to see that there's the boat is made differently very differently that everything you see in a country like England or France is made with the hand in it it has it's special that it's made for time that it has more weight in a European door has more weight than our doors it's bolted in its own weight yes my travels make me understand oh god yes when I was first taken to this all happens when I was first taken to Europe and I was on the boat and I arrived in London oh I said no it's not like that I mean that's like New York they have steps and people live in houses I thought they might live but I remember the shock I had that in some way people lived in houses like they do in America so the next thing is that my first impression was that it wasn't like our houses our houses were their apartment houses but these are all houses like this and I begin to see that they are family houses and that they have a structure of middle class life I think this is like that I don't know but I think so but I get there from me and the strange names and I get to London I get to see that a house has stoopes and that they and the bolt on the door was very and the bolt on every French door is shocking because it's so beautiful it's so big and the doors mean something I've got something Stella Adler I've got something this is a strong middle class this is a strong middle class the doors are strong they must be look how I've arrived at the essence of this play the depth of the middle class of this play yes or no do you understand that I understand from my whole life what I need from my life I have drawn to create the play and I don't have to go inside here it's about Nora no it's about a strong middle class I've got my hand on it and therefore everything about it has a power the middle class has power and I begin to say what is the power in the middle class the institutions around it the middle class is a middle class created by the institutions and my first comes they know how to make money and they use money and there's a family and there's always a church and there's always a city hall and there's always a police and there's always a park and people I know I know so much about the structure around the class and then I know I have to deal with every structure because that's what you're learning how the people think through these structures what is their relation to money what is their relation to religion what is their relation to education to the church, to the police and you have to know this if not you don't know how you're living but your character has to live by these institutional things that's what makes the middle class right to handle it but if you get the middle class 19th century middle class 18th century middle class you will have to know that it is transitional into the strongest class that is there on top of this class you can put the English queen on top of this class you can put the Danish royalty but you cannot say it's about royalty you understand you just feel the bolt on that door makes you know that you walk up that it's not a palace and that there's power the strength that it's repeated I know it's repeated I've seen it repeated and now the repetition means to me that when you see a thing repeated it is the dominant class of those people she brought her passion for people before the theatre into the classroom in 1949 she opened an acting studio which continues today okay it's a lively applause but I don't trust it I think because it's raining you might be a little bit protected by scarves and sweaters and so that's extreme there is a very good story around that long time ago that I went into Tiffany and bought some you know that story yes it's a very good story and I bought something and the lady said where should we send it in England I said oh I don't have in England I thought you were English I said no just affected you will never govern Mary but let you go back there will be long brawls again in Scotland dangers and bright ones to my peace at home to be fair to my own people this must not be now speak once with your illness and what's behind it come here Daniel stay there speak to her and make her realise the technique of being a queen now you are speaking to her without guiding her awakening her to this technique of governing which is masculine which is strong which is don't it's not going to help you she says I too now what you must realise is that every queen is brought up educated to rule they are not educated to be girls you will never govern Mary you will never govern Mary if you want my love you shall have it freely when I am free you will never govern Mary by let you go back to Scotland there will be long brawls again dangers and bright ones to my peace at home it must not be colours lots of colours up and down and there now darling you must realise a star plays Elizabeth she was a star she was queen now you are playing the lady in waiting there is no age for an actress there is no age you have to have it you have to be able to produce it you have to have that tone that you give up you can't always do this because they are kill you so what's the good of it true in my place why rules now your brother yes but all this could be arranged or so I'm told if your son will crown king and more red made region alright every one of her arguments is stupid stupid walk away from me stupid you're stupid you don't always have to face her you'll do as I say I want to stop with all this nonsense well now we have some more of this stupid feminine thinking finish with that I was standing still because I felt more powerful standing in one place and moving around she's like I am a front of my piano teacher I'm playing da da da dee say faster go so fast just a moment stop coughing they don't sneeze and they don't they don't catch colds they're not tired they don't yawn and they don't chew gum so I told you in the beginning that no matter what I said you wouldn't listen you would go to the words you are drunk with words with you are infected you are diseased with words instead of what words come from you must contribute to the words the words are not your privilege the words are somebody else's you must do something with them you must give them life they are on the page Shakespeare is dead as doornails on the page the play has nothing to do with words nothing at all to do with words I would advise you immediately to take yourself out of any book I may refer to myself as a little example take yourself away look to that moment look at the men that he's dealing with he's dealing with nature darling not with some goddamn foolish woman there that's telling you you gotta be programmed he's dealing with people like that he's dealing like people with Swedenborg he's dealing with people that understand him and their problems that are your problem but he's of a big people that are understanding it I don't level with them don't level with these people see what they have to say for Christ's sakes don't bring everybody down to our level you have been abandoned mostly absolutely abandoned in every way now we're trying to get some point of view so you can act the man someday you can act the woman who's in conflict you have no there's no way to make you act except business I don't like this and I don't like you gotta stop it we are with the great men Mr. O'Neill said I want everything of string break public I will pay for everything Mr. Shaw Mr. Shaw did that Mr. O'Neill gave him the noble prize now all these people are the playwright you're gonna deal with the program lady get yourself away let us deal with you as material not as an evolved people you are material mostly I can play this play I can play that play I can understand that man and this man one thing I don't want to understand is Stella all day long I don't need her I need her in two and a half hours when she's concentrated or she is defeated or she is a woman that wants to become like Nora or wants to become like something I don't need this Stella do you understand material a blackboard people write on me yes that's what you are will you stop it with yourself I don't know if I told you and maybe it's wrong to say it when a guy said to me well I'm a guy like Hamlet I said I don't think so I said Hamlet own own Denmark and you don't have a pot to piss in so thank you