Acting with Adler

by Joanna Rotte, Isaac Butler author of The Method: How (Foreword by)

Overview

Stella Adler towers high among the memorable acting teachers in American theatre. Her methods of training, her principles of acting and character interpretation, and her analyses of the seminal plays of the modern theatre comprise a legacy for everyone who followed her. Acting with Adler looks at that legacy through the particular immediacy and authenticity of her own spoken words. Over three years in the 1970s, author Joanna Rotté worked under the direction of Adler as a student and actor, all the while taking copious notes that form the heart of this book. Rotté’s recounting of her time with Adler reveals a teacher speaking about her principles in a tough-minded, demanding manner, inspired by her overriding conviction that an actor “becomes bigger through working.”

This new edition of Rotté’s acclaimed text includes an entirely new foreword from Isaac Butler, author of The Method; a preface that places Adler more fully in her historical context; and an afterword that reflects on Adler’s philosophical and practical contributions, considering what her teachings have to offer performers working today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781493085125
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	09/24/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	252

About the Author

Joanna Rotté is the author of the book Scene Change: A Theatre Diary—Prague, Moscow, Leningrad and of articles appearing in theatre journals and online arts and culture publications. She is emerita professor of theatre at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, where she taught acting and script analysis and directed plays for thirty years, including seven years as head of the theatre department. She is a volunteer teaching artist in the New York state prison system and offers a master class at the Stella Adler Studio. She is a member of Actors Equity. An archive of her writing, performances, and productions may be found at www.joannarotte.com

or www.homepage.villanova.edu/joanna.rotte.

Table of Contents

	Foreword	11
	Introduction	15
I	The Development of the Actor	28
	Artistic Standards	28
	Spiritual Standards	36
	Physical Standards	40
	Body	40
	Voice	46
II	The Resources of the Actor	51
	The Life of the World	51
	The Life of the Imagination	59
	The Life of Ideas	64
	The Life of Materials	71
	Costume	71
	Properties	76
III	Action: What the Actor Does	79
	The Physiology of Action	79
	Simple Doing	84
	Complication of the Doing	88
	Circumstances Around the Doing	91
	Attitude while Doing	100
	Justification of the Doing	103
	The Theme in Action	107
	The Anatomy of Action	110
	Inner Action	113
	Verbal Action	118
	Physical Action	124
	The Emotion in Action	128
IV	Characterization: Who the Actor Becomes	132
	Character According to Type	136
	Individualizing the Character	141
	Coloring the Individual	149
	Heightening Character	154
	Character According to Society	159
	The Greeks	160
	The Clergy	163
	The Aristocracy	165
	The Peasantry	166
	The Middle Class	169
V	Text: What the Actor Knows	173
	A Stella Adler Chronology	189

Editorial Reviews

“I’m delighted that Joanna Rotté’s book, Acting with Adler, is being republished, this time with an additional chapter. The original book is simply the best, clearest, most illuminating work on Stella Adler’s Technique. But with the new chapter Rotté sends Acting with Adler spinning into another stratosphere, exactly where Stella would have wanted it to go. Joanna proposes the concept of Actor as Artist–Human Being and she offers a blueprint for getting us there! With Stella Adler, Joanna Rotté affirms a vision of theater as an ancient spiritual endeavor and calls for actors to be what they truly are, what Stella was: Spiritual Warriors. I recommend this book to the entire Adler community.”

Tom Oppenheim