Newsletter May 2008, Statement from the Artistic Director

This statement was published in the Stella Adler Studio of Acting's May 2008 newsletter.

When I act or am deeply engaged in a directing project, I encounter inside myself the voice, the spirit, the very heartbeat of my ancestors. It comes always as an awesome but welcome guest, a forceful but benevolent guide urging me on. This ghost comes mostly in those moments when I defy fear, moments when I reach beyond myself for a universal reason to speak, to create, to embody.

I wonder if others have this kind of experience. I wonder if they, too, encounter the vivid presence of the past when they commit fully and selflessly to the ever-living present. My guess is that they do: that the audiences for whom we play and the players with whom we act exist equally outside us in the present and inside of us from the past.

This same process of dialogue has guided my work as the Artistic Director of the Stella Adler Studio for the last twelve years. In addressing the present and building the future, I listened carefully and lovingly, and the voices of the past spoke. I can accurately measure my steps forward by way of this process: knowing that when I am “right”- that is, courageous, selfless, focused on the size of theater, the profound need for the perpetuation of the arts - then a door opens inside me and the guests, the ghosts, come in to encourage, to urge me on, to point the way. In this regard my work is environmental. I dedicate myself to building an environment that nurtures theater artists who value humanity, their own and others, as their first priority. When I devote myself to this environmental and artistic work, past, present and future are fused.

For many years I have been sculpting a vision for the Stella Adler Studio that encompasses past, present and future, a vision that includes our great past but also serves artists and the community in our own time. I envision the Studio evolving into the Adler Center for the Arts. With world class actor training and theater at its core, the Adler Center for the Arts supplements professional training programs and serves the community through vital artistic and social programs like the Stella Adler Outreach Division and Harold Clurman Art Series. In the past year, with the guidance of Nello McDaniel of Arts Action Research, I have created a strategic plan, a tool that will keep us on track to realize this Center. This Adler Center for the Arts is reflected on every page in every article of this newsletter. I invite you to participate the Center and look forward to seeing you at the Studio.