LETTER FROM THE
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

–

Dear Friends,

In 2019 the Stella Adler Studio of Acting celebrates 70 years as a cultural institution in New York City. We are also moving to a new home at 65 Broadway. As we approach these milestones, I’ve been studying the various approaches to acting that Stella innovated in her long, creative life. Is this work still relevant? Is it as necessary in our time as it was in Stella’s? These are some of the questions that cross my mind.

I find myself delighted and exhilarated to say that all three of the branches of Stella’s technique foundation, character class and script interpretation - are not only alive but flowering. Furthermore, it’s clear to me that Stella’s work is not only beautifully represented by faculty members Ron Burrus, Antonio Merenda, Maureen Megibow, Patrick Quagliano and Betsy Parrish but through them her work is evolving, her techniques are pliant, her approaches applicable. For example, though Stella was decidedly committed to the stage as the primary medium of the actor, her protégée Ron Burrus has made her foundational approach the best technique for film acting. 

I’ve also been watching vintage videos of Stella teaching. In them I encounter another aspect of her relevance. In our world gone mad with images, commercialism, publicity, superficiality, Stella cried out for depth, truth, meaning. She provided the world with a Cassandra-cry, a warning, a plea, a prayer. “Oh humanity” she seemed to be saying in every class, “wake up to your depth! You possess gifts, potentials, power beyond the superficial glimmer of fame and fortune.” This aspect of Stella’s contribution is indeed relevant, perhaps more now than ever before.

I think you will see through this annual report that her values and spirit are alive and thriving - both in the programs that the studio provides to aspiring professionals and to the greater community.

Though Stella died in in 1991 her voice continues through our work! Here’s to another 70!

Sincerely,

Tom Oppenheim

Artistic Director

CONSERVATORY TRAINING PROGRAM

Conservatory training programs are the core of the studio’s activity.

“The weeks to come became what I can only describe as the most beautiful experience I have ever had. A group of 15 students – all with differing ethnicities, sexualities, interests and backgrounds – came together through a shared passion for acting to create an environment where we weren’t judged or excluded. We shared our weaknesses, our strengths and our stories. We grew not only as actors but as people.”

— Sarah

SCHOLARSHIPS

Did you Know?

The Stella Adler Studio of Acting, like most schools, has a gap between the cost of tuition and the cost of the conservatory programs? Tuition pays for the cost of each program including space, teacher salaries and utilities. Special units, like studying with Andrew Wade, go above and beyond the cost of tuition and therefore need support from people who know the value of this experience. Fundraising helps us fill the gap.
Scholarships attract students who demonstrate need, talent and merit. An assistantship program is also offered to help upperclassmen defray the cost of tuition.

“It’s only been three weeks and I already feel I am more in touch with myself and my humanity than I have ever been. II think I have been struggling all my life to connect with the people around me but it was hard to do it with people who do not experience the depth of feelings I have, or believe in the truths I believe in. I think I found this with my (movement class) partner, in one of those first early classes and I was relieved to finally feel safe at home. Not only was I in deep touch with myself, but I could also see her. I could feel her goodness, her humanity...”

— Lana

OUTREACH DIVISION

The Stella Adler Outreach Division democratizes access to this American theatrical tradition by providing free training to the most severely under-served people in our community.

OUTREACH AIMS:

1.) To serve people who live at or below the national poverty level

2.) To disrupt the school to prison pipeline. Here is a snapshot of students served in one year.

3.) To empower participants through the rigorous study of craft.

** THESE ARE FREE PROGRAMS **

Did you Know?

The Outreach Division is funded by gifts from private donors, foundations, government and special events like the annual gala. Donors in the last year include the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation.

The Harold Clurman Art Series is a multi-faceted community program that provides free and low-cost programs to the greater New York City community. Here are some of the participating artists from the 2017-2018 season.

David Amram

Rachel Harding

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni

Frederick Johnson

Gregory Pardlo

Leon Gurvitch

Lauren McClung

Ruby Sales

Cathy Park Hong

Idra Novey, poet, novelist and translator

Jan Rosenberg, playwright

Dawn Saito, dancer and movement artist

In 2017-2018 the Harold Clurman Playwrights Division exclusively served women playwrights. Of over 200 submissions, the studio was honored to support the work of the writers  whose work rose to the top of the search.

Jan Rosenberg was the studio's 2017-2018 playwright in residence. After a year of developmental readings, the Harold Clurman Lab Theater produced her play What's Wrong With You in September 2018. Jan's work had a searing impact on the community. Her focus on the millennial generation and her willingness to broach challenging aspects of the human experience with honesty and humor make Jan an important artist to watch.

Inside Rikers

Teaching at Rikers Island Correctional Facility

Rikers Island Correctional Facility is the country's largest jail. The Stella Adler Outreach Division is the largest arts program provider at Rikers.

Every week of the year the Stella Adler Outreach Division works with a cadre of highly trained theater artists - teachers, writers, voice and speech experts, movement coaches and directors - who reach an average of 300 incarcerated people annually. Free theater programs are offered to multiple populations with a focus on the most severely under-served and the most vulnerable.

 Why does the Stella Adler Outreach Division serve in jails? Because the obligation to do so springs directly from our mission: to create an environment that nurtures theater artists who value humanity above all else. Jails-in-crisis are places in which humanity is compromised. Serving the people who are inside not only allows us to bring the healing power of art to those who need it most but also lets us realize the mission in an incredibly powerful way.

Faculty member Julia Rae Maldonado (alumni of The Stella Adler Studio of Acting; MFA, playwriting, Actor’s Studio Drama School) teaches multiple classes at Rikers. Asked about what she loves in this work, Julia said, "I get to be a part of my students discovering talents they didn’t know they had, and to be a link to a future they maybe hadn’t considered for themselves. It’s tremendously exciting when the writing work really 'clicks' with a student, and I get to watch them grow as artists." About the challenges, she reported, "Working in jail is unpredictable. You have to be prepared to adjust your plan on the spot. You can show up and students will have been moved, or facilities will be closed. Students that were in a good mood last week may be in a bad place when you arrive, but you can’t allow yourself to be let down."

In an such an unpredictable environment, measuring our success can sometimes be a challenge. One of the measures that speaks most strongly about the programs on the inside is when a student is released from jail and comes to the studio to keep participating through the free Outside/In re-entry program. LaTanya Jones is one such student.

LaTanya was a student in the studio's inaugural program with women inmates in 2015. She stayed in touch during her incarceration and is now in the Outside/In ensemble. She said, "Stella Adler Studio of Acting offered me a new lease on life and I willingly and gratefully grabbed it with two hands and I never want to let it go. Now I've joined society and lucky for me the narrative hasn't changed. You are all still colored with love, and I appreciate each of you. The most important thing is (that) returning to anything remotely close to my past is not an option. I'm rebuilding with my young daughter and reuniting with the rest of my family. I sleep nightly in a shelter. Each morning I board the A-train to report to a job as a Case Manager; where I ironically help other homeless people. I've stopped complaining about what I don't have and appreciate what I do have. I live enthusiastically, and look forward to my classes at Stella Adler. I believe the best is yet to come."

Julia Maldonado said, "before I started working in jails, I had a lot of strong opinions about criminal justice reform. But I discovered that only by seeing it from the inside can you begin to understand the complexity of the problem. Sometimes, the obstacles in the way of change seem insurmountable. Progress happens very slowly. The best you can do for an issue you care about is to use what talents you have to serve your community."

Company Tour

Serving the Community

Waking up in the early morning dark to bring a show to an outer-borough grade school is becoming a rite of passage for the studio's most socially-minded students. The Company Tour unites an ensemble of advanced-level students who rehearse and perform an abridged Shakespeare play at the studio and then take it on the road. The tour targets New York City's most severely under-served audiences: schools with high rates of poverty, community and senior centers in hard-to-reach neighborhoods and jails and rehabilitation centers. Since 2014 thousands of audience members have been reached and a new generation of actors are finding meaning in the intersection between theater and community.

Allison Leilani Boenig, company member who plays Olivia in Twelfth Night, reported, "[This] is an incredible opportunity to not only cultivate a show that we perform at our  home base, but to learn the nature of maintaining a play, and to keep it sharp and well-oiled over the course of six weeks. Its very difficult to learn for the first time what the show needs after not performing it for days, or to bring it to a whole new space and to quickly adapt it to said new space, but I truly love the tools it is giving my cast and I as actors and an ensemble. 

We have also learned how much this work means to young people who may have never been exposed to  the arts. This has been incredibly humbling and enlightening as we have seen just how many students and audiences take in what we do, are touched by it in some way, and wonder how they can be a part of it."

Tour Venues

Rikers Island Correctional Facility, Queens, NY
St Athanasius School, Bronx, NY
All Hallows High School, Bronx, NY
Fort Hamilton High School, Brooklyn, NY
IS 392, Brooklyn, NY
PS 140, New York, NY
Sirovich Seniors Center, New York, NY
Coalition School for Social Change, New York, NY
Vanguard High School, New York, NY
Park East High School, New York, NY
Renaissance Charter High School, New York, NY
YMHA Washington Heights/Inwood, NYC

Teen Programs

New Works Performance Intensive

“This program showed me how theater can change the world.” Claire Striet

After the the final performance, a parent of a teenager who was in the New Works Performance Intensive asked, "how did you get them to tell you what's on their minds?" She was deep in the trenches of trying to communicate with her high school aged daughter. After watching a short play about depression and peer pressure and hearing her daughter and colleagues talk about the experience from conception to realization, a window inside their lives had been opened for her.

The New Works Performance Intensive is a revolution in training. A five-week summer program for teenagers, this program unites a group of young people with a group of professional playwrights and a professional director. In a meet-and-greet style meeting, both groups come together and talk. Program director Christa Kimlicko Jones and Judson Jones (Romulus Linney's, Holy Ghosts; A Name for a Ghost to Mutter; and The Soldier Dreams with Theatre East, Off-Broadway) facilitate a conversation led by the teenage actors, in which the group discusses the things that keep them up at night. With this information, along with inspiration from the teenage actors' own lives, the playwrights craft short plays which the teens spend the next five weeks refining for performance. Recent topics addressed include school shootings, anxiety, feminism and empathy.

Said student Claire Striet, "I loved the New Works Performance Intensive because I got to see how powerful theater can be and how it can make an impact...this program showed me how theater can change the world and made me even more passionate about it than I already was." About the creative process she said, "It was amazing working with the playwrights. I loved watching the script represent exactly what we said when we met them."    

Barbara Blumenthal Ehrlich wrote SICK OF IT, a short play about anxiety and grief, for performance in August 2018. She said "It was a bit daunting to walk into a room with a blank slate, knowing there's a group of actors waiting for an as yet unwritten play. But Christa structured an inspiring introductory meeting in which the students performed a monologue, discussed an issue they care about, engaged in a group discussion, and then broke up into a kind of 'speed dating', giving valuable one-on-one time to each playwright. I was truly impressed with the talent in that room. The young actors were clearly gifted, not to mention generous, raw,  and articulate in sharing their personal issues. My head was swimming when I left. It was difficult to pick a topic. They were far ranging from personal to political, and they were all great fodder for a play!"
Playwright Adam Kraar (ALTERNATING CURRENTS with The Working Theatre and WILD TERRAIN with Ensemble Studio Theatre) has participated in several rounds. He said, "My play this past summer asked a great deal of the actors - the courage to play characters that could seem foolish (not to mention the guts needed to play a dog!), and the skill required to inhabit a world that these young actors had not personally experienced.  One happy surprise was the spirit with which each actor rose to this challenge, bringing to life the complexities and comedy of the play." Echoing the parent's post-show observations, he added, "The discussions with the audience afterward are always illuminating.  I love watching the teens' eagerness to share with the audience the many discoveries they've made about the craft, about each other, and about the world."