all right welcome back it feels good to be back help me a lot when you keep busy running around paying bills and living your life you kind of appreciate you learn to appreciate what it's like to come here sit down and do an i honor to have my great guest talented woman acting teacher writer actor director lola cohen thank you so much for making the time you so much for inviting me overwhelming to read your work we're here to talk that method acting exercise handbook an incredible reading so much information lola from beginning to end so we're going to be talking about the book if we can just have a little introduction about yourself and growing up in brooklyn in a little bit of your background for all of us if we can just a little and then we get into the book just a little bit yes i'm a girl from flatbush brooklyn in the woody allen neighborhood  and so i come from that tradition my parents were theater lovers they went to broadway shows practically on a weekly basis they all got dressed up their friends and they paraded you know oh probably five dollars a ticket so everyone went and then they would come home with play bills and i would cherish them but i was not motivated to to be an actor when i was a kid growing up in brooklyn no that came much later my life write what i tell you i bought the book last week and i said i'm going to take a day going to concentrate as soon as start reading it i said to myself all my god there's so much information it's a whole breakdown in fact that made note i made a lot of notes but one of the notes that i put it in the paper was it let me know if i'm mistaken you literally have to break down everything we do right everything that we do in life like every single step even when we wake up when we take a shower and when we eat when we sleep when we make love when we cry when we saw her when we live we have to learn to just be aware of every single breath well that's right that's right in training not necessarily on the stage right too much but we train the actor to nurture the senses to learn how to see smell hear touch and taste our lives from your right getting up in the morning to experiencing eating breakfast and having an smelling a sharp smell sitting in the sun then we progress on to more difficult tasks more personal tasks more emotional tasks of objects that are connected to people and events that conditioned us that shaped us so we work very specifically in terms of concentration and focus and relaxation oh well relaxation is the foundation of leaves work he was obsessed with the idea of relaxing at will unless the muscles and nerves and the body is relaxed there is no way that expression can come through you can be thinking very poignant and explosive thoughts and if the muscles and nerves are tight the body will not let those impulses come through so we worked very hard on learning how to relax mentally and physically lay divided the relaxation into two  parts that attention is what inhibits the act there are locks every yes and so there is mental tension and physical tension and we have a way to relax the face the neck the back we sit in these very uncomfortable chairs which become an obstacle and elise said if you can relax in these chairs you can relax anywhere so we work very hard on relaxing at will incredible yes credible incredible but yeah one of the things that i got my attention is how specific you are with every single step well i've been teaching for thirty years or so many yes right and you know i work with all levels do you have to be so willing to work hard and long and train and it's not it's not a quick fix and we work so specifically on using the five senses to create imaginary reality and you have to be a keen observer as well you can sense people you can read people very clearly you have to have an understanding of the human condition observer part of you developed so that you can recreate other people and take on different personalities and personas and the way you move the way you speak and so we work very hard at that detail detail retail like the breathing when you talk about breathing in we go over the overall sensations too i mean it's a whole breakdown of how we feel and how we think everything matters every thinking process relaxation action every single move every single thought images dreams memories for i don't know about dreams we don't really work with people that do and it's very interesting where we work with the script i mean that's all that you're saying is before we even get to the script and how to break down a script how to find the transitional moments so called in the scene where  new information is revealed and then we have to change our behavior according to the given circumstances and what the director is after in the scene after teaching for so many years how do you feel how that how do you find it my husband says when when when he used to be a fighter he says the st twenty three rounds you feel the fighter out you react you throw your punches you throw your combinations but it's about feeling the opponent out and then you start delivering as an acting coach is a teacher is a master of the craft because you're a master of the craft how do you find yourself as a teacher in the entire process i know that is a very kind of like white american question is that but how do you find yourself well teaching so many many many people from so many different backgrounds you have to love actors you have to be excited by the creative process and what goes on inside a person there has to be this endless love of actors for me i love working with people on all different levels people who know nothing sometimes have just as much talent and who've been around the institute for years so teaching is i i absolutely love it i wouldn't be doing it for so long if i didn't it's always changing leaves work is evolving subjecting all the actors to the different exercises and understanding their impulses and trying to nurture them how can they  get into the skin of the character using the exercises and the training how to make choices and just presenting this work which i studied so hard with me the last five years of this life i  so and chanted by the work and mesmerized by the results that he could get with people who i thought had no talent not that he could make somebody good great but he could make somebody good better and so just working and helping actors to find their own way nurturing town and i think that's one of my strengths where i find people's not their weaknesses but their strengths and teach them how to pull out of themselves pieces of themselves to merge with the character you know the full beautiful the you remember we can go back in time i laugh when you bre moment the well it was an embarrassing moment for me because i'd been doing yoga and you know it was the st day of class and there he was on th street exactly were i'm teaching now and  showed us relaxation and after five minutes i raised my hand and i said i'm i'm done and you could see though you're done why a simple i do yoga and i know how to relax i thought actually i was bored i didn't know how to relax i was completely tense and thinking i knew things that i didn't and he said what do you mean and i said well you know i study with the guru and he's telling mentally massage my mind mentally massage my body i am not this mind and he of course is rolling his eyes and he said go back to the relaxation you're not done and i my heart was pounding and i was embarrassed and i just you know i continue to try and relax and i was i had so much tension i had a tremendous amount of tension in my mouth i was do you know couldn't keep my eyes closed it was not good but i persevered and i learned and i stayed and then i did my st scene it was from a a philip ross novel called letting go and i played a woman who took in boarders and her she who had a young child and this border was walking around naked and you know and i was staying skipping and i was preparing a dinner and i had no clue what i was doing and there was no turkey and there was no refrigerator and i'm kind of kind of mining what i'm doing i mean i was completely lost and he stopped the scene and he said darling what do you think you're doing up there and i hope of a lot i don't know he said well what are natured where i and everyone laughed and he said come on let's start over and let's start to improvise and so that was my st scene and my st class with really crowded and he was you know this was later in his life he had two children and he was kind of i'd heard things that he was quite explosive and he wasn't at all he was very loving and i never felt bullied or or put a poem or not like that at all no he was he was absolutely spot on in his diagnosis of actors and he could take an x ray incredible and you've heard that before about him that he could say one thing he called it an adjustment and he would tell you to do things a different way and then your mind would just explode with ideas so that it was it was wonderful and i can imagine that you were taking a lot of notes too i was the no taker i you know this and then when i did the least rosberg notes i had my hundreds of notes but how i can began writing that book was i realize that the videotapes you know for the last five years leave classes were videotaped and they were on those big eight track tapes and they would disintegrate ng i started studying at stra i get to the institute at like seven in the morning and on these big yellow pads i started to transcribe the that book took me about ten years because i had a life and i was teaching and i had two young children and i just started that book wrote itself i mean the man was a genius he could speak on any theatre in any part of the world and could tell you who was running it and what the problems was and of course he was obsessed with the work war theater came to new york and he was blown away but yeah and and there was yes and he saw the the cherry orchard in lower depths and brothers karmas off and he was you know  they were playing all the roles in a way that nobody never seen before that the you filled moves they were into claiming they had a different style of of of acting and lee was mesmerized by their work and lucky for him two of the the actors stayed behind in new york and they started the american laboratory theater and so lee had been working at the christic street settlement house on the lower east side in his early twenty's and so he was twenty three when the moscow war theater came to new york and after he saw the moscow or theater he decided that he wanted to devote himself to to acting in the theater and he enrolled in  claire tree major school which was a very conventional school and he felt that he was getting nothing out of it really and when he studied ballet and diction and he loved it but it wasn't enough for him and when he heard that maria was opening their own school the american laboratory theater was the only signed up and harold clurman who he had known at the theater guild harold was a play reader and cheryl crawford was the casting director  too much of a different world back then if we compare it to what's going on now i mean what do you think there i teach all over the world i spend my summers in in russia i work like you contrary to what the act artists right are a different breed yes and so i don't see the difference between then and now you know when when you you love theater and this is your world and you feel part of this it's in your blood and you cannot do anything else but act or direct or write you're in this this theater world that i always wanted to be a part of and lead instilled this kind of commitment and love of theater and passion and fact the unrespectful who came before you and learn the history and you know today some some of the students don't know who marlon brando i mean not a straw sprigg institute but i mean young people nowadays they have to they they really have to go out and search and make a study and in in my classes incumbent upon them to to learn the legacy and who came before this reading by are themselves as reading and reading like you said as you want to read it to learn we are sponges we hate or biographies of writers and the work itself because actors by a twitter account instead of concentrating his attention to what's important we live in a different world that we have like everything is one click away i hope not right but i i to we're hoping we're hoping but it's it's about all too you know it's a it's a lot of things going on and we have to be aware of our surroundings yes and actors once again we're a special breed to be able to teach actors and bring them in given the right adjustments is going to be quite magical during the process when you see the actor evolving from one stage to the next how does it feel for you as a teacher well that's the thing when you see when you see that happen when you see people make breakthroughs and often that doesn't come a long long time people can work for years talent blooms at different times and to put different people's lives i try never to pass judgment on a  person in terms of their talent i've been shocked and surprised many times by by someone who all of a sudden has a transformation or just the ideas become concrete in their mind and they start to learn how to use s memory in the scenes and you know and it becomes not so intellectual not that you know thinking and thinking you know that the method there's a lot of misunderstanding is that it's interventions yes yeah misunderstanding and so i try to clear that up with my students and present in my book i try to present things very clearly precisely as if yes so that there it there is you know in art everyone makes it their own it's not my way i'm giving them these exercises and then i'm hoping that they mold the clay it's not my call les you know i'm a passing on this work that that i learned from least rosberg from my teacher kim stanley and and jose those were my three main teachers and i devote a whole slew section of the book to kim who taught me the need to exercise a very specific exercise she did not do sense memory in her class she she used this this used a series of needs where the actor explores these these different states of consciousness different states of mind to to use them in forming a character to two  to extract the characters need to discover the characters need in different moments in the scene or maybe throughout the whole play the character has a specific needs needs change within a scene and  lower on it don't just take what i'm saying improve it to yourself there's wonderful people out there who have a lot to share and give teachers and find them take the best from everyone make something as difficult as sitting down and doing an interview requires relaxation listening yes and being in the moment how does the work like be in the moment because it seems like it seems it's kind of easy but it's not as easy to learn to be present at the time we are to listen to really relax i don't  how do we do it because i know it's a learning process a learning process for me when i come in sit down sit who i get it just be in the moment is what it is like a mental clip you know a great acting looks invisible those people look they they are those people now how how does someone so seamlessly enter another person's life well there are people who are naturally relaxed who have this wonderful ability to just seem like you know there's no camera there's no cissy this is just being i'm not one of those person i had people i had to work very hard on learning how to relax at will well we you know gave us this technique of how to do it where we we work on the five areas of mental tension the blue nerves around the eyes we make these faces we stick out our tongue we learn their own nations we learn how to breathe and relax and just you know be in the moment it is hard work it is harder and then to get in the moment of the play that's the double edged thing that you have in your own moment and in the moment of the carabao when actors are too much even out there when i'm then you kind of well that's not really happening because i saw them behave a different way that didn't go with the character and so you get you kind of out of it when you see that kind of acting it's the word commitment commit yourself to that to the act to the character you're playing and to to form a sense of belief in what you're doing and if you use your own personal experiences if you need them if you're cast as the character and you feel so much like that character do nothing do not do the method why screw it up you are the carrot i mean that i love that that's so essential if it's true i girl from brooklyn i'm not now going to try to act like that that's me right if i had to play a catholic girl i'd certainly have to do something to make that good leave of all right so that's that's the choice that art is in the choice this is a great strasberg quote art is in the choice the choice is that which can different conditions art so we present these exercises and then actors have to make the choice well it's it's a freezing cold day and i'm in the middle of a break up well i'm not and it's hot out how michael now going to create the cold and the break up and here you are you're the break we're breaking up with me well that's not go you know that's not going to mean anything that's why you say everything has to mean something so i would have to then substitute someone from my own life that contains the value that the director is looking for the playwright has said that that's what is happening in the scene and then we would have to use that idea of substitution what would what would be who would be that person for me or the event for me and if i had to create the cold i know how because i've trained at the institute or whoever with many times i've i've worked on how to work on cold how to work on heat we have specific exercises for that how to be in the rain how to come that of the rain how to keep that going throughout the whole scene just the st moment wow it's cold in here warm cold method actors we know how to create the heat we know how to create the cold because we've practiced and specific so specific have you counter that because there is so rich what you're saying that obviously i'm taking reading my notes here but it's i'm listening to you have your counter actors that great actors find that not everyone has to be a method actor of course not and you know it's not for everyone it's certainly not for the faint of heart i we were very emotional when we work with the special exercise we called the emotional memory memory of going back to a condition the experience from your life and reliving it recreating it through the five senses that's why sensory work is so important because we don't go directly to the event say if i wanted to create the pain of the death of my father i could be telling you know my father i loved him so much he was so beautiful that's a mental memory but if i needed to have  an emotional or explosive moment regarding the death of my father i would use the five senses to describe a specific moment and i would him or i would smell him or i w the senses to to find that moment to find the emotion so you don't go directly towards the emotions you jolanda your kink an event right conditioning a vent and  you go to that event and through this very specific exercise it's done one on one with the teacher and student for the st time you learn how to go back to this time in your life and not act out what you felt then it's you now going back to that event and actually you don't anticipate a result because you don't know what it's going to be it could be laughing hysterically at that at that time in fact i did a scene for kim stanley it had to be the most the happiest day of my life so i worked on the letter that i was when i got the letter i thought this was the happiest day of my life and i went back to that later i did it in a scene and i'm creating the later and i was so proud of myself i'm creating the letter and i'm going to be so happy well i wept it wasn't the happiest day of my life because the time changes events and what was so happy then going back to it now it gave me a different value so these emotional memories must be practice to see if the value that you're searching for for the scene matches the value in the emotional memory and so we work on these specific emotional exercises to call them up at will and they are repeatable this is the magic of the method that we don't wait for inspiration to come down right that we have a repeatable technique that will give us what we need when we need it and this this idea of repetition that lee was so he was searching for the method to help us repeat our good work not imitate  fail ok other times he would stop the scene he he knew what actors needed to hear when they needed to he was able to speak to the actor solo oh yeah he was in racing he was amazing he would get right to the heart of the matter and he would you know with his genius mind it gives you something to substitute or something to take you out of your stubbornness or your inferior work and you trusted him because he was a master and you saw him working with the other students and how what he could get out of people but it wasn't enough he needed you to practice at home every day you dish didn't prepare an exercise once a week you went home and for an hour you sat by yourself and you worked and you worked and every day you work and then you would bring it in and show him and he knew who didn't do the work because you know and you know that people who was fixated in who didn't get what he was saying he would never give up on them it was amazing it was absolutely amazing i would say to myself why is he just it's a blank all he's trying to get through to me and then he would turn around and say to everybody i'm doing this for you you're wondering why i'm saying all this it's for all of you watch very carefully so he would just real train and drill them in the last time you sign you know i was in los angeles he was back in new york i in russia in moscow and there was no peace for him so he found this little dosh on very modest and it had a beautiful veranda and small rooms and he moved his entire family there and he had he had his own studio and just magical and i taught a class there and i directed a work in progress of the siegel on the family veranda in russian jewish girl from brooklyn now directing siegel on the veranda i was just in in the streets there are plaques to their great actors and it's just a whole other feeling to be there they're so educated and they've all read you know of course their own literature and and breakdown and then you explain why it's important that you go through what's i think is very important is to hear the actors feedback while that's acting i wanted to i love it i look good i'm glad you said that because i was on the fence now do i present because to i present the problems and the struggles of actors so that people reading it could see oh yes i thought i was so confused too and so there's this because it can be you know  it it's the imagination and the creative process that we're talking about right so the struggles i thought were very important too and yes yes i'm glad your life i thought that was very insightful to hear you know to read the actors rushing learning how to do things you know very specifically thoroughly doing things fully not just you know halfway you know and i also try to  talked to directors in my book because the rector's often don't know how to talk to actors i mean they're the ones we love to write you know of course of course they know and they understand then many of them come from an acting background which i think is one of the great things for a director to take acting classes not necessarily method but just to understand how do you  have how can you get something out of an actor without saying to them now is a director will you give them fake anger that's what you're going to get fake anger but what can you tell them to give them the motivation to feel angry not act angry but to take something that makes them angry and then fuse that with the characters so you know you it comes from you it's it's you you are the the character and then you try to merge with the exercises parts of yourself that work for the character and when there's a problem then you really have to work harder this is incredible we have almost we got two minutes to wrap it up and i have not even i mean we cover a lot but it is just that every word that you it's you so know that you have so much to say so you is like i basically what we have to do is to develop a documentary on you pretty much yeah yeah because with time and time and woman loves the craft she knows actors she loves actors and it was very nice to have you here i was hoping that i was able to get all the information in is a little bit overwhelming because there's so much you have