Stella Adler on Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov
Cofounder in the 1930s of the Group Theater and best known later as the formidable force behind the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting, Adler was an articulate, opinionated, intellectually gifted member of the profession, as these talks on Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov attest. Culled from a lifetime of lectures and edited into rough essay form by Barry Paris, they exhaustively examine the major works of those three seminal modern playwrights. They are not academic exercises, for Adler's goal was to show her acting students how to break down those intimidating plays into easily digestible parts, the better to bring them to life onstage. Adler's microscopic dissection of a role like that of Nora inA Doll's Houseis fascinating. Unfortunately, her close, complete reading has a downside in this book--repetitiveness. Furthermore, not even Paris' expertise disguises the fact that these pieces were originally spoken. Digression and repetition may be helpful in a classroom lecture but are not as forceful on the page as a lean, careful essay would be. Sadly, this is all she "wrote."Jack Helbig--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.