drama school
A drama school, stage school or theatre school is an undergraduate and/or graduate school or department at a college or university; or a free-standing institution (such as the Drama section at the Juilliard School); which specializes in the pr ...
and
theatrical company
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perform ...
located in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
that existed during the 1920s and 1930s. It was a publicly subsidized, student-subscription organization that held fund-raising campaigns to support itself.
History
The school itself was known as the Theatre Arts Institute. It was founded in 1923 by former
Moscow Art Theatre
The Moscow Art Theatre (or MAT; russian: Московский Художественный академический театр (МХАТ), ''Moskovskiy Hudojestvenny Akademicheskiy Teatr'' (МHАТ)) was a theatre company in Moscow. It was f ...
members
Richard Boleslavsky
Richard Boleslawski (born Bolesław Ryszard Srzednicki; February 4, 1889 – January 17, 1937) was a Polish theatre and film director, actor and teacher of acting.
Biography
Richard Boleslawski was born Bolesław Ryszard Srzednicki on February ...
and
Maria Ouspenskaya
Maria Alekseyevna Ouspenskaya (russian: Мария Алексеевна Успенская; 29 July 1876 – 3 December 1949) was a Russian actress and acting teacher.Nissen, Axel. 2006. ''Actresses of a Certain Character: Forty Familiar Hollywoo ...
and stressed
Stanislavski's system
Stanislavski's system is a systematic approach to training actors that the Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski developed in the first half of the twentieth century. His system cultivates what he calls the "art of experiencing" ...
as its teaching method. Students were taught to be uninhibited, with exercises such as acting as a fish under water, a melting ice cream cone, or (for women) the mother of a sick child praying to the Madonna. Both actors and directors were trained, and Boleslavsky and Ouspenskaya became known as the leading promulgators of Stanislavski's ideas in America.
Some five hundred students were trained at the school during its years of existence. These included
Lee Strasberg
Lee Strasberg (born Israel Strassberg; November 17, 1901 – February 17, 1982) was an American theatre director, actor and acting teacher. He co-founded, with theatre directors Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford, the Group Theatre in 1931 ...
,
Harold Clurman
Harold Edgar Clurman (September 18, 1901 – September 9, 1980) was an American theatre director and drama critic. In 2003, he was named one of the most influential figures in U.S. theater by PBS.
, and
Stella Adler
Stella Adler (February 10, 1901 – December 21, 1992) was an American actress and acting teacher. '' Future critic
Francis Fergusson
Francis Fergusson (1904–1986) was a Harvard and Oxford-educated teacher and critic, a theorist of drama and mythology who wrote ''The Idea of a Theater'', (Princeton, 1949) arguably the best and most influential book about drama written by an Am ...
was also a student.Lenore LaFount started an acting career after her time at the school, but would soon marry
George W. Romney
George Wilcken Romney (July 8, 1907 – July 26, 1995) was an American businessman and politician. A member of the Republican Party, he served as chairman and president of American Motors Corporation from 1954 to 1962, the 43rd gover ...
and later become First Lady of Michigan and a political candidate in her own right (and the mother of businessman and politician
Mitt Romney
Willard Mitt Romney (born March 12, 1947) is an American politician, businessman, and lawyer serving as the junior United States senator from Utah since January 2019, succeeding Orrin Hatch. He served as the 70th governor of Massachusetts f ...
).
The school gave theatrical productions from 1925 to 1930.Richard Aldrich served as general manager for these productions before becoming a successful producer on Broadway. Relatively small in size, it aimed for a high-brow audience. Its productions included well-known works by
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
,
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playw ...
, and
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; 29 January 1860 Old Style date 17 January. – 15 July 1904 Old Style date 2 July.) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career ...
, but also included well-regarded instantiations of modern and avant-garde works such as
Jean-Jacques Bernard Jean-Jacques Bernard (30 July 1888 – 14 September 1972) was a French playwright and the chief representative of what became known as ''l’école du silence'' or, as some critics called it, the ''art of the unexpressed'', in which the dialogue doe ...
's ''Martine'' and
Arthur Schnitzler
Arthur Schnitzler (15 May 1862 – 21 October 1931) was an Austrian author and dramatist.
Biography
Arthur Schnitzler was born at Praterstrasse 16, Leopoldstadt, Vienna, capital of the Austrian Empire (as of 1867, part of the dual monarchy ...
's ''The Bridal Veil''. Talent scouts for radio and film attended the school's performances.
In 1929,
Maria Germanova
Maria Nikolayevna Krasovskaya-Kalitinskaya (russian: Мария Николаевна Красовская-Калитинская, née Bychkova (), 1884 – 9 April 1940) was a Russian actress, theatre director and reader in drama, better known un ...
succeeded Boleslavsky as director of the theatre; she was also from the Moscow Art Theatre. The Lab, as it was sometimes known, disbanded in 1933, but was an important and influential link between Stanislavski's Moscow company and the even more influential Group Theatre of New York that followed it during the 1930s.