Acting with Adler
by Joanna Rotté
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Book Presentation:
Stella Adler towers high among the memorable acting teachers in American theatre. Her methods of training, her principles of acting and character interpretation, and her analyses of the seminal plays of the modern theatre comprise a legacy for everyone who followed her. Acting with Adler looks at that legacy through the particular immediacy and authenticity of her own spoken words. Over three years in the 1970s, author Joanna Rotté worked under the direction of Adler as a student and actor, all the while taking copious notes that form the heart of this book. Rotté’s recounting of her time with Adler reveals a teacher speaking about her principles in a tough-minded, demanding manner, inspired by her overriding conviction that an actor “becomes bigger through working.”
This new edition of Rotté’s acclaimed text includes an entirely new foreword from Isaac Butler, author of The Method; a preface that places Adler more fully in her historical context; and a new chapter that reflects on Adler’s philosophical and practical contributions, considering what her teachings have to offer performers working today.
About the Author:
Joanna Rotté is the author of the book Scene Change: A Theatre Diary—Prague, Moscow, Leningrad and of articles appearing in theatre journals and online arts and culture publications. She is emerita professor of theatre at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, where she taught acting and script analysis and directed plays for thirty years, including seven years as head of the theatre department. She is a volunteer teaching artist in the New York state prison system and offers a master class at the Stella Adler Studio. She is a member of Actors Equity. An archive of her writing, performances, and productions may be found at www.joannarotte.comor www.homepage.villanova.edu/joanna.rotte.
Press Reviews:
"I’m delighted that Joanna Rotté’s book, Acting with Adler, is being republished, this time with an additional chapter. The original book is simply the best, clearest, most illuminating work on Stella Adler’s Technique. But with the new chapter Rotté sends Acting with Adler spinning into another stratosphere, exactly where Stella would have wanted it to go. Joanna proposes the concept of Actor as Artist–Human Being and she offers a blueprint for getting us there! With Stella Adler, Joanna Rotté affirms a vision of theater as an ancient spiritual endeavor and calls for actors to be what they truly are, what Stella was: Spiritual Warriors. I recommend this book to the entire Adler community."
-- Tom Oppenheim, Artistic Director, The Stella Adler Center for the Arts
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