Lee Strasberg: Burning Ice

Abstract

If the symbol was a hard nut for Stanislavski to crack, so is Lee Strasberg, symbolically and literally, a hard nut for anyone, friend or foe, to crack. Certainly it is easy to take an emotive view of him whether you admire him or not. In a most remarkably simple-minded way, his friends and disciples adore him while his enemies detest him. He is one of those figures who, like a supreme politician as opposed to an expert statesman, invites no middle ground, no neutral view. He suggests, as much by his nodding silences as by his little attentions, a classically formed love-hate relationship. But when the nut is there to be cracked, it almost always comes out melting love or towering hate, rarely both together.

Mediating the Method

“…But like exercises that do not necessarily lead to art, they cannot be expected to drift automatically into philosophy. 20 Recording was the way Strasberg transformed his impromptu pronouncements into theory-and the necessary ground for that theory. Rogoff-the Actors Studio's administrative director from 1958 to 1960 and one of its most perceptive observers in print afterward-recounts the unvarnished version of Strasberg's classroom discourse:…”