I recently had a conversation with another acting teacher and brought up the concept of Private Moments: what they are and how they are achieved. His response was to talk about the “fourth wall” and how it blocks out the audience allowing for public privacy.
I agreed that the fourth wall is important, but emphasized that by itself it could not be counted on to establish the sought after privacy. Lee Strasberg also taught the use of the fourth wall, but for very different reasons. He showed us that the set designer can only give us 3 walls in a proscenium arch theatre yet we must live and behave within four walls.
In classroom work, when a Private Moment is assigned, the student is taught to create the place in which the Private Moment is usually done in great detail. Of course this includes all four walls. It is the intense concentration on many details simultaneously that so engrosses the actor that s/he is consumed by it and becomes publicly private. When this lesson is learned, the actor can apply that same concentration to any other creative effort to achieve the same sense of privacy. In other words, working on a substitution, a personal object, an overall sensation or any other creative, sensory task will bring the actor the same result. It is the focus and concentration, not the fourth wall, that gives the sense of privacy. Yes, if an actor is focused on the fourth wall it might get him to same place, but without extensive detail it won’t happen every time.
The other teacher’s response was to immediately say “well, there are many ways to get to the same place. I use and teach the fourth wall”. Therein lies the great difference. Lee read, studied, and knew how the actor’s instrument works. He understood exactly what was at work within an actors creative effort. There is no “hit or miss” with the craft he taught. Other teachers taught what they knew from anecdotal, personal experience. These wonderful teachers often inspired and encouraged their students to wonderful work. There is no denying their contributions and insights. But Lee Strasberg was unique in his intellectual curiosity as to what actually took place within the actor herself that brought heightened experience, fuller expression, and very importantly, an ability to be able to repeat this eight times a week. Lee knew from the available social science research of the day what was actually happening. An actor describing his work after presenting a scene at The Actors Studio might say that s/he was working on the fourth wall, but if Lee saw that the effort was successful he took the time to explain to the actor why it worked so that s/he could repeat it. If it didn’t work, Lee would often walk an actor through the process so that s/he could experience, and therefore learn how to do it eight times a week. Lee Strasberg gave us knowledge as well as craft.