When Lee Strasberg was teaching me how to interview potential students he made it clear that even in this process there mustn’t be any judgement. He went so far as to say “in an audition we judge talent; a teacher trains it”. How then is the decision made? One of the important questions in the interview is “who are your favorite actors”? This seemingly conversational question can be very revealing.

Recently, I was asked to help someone find a good and qualified acting teacher in or near Tampa, FL. I began searching and started running across names such as The Acting Studio, Actors Studio, Actors Studio School, and other similar titles. All of these are of course intended to make the prospective actor believe that there is some extension or connection to the actual “The Actors Studio”. All of these schools or classes have no association nor connection to the work that was taught by Lee Strasberg in his classes or discussed and practiced at “The Actors Studio”. There is an intentional intent to mislead and an attempt to cash in on the name of a world revered institution that changed the course of modern acting.

That, in part, was one of Stanislavski’s definitions of good acting. Just the other day, one of my SUNY University students posted a blog on Twitter saying that he had been alone in a rehearsal studio working on a monologue. He said that he felt so free without having other people around to watch and judge him. He’s right of course. We all feel that way from time to time, but HOW do we achieve that every time we’re working; especially when there’s an audience?