By Ronald Rand and Luigi Scorcia

Milton Katselas’ directing career began in the 1960s with the original Off-Broadway production of Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story. He was nominated for a Tony Award for his direction of Butterflies Are Free. He has directed over sixty plays, eight feature films, and is a renowned teacher of actors. His school, the Beverly Hills Playhouse, is one of Los Angeles’ oldest and most respected ongoing acting workshops. Under his direction, Blythe Danner won the Tony Award, Eileen Heckert the Academy Award, and Bette Davis her only Emmy Award. The actors Mr. Katselas has directed include Al Pacino, Gene Hackman, Goldie Hawn, Christopher Walken, Burt Reynolds, George C. Scott, Elizabeth Taylor, and Richard Burton. He studied with Lee Strasberg at The Actors Studio and was mentored by Elia Kazan and Joshua Logan. As an author, he has penned two books: Acting Class, his renowned book on acting technique, and Dreams Into Action.

RR: Who has been most influential in how you teach?

 

MK: When I studied at Carnegie Tech, Barry Farrell taught the beginning classes, and he first introduced me to Stanislavsky’s work.

I studied with Lee Strasberg in his private class for a year and a half, and then, after I directed Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story Off-Broadway, I was invited to join The Actors Studio. I watched Elia Kazan teach and then I became his assistant on Blue Denim. I worked twice for Joe Anthony as his assistant and also observed his classes as a teacher. Around that time, I also sat in on Tamar Daykarhanova’s classes, Stella Adler’s classes, and Uta Hagen’s. Herbert Berghof and I became good friends.

I remember my first scene as an actor for Strasberg. The scene ended, and he had me close my eyes and asked, “This woman you’re acting with – what’s the color of her dress? Did she have a ring on her finger? Was she wearing earrings?” I froze. I hadn’t observed any of these details. The reality was that during the scene I was thinking of someone else, instead of observing and responding to what was really in front of me. That first lesson is something I see so often in actors even now – the eternal problem.

A breakthrough occurred in his class when I did a different scene. Lee wasn’t there; Paula Strasberg came to lead the class. In the scene, I played an emotional paraplegic on a picnic, and the girl asks me to go swimming. During the scene I tasted the sandwich I had with me, was aware of the radio that didn’t work, and I became totally absorbed. I looked out onto the class, saw the faces of my classmates, but imagined a beautiful lake, and threw rocks into the lake, and realized by the end of the scene that it was the most important moment in my acting life. That was a real experience. I was comfortable, really there, really seeing and experiencing. It’s the basis of my teaching.

 

RR: Have you changed the way in which you teach acting?

 

MK: Absolutely. At first my class was all exercises. Now we emphasize scene work heavily, and the exercises are quite a bit different. One of the exercises is a powerful picture exercise, somewhat different from what lee had picked up from Bolaslavsky. In my version, the actor takes a photo or a painting and duplicates it – to the nth degree. They become that photo, and then they demonstrate that possession by saying one line that might be the cornerstone, psychologically, of that person. The actor, in becoming the person in the picture, gains more confidence – I have him walk around, relate to other people. These exercises teach actors to investigate the details, the clothing and shoes the character wears, the behavior. That is an important key to really nailing moment-to-moment behavior and creating a character.

 

RR: Why should an actor study the craft of acting?

 

MK: Because most don’t realize it is a craft. You wouldn’t try to become a professional violinist without studying.

With a strong commitment to lifelong growth and development, you can go off and leave a class to work, but then come back and cultivate something new. And someone like Doris Roberts: She called me after one class – this is after a decades-long successful career – and told me, “I feel happy to be alive, I’m learning so much!” It’s that desire to be better, like a quest. John Glover, a fabulous actor, has been working with me for four years and has experience tremendous growth.

 

RR: How should an actor begin to work on a role?

 

MK: Stanislavsky said there were two areas: Work on the role and work on oneself. When the actor begins to work, he has to understand that in the end there should be a seamless connection between you and the character. A good first question to ask is, “How am I like the character and how am I different from the character?” The actor should have some sense of an answer to this. Little by little he can then merge himself into this other person.

Analyze and understand the script; develop a clarity about what’s going on and your character’s part in the story. Do your research. If the role is a doctor, prize fighter, architect, whatever, know the effect of this profession on the behavior, the clothes, the hair, etc.

The actor has to make choices that fire his or her imagination. The audience doesn’t need to know – they just need to respond to the actor’s hot choices.

 

RR: Do you place an emphasis on the actor understanding the playwright and the world of the play?

 

MK: Absolutely. I was fortunate enough to know Tennessee Williams very well. I had worked on Broadway on Camino Real and The Rose Tattoo. There’s nothing like that kind of collaboration. Now I look for the author when I read her scripts and I try to hear her voice, the timbre, the inflection, the sense of humor, and I try to see her point of view clearly in her writing. It is very important to understand a writer. You may not know her personally, but you read all her work and read about her life to get an idea. I think actors don’t do enough of this kind of research.

But that being said, actors have got to give themselves the permission in rehearsal to go where the author has not gone, to ask other questions, to provoke and challenge the writer. The actor must have freedom to develop the role.

Chekhov said something amazing about this collaboration: “Never be afraid of an author. An actor is a free artist. You ought to create an image different from the author. When the two images – the author’s and the actor’s – fuse into one, then a true artistic work is created.”

The writer is not to be held in awe. He or she is to be studied, to be understood, excavated, and explored. And at the same time, the actor has the right to interpret, to make choices, and to emblazon a role with his or her point of view.

 

RR: How important is imagination in the actor’s work?

 

MK: It’s huge. I have a 1904 Webster’s Dictionary, and I pulled the definition from there: “The will working on the materials of memory, not satisfied with following the order prescribed by nature, or suggested by accident, it selects the parts of different conceptions, or objects of memory, to form a whole, more pleasing, more terrible, or more awful than has ever been presented in the ordinary course of nature.” That’s the cornerstone of what we talk about with the use of imagination. That’s what’s necessary to elevate one’s work.

Make a choice – it may lead you to some imaginative way to uncover things you never thought were possible. Try to imagine some alternatives to what the author has given you. What if Juliet didn’t take the potion, and did something different instead? What would happen if Othello didn’t kill Desdemona? The actor has to investigate and imagine these alternatives, so he’s really moving moment to moment – not just obeying a script. Imagination has a lot to do with that.

 

RR: How valuable is your unique presence to the work that is actually occurring in the classroom?

 

MK: Actors these days flit about from teacher to teacher, spending a few months here, a few months there; this is not productive. I believe in a one-teacher concept and working out your problems with one teacher, together, over time.

I have very special teachers here at the Beverly Hills Playhouse – some have been with me for over twenty-five years. I believe that to make a difference over the long haul, we need to train teachers. I really care about the craft of acting. It’s absolutely necessary to take the time and the patience to really develop an actor.

It’s the artists who will change a culture. I remember Stella Adler saying to me in one of our private talks, “I’m not just teaching acting, I’m teaching actors to be people.” When I heard that, I realized that’s what a master teacher is doing. And that’s what I’m after.

 

 

DORIS ROBERTS

 

Doris Roberts has distinguished herself with her versatility on Broadway, film, and television for the past forty-five years. She has won five Emmys and has received twelve Emmy nominations. She has also received the Outer Critics Circle Award for her performance in Terrence McNally’s Bad Habits, the 1999 American Comedy Award, three Viewers for Quality Television Awards, and a TV Guide Award. On February 10, 2003, Ms. Roberts received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

 

 

RR: What drew you to study with Milton Katselas and how long did you study with him?

 

DR: Milton is the absolute best. He gets right to the point. I’m going to be in his classes with a walker.

He taught me something a year ago that totally changed me. He asked me to do the Empress in Anastasia. So I found a picture of her, and I copied what she looked like – the little dress, the pearls, I learned some sentences in Russian. I was very authentic about the accent. It went very well when we did the scene in class. When it was over, Milton said, “That was wonderful, but now I want you to be mythical.”

I thought to myself, “What does that mean?” but I didn’t say it out loud.

He said, “I don’t like what you’re wearing.”

“But this is what she looked like,” I explained. “It’s what the Empress wore.” And I showed him the picture.

“Where’s Doris?” he asked me. So I changed myself, I pulled my hair straight back, made my clothes different, and when I came back out, everyone in the class was shocked. What I had done was make myself look totally different – I was “mythical.” He gave me the power to permit myself to go further, even further than I had ever done before.

I am successful as an actress but I still have more to learn, and he’s the man to teach it to me. He wants everyone who comes onstage to surprise people, to make brilliant choices. He just makes the whole process much more alive. He’s also a brilliant painter and writer – an incredible human being. I wouldn’t miss my Saturday-morning class for anything in the world. It fills me with the same passion as when I was an eighteen-year-old actress.

 

RR: What were you hoping to discover about yourself and the craft?

 

DR: To be the greatest actress! That was what I wanted to be when I started my life as an actress. As a young girl, I was taken to the Museum of Modern Art, and I saw these old films there: one was Madame Sarah Bernhardt, another was Eleanora Duse, and the third was Minnie Fiske. Duse stole my heart. I thought, “That’s what I want to be!” She was so magnificent that Stanislavsky wrote about here.

 

RR: How would you describe what you learned?

 

DR: He’s a great director.

It’s helped me to realize I can’t do the work “right on the nose” and stick to what the words are, but I should go with the subtext. Those are the choices that make it very interesting.

Whether I’m working on television or in film, whether it’s a close-up or a long shot, I never approach what I do on a comedic level; I approach it from a reality level. Everything I did on the set of Everybody Loves Raymond I did from love, and the end is so hysterical. I wanted to live on the set: I wanted my sons to be the happiest in the world, and that’s why people laughed. It’s love, and that’s exactly what I loved about doing the show.

 

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