Method madness

Robert Brustein's Nobody Dies on Friday

by Scott T. Cummings

The 1997-'98 season of the American Repertory Theatre might well be subtitled "Battles of the Titans." First came Dionysos versus Pentheus in a classically tragic showdown, then Petruchio versus Kate in a battle of the sexes, then Shlink versus Garga as existential heavyweights going toe to toe in Brecht's rumble In the Jungle of Cities. Now comes the most curious match-up on this season's theatrical boxing card: Brustein versus Strasberg. The ART New Stages series concludes for the year with the world premiere of Nobody Dies on Friday, a new play written by artistic director Robert Brustein about America's most infamous acting guru, Lee Strasberg; it opens next Thursday, April 16, at the Hasty Pudding Theatre and runs through May 2.

In the 1950s, Lee Strasberg turned the Actors Studio into a breeding ground for a generation of movie stars -- Marlon Brando, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, to name but three -- schooled in a brand of acting that featured a brooding restlessness which often erupted into flashes of raw emotion. This technique became known as the Method, in part to associate it with the technique on which it was based, Stanislavsky's System, which was pioneered by the great Russian actor/director in Moscow in the early 20th century. To generate performances that are spontaneous, visceral, and emotionally real, the Method utilizes "sense memory" exercises to help an actor get in touch with feelings, often painful ones, from his own personal experience and then substitute them for the feelings of the character.

The Method in general and Strasberg in particular have had their share of detractors over the years, chief among them Robert Brustein. His career-long effort to take the Method to task can be seen in his early writings in the 1950s, in his philosophy of professional training at the Yale School of Drama and ART Institute, and now in the form of a searing family drama with Strasberg himself as a character on the hot seat. In his book-lined office overlooking Brattle Street in Harvard Square, he talks about his new play, the state of the American theater, and the differences between Stanislavsky and Strasberg.

"Stanislavsky's System had a strong philosophical and ethical basis to it which had to do with the dedication of the artist to the craft of the theater," Brustein explains. "Strasberg's Method seems to be primarily devoted to careerism. That's not its declared aim, but that was its result. It created movie stars. They may have started out in the theater, but they ended up in the movies and never came back.

"One of Stanislavsky's most famous remarks was `You must love the art in yourself rather than yourself in art.' It's clear that Strasberg was developing people who loved themselves in art rather than the art in themselves. And that is related to the emphasis that Strasberg puts on sense memory and emotional recall. You're not going to find King Lear's epic revolt against the universe in your own problems with your girlfriend, or even your problems with your children. If you are going to go back into your own life, you are ultimately going to end up playing yourself, and when you play yourself you become a personality, and if you're pretty enough and dynamic enough, you become a movie star."

And that, for Brustein, raises the specter of celebrity, another subject that has intrigued him over the years. Nobody Dies on Friday, he says, is "about what the love of celebrity does to family." In the play, the celebrity in question is none other than Marilyn Monroe, who was at the height of Hollywood fame when she came to Strasberg and the Actors Studio in the mid 1950s to learn the Method. To the distress of his son John and daughter Susan, herself a budding star of stage and screen, Monroe became a virtual member of the Strasberg family. When she married Arthur Miller, in 1956, Strasberg gave away the bride; at her funeral, in 1962, Strasberg gave the eulogy. The two developed an extraordinary co-dependence that left permanent scars on the family.

Brustein's play examines those scars-in-the-making in a play that draws some inspiration from O'Neill. "We had just done Long Day's Journey into Night," he points out, "and it struck me that to some extent this was a Jewish version of that family, a dysfunctional Jewish family instead of a dysfunctional Irish family. And I liked O'Neill's form of observing the unities." Indeed, the play takes place in the span of a single day, New Year's Day 1960, in the living room of the Strasbergs' spacious West Side apartment overlooking Central Park. It is the morning after one of their famous New Year's Eve parties, and John wakes up on the couch, having been exiled from his bedroom in favor of Marilyn, who'd been too drunk and distraught over her crumbling marriage to go home the night before. This displacement is the catalyst for a series of lacerating confrontations between Strasberg (played by Alvin Epstein), his son (Robert Kropf), his daughter (Emma Roberts), and his wife, Paula (Annette Miller). The production is directed by ART veteran David Wheeler.

For a play inspired by what Brustein calls Strasberg's "corruption of the Stanislavsky System," the timing could not be more fitting. The ART company has just returned from a special engagement at the Moscow Art Theatre, the legendary theater co-founded by Stanislavsky a century ago. And starting this summer, the ART Institute will inaugurate a joint professional training program with the Moscow Art Theatre School. Sandwiched in between will be Nobody Dies on Friday.