Spotlight On…
Tom Oppenheim, Artistic Director
The Stella Adler School of Acting
Being the grandson of Stella Adler, Tom Oppenheim had a vast knowledge of theatre since birth. Now he is using that knowledge as the Artistic Director of The Stella Adler School of Acting.
Q: How did you get started in your theatre career?
A: My introduction to the Theater was quite literally by birth. My Grandmother was Stella Adler. I therefore was brought up in a living room with people like Stella Adler, Harold Clurman, my cousins Pearly Pearson and Lulla Rosenfeld, Luther Adler and many more who spent their lives on the stage, both the Yiddish Stage and the American Stage, including the Group Theater. My theater career began sitting around long dinners and holiday parties, hearing my family and their friends talk about the theater but also hearing them talk about life, art, politics, ideas and ideals. When my family told stories, which they did incessantly, they didn’t just tell them with words. They stood up, acted them out, and illustrated them physically and vocally. Acting wasn’t just a vocation or career. Acting and theater was a way of life, a way of communicating, a way of being and understanding the world. For me it all began at home.
Q: Describe someone or something in the theatre community that has influenced you.
A: Many people have influenced me in the theater community. Of late the greatest influence I have received has been from Mark Rylance. Formally the artistic director of the Old Globe in London, Mr. Rylance is currently in Boeing Boeing on Broadway. I have long admired Mark Rylance as an actor, and once years ago he participated in the Studio’s Harold Clurman Lecture Series. Mark won this year’s Tony Award for his performance in Boeing Boeing. For his acceptance speech he spoke a prose poem by the poet Louis Jenkins. The gesture was so eccentric, so humorous, holding the moment so lightly, that I found myself dazzled. I reached out to Mark and what has ensued has been a curricular partnership where Mark has both hosted a series of his teachers from London — Peter Dawkins, Tim Carol and Stewart Pierce; people he had worked with at the Globe — and Mark himself teaching our third year NYU students and our second year Conservatory students. What Mark conveys through his teaching, but also through his being, is that actors are wise to find ways and means to connect to their deepest humanity in preparation for the stage. He does this, as he does everything in his life, as far as I can tell, with levity and grace, devoid of dogma. Mark’s work as an actor is marked by an innocence, an openness, as though it is all happening now right in front of you, for the first time. It comes from a great depth, and from a reverence for the theater, the playwright, the audience and the spirits, which accompany us all. In his work as a teacher he lights a distinct path to this kind of work.
Q: What is your favorite part about teaching at your school?
A: I don’t teach at my school; at least I haven’t for a number of years. I am the Artistic Director of the Stella Adler Studio of Acting and have been so for thirteen years. Therefore, my life is dedicated to creating the context in which my teachers teach. My favorite part about doing that is tapping into the treasure chest of tradition which begins with my great grandfather Jacob P. Adler and his Yiddish Theater, extends through Harold Clurman and the Group Theater and Stella Adler who grew up in the Yiddish theater and then was a founding member of the Group Theater. My challenge is to reconcile that tradition to the world today, to honor both the past and the present and to find ways for that tradition to culminate as gloriously for our students of today and tomorrow as in its own time. It is this challenge that makes working at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting inspiring: living in the present, with my vision decidedly trained on the artistic life of the young artists that are here now; focusing too on the future, ever mindful of the grand theatrical and artistic traditions from which we come and which sustain and enrich us. This is my favorite thing about working at my school.
Q: What’s an average day for a student in your program?
A: We run a number of “full-time” programs. One of those is in collaboration with New York University. These students are with us three days a week, for between eighteen and twenty two hours per week, for anywhere from two to four years. The other is our professional Conservatory Program, which is a three year, thirty hour per week program. Finally we have a one-year full-time evening program with an optional second year, which is an eighteen to twenty hour per week program. In addition to this we run many shorter workshops and summer programs. In our full-time programs our curriculum is rigorous and demanding. We are not dogmatic in our approach, favoring strong teachers whether or not they studied with Stella Adler over weak ones who had. However all our teachers come from a place that is imagination-based and which upholds the Adlerian insight that growth as an actor and growth as a human being are synonymous. We are very physical and vocal and we focus equally, in the span of two to four years on contemporary and classical texts. Finally, to uphold the central mission of the Stella Adler Studio of Acting (which is to create an environment that nurtures theater artists who value humanity — their own and others — as their first and most precious priority), we surround our students with arts events, including theater and dance theater, lectures and symposia, jazz and classical music.
Q: What are some of the advantages of studying in New York City?
A: The advantages of living in New York City are many: cultural richness, theater, poetry, music of all types, cinema galore, many art houses; also, the street life, the vast array of peoples from all over the country and around the world. For a young actor knowing that you are in the center of it all, with Broadway, Lincoln Center, the Met, with off and off-off Broadway in spite of the fact that the work there in some cases is not what it was is empowering. The international flavor of New York, its truly multicultural flavor with multiple types of food, many languages, numerous neighborhoods is a rich resource for a young actor or for any young person who aspires to waking up and expanding.
Q: What are some of the special programs you offer within your school?
A: I have already referred to some of the special programs of the Stella Adler Studio of Acting. They are produced under the name of the Harold Clurman Arts Series. They include theater and dance theater, lectures and symposia, jazz and classical theater, play readings and poetry readings. The purpose of all this activity is to support our mission to create an environment that nurtures theater artists, who value humanity, their own and others, as their first priority, while provided art and education to the community. A good example of all this activity as a manifestation of our mission is this year’s Harold Clurman Festival of the Arts. For ten days we presented plays, concerts, readings and symposia with artists including Whoopi Goldberg and Rosie Perez speaking about art and educational justice, David Amram and Sonya Lee playing jazz and classical music, Margie Gillis and Bill T. Jones speaking about the relationship between movement art and humanitarian activity, Mira Sorvino and Jeffery Wright talking about art and social activism in relationship to humanitarian work in Africa. At the heart of this festival and at the core of the Stella Adler Studio of Acting is our own Stella Adler Outreach Division whose dual mission is to bring free actor training to people who cannot afford tuition while providing our full-time students with a model of social engagement.
Q: What percent of applicants are accepted to your program(s)?
A: A large percentage of our daytime students come to us via New York University. We receive on average sixty five to seventy students a year. Five other actor-training programs are part of this relationship with NYU. My understanding is the NYU auditions in the realm of two thousand and five hundred students a year and accepts between three hundred and seventy five. In our professional program we audition an average of three hundred and fifty to four hundred candidates and accept two sections of fourteen for a total of twenty-eight students.
Q: Anything in particular potential students should prepare for or expect when applying to your school?
A: What we look for, ahead of experience, on a par with raw talent, is appetite for life in all its myriad aspects. We work most effectively with young actors who are inclined toward a bigger vision of the art of acting than agents, casting directors, fleeting fame and financial reward. Actors accepted to the Stella Adler Studio of Acting are thrust into a dynamic and demanding atmosphere calling them to a bigger vision of life, calling them to art as service, calling them to the grandeur of the past and a brighter future, calling them to their richest and deepest self and selves.
Q: What makes your program different from other programs out there?
A: What makes the Stella Adler Studio of Acting utterly unique is that while we are a bona fide conservatory program that prepares actors for a professional career on stage and screen, our mission is utterly devoid of reference to that aim, focusing instead on the nurturing of one’s humanity as our primary goal. This is in keeping with our history and tradition, which posited and pursued theater as an instrument to elevate and uplift humanity. Our mission, which is based on the insight that growth as an actor and growth as a human being are synonymous, is to create an environment that nurtures theater artists who value humanity, their own and others, as their first priority, while providing art and education to the community. It makes no reference to professionalism, to careerism, to promised commercial success, not because we don’t believe in that success, but because we feel it will come, by the way, or not, on the road to the deeper journey of what it means to be an actor, that is, an ever-evolving human being. This in itself is unique. However I believe what is most unique about us is the great lengths we go to support that mission.
Tom Oppenheim was born in New York City. He studied acting at the National Shakespeare Conservatory and with his grandmother, Stella Adler. Theater credits include the title role in Shakespeare’s Macbeth as well as Michael in Buzz McLaughlin’s Sister Calling My Name, both with the Harold Clurman Laborator Theater Company. Jambalaya’s productions of Othello as Iago, and Featuring Loretta; Henry IV, Part 1 and Macbeth at the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, Henry VI, Part 1, II, III at Theater for a New Audience, Juana Queen of Spain at EST, Bound East for Cardiff at The Provincetown Playhouse, Romeo and Juliet at the Mint Theater, Comparing Books at the Producer’s Club. Film credits include Mike Nichols’ Wolf, Art Jones’ Going Nomad, and Dodgeball, Virgin and Hound Dog. TV credits include Sydney Lumet’s TV series, 100 Center Street.
