Steinway Hall – Part 2
Monday, March 30th, 2009Last night’s posting (Steinway Hall – Part 1) about the gifted Laura Garritson got me to thinking. I suppose if you haven’t read that one yet, you might go there first. It got me to thinking about greatness in performance.
As a young man I came to New York to study acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater. There I spent two intense years under the tutelage of world-renowned teacher, Sanford Meisner.
There I learned to act, but interestingly enough, I’ve always liked to say that it was there that I learned more about composing music than anywhere else. At an acting school. Had I ended up being a sculptor, I really believe that this acting school would still have been my high point in study.
It was there that I learned what makes an artist tick – an understanding of the reality of doing. That acting is reacting. To act before you think. That there is no indicating in the reality of doing.
It was there that I found my inner sense of emotion and experimented with and finally figured out how to bring myself to my art – whatever the medium. It’s something I’ve thought about and taught all these years since my student days.
