My Adventures at the Lee Strasberg Institute of Theater & Film - Week 1

~ contributed by Sandra Costanzo, Social Media Intern

This past Saturday, 1/8/2011, I started the Lee Strasberg Institute of Theater And Film. Some of the actors and actresses that studied at this school include Alec Baldwin, Scarlett Johansson, Angelina Jolie, Marilyn Monroe, Al Pacino and many more.

Over the next twelve weeks I will be learning method acting, along with an elective of TV and Film and will be blogging about it. Method acting was discovered in the 1930`s and has been taught at this school for the past 40 years.

The first day of class, I went with all the students to receive our class schedules. After we had been given our schedules, our teachers met us and brought us to our first class. My first class was my elective, which is TV and Film. In this class there are only 3 other students and we worked on many different exercises. This first exercise, which is done everyday, is a warm up to make sure we are relaxed and focused. We worked on dialogues as this was to test our ability and comfort level in front of the camera. Then we worked on improvisational exercises.

After lunch, we returned to the school and had a method class. In this class, there are twelve students and we learn the basic study of the Lee Strasberg school. This is a very difficult concept and can take an actor several years to master this method. In this class, we did many improvisational exercises as well as two method exercises. The method exercises included using our senses to act as if we had a beverage that we drink every morning. Another exercise was to imagine being at a party and to make it as lifelike as possible. We then did more group exercises until the class was over.

Stay tuned…