Listen to Terry talking about the origination and development of the Studio with Sean Chandler on his theater podcast – Your Program is Your Ticket. Terry also speaks about how the Studio successfully transitioned into an online program to keep the study of acting alive during the COVID-19 crisis.
Sean Chandler
Meisner, empathy and virtual sets, poised, and ready to go. These topics and much, much more on today’s episode. I’m your host, Sean Chandler. And you’re listening to your program is your ticket. A discussion of smaller theater works and the people and organizations that make it happen. Acting teacher Terry Knickerbocker of his own Terry Knickerbocker studio is my guest on today’s show. Mr. Knickerbocker teaches the Meisner technique and as part of a direct lineage of Sanford Meisner, having spent over 30 years training and teaching with William Esper, one of my center’s most respected proteges. Terry has coached such well-known actors as Sasha Baron Cohen, Sam Rockwell, Michelle Williams, Emmy Rossum, Josh Charles Abbie, Cornish Boyd Holbrook, John Leguizamo, Jonathan Majors, Gretchen Mol, Brian Michael Smith, and Yul Vasquez among others. I am so fortunate to have him on our “Act-Two. Places” series, which gives theater folks an opportunity to discuss the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on them and their organizations and their plans for reemergence.
Keep in mind that our interviews are recorded at different times to optimize schedules just in case the audio sounds different. I’m thrilled to have Terry on the show, so let’s bring them on.
Hi, Terry and welcome to your program is your ticket. Hi.
Terry
Hi Sean. Thanks for having me.
Sean
My pleasure. It’s so nice that I have a very, very prestigious acting teacher on, on the show. And in particular with the “Act Two, Places,” series. It’s going to be so nice to get your perspective on everything because you’re probably seeing it all. You see the, before, the after, the during of building talent and, I’m just really, really thrilled that we can have that look inside.
Terry
Well, thank you. I hope I can add some value to your program, to your listeners. I don’t think I’m seeing everything, but I’m seeing some stuff. Yes, it’s true. And I think it’s cool that people are training right now, actually really well. You know, there was a lot of, I may be jumping the gun in terms of questions you have, but there was so much fear and doubt and worry. This is an embodied art form, and the training always has happened in person. And so to be able to even imagine that you could have a class where each person is their own zoom box and training acting in their living room, in their parents’ house with training movement and training voice with the same benefits is almost unimaginable and was unimaginable for me at first. But you know, what are you going to do? Watch Netflix all for a year? So it’s great that students are doing it. And it’s great that other teachers and I have figured out how to do it.
Sean
I think that we were all just trying to understand how we were going to even get through the very first day, which we’ll talk about in a few minutes. And then it was how do I start this? How do I start this reemergence? And then a lot of it is, and this is what I’m hearing from a lot of the guests on this series is giving yourself permission to sort of risk to try things outside of the structure of theater. And also, from what I’m hearing is as a result of that, a lot of people know that we’re in the learning phase of this before we, hopefully, whenever that mythic day comes, that, you know, we’re all free to go back in the theater. A lot of people are enjoying what they’ve learned and taking pieces of that to help their programs. And I think a lot of that was a lot of that for you just, you know, telling yourself it’s okay to do something like that.
Terry
I mean, honestly, I know you’re going to ask me about those first days, but I was terrified really. And so where so many people, and I was mad. I didn’t think you could do this. And so I honestly thought I was going to have to like sell my house and, you know, move somewhere and to work at a gas station. And it’s taken a little while to figure out that this could be done and could be done in quality because, you know, the tagline of my studio is, “Training the Passionate Actor Committed to Excellence.” And that idea of excellence is important because there are a lot of places you can train to be an actor in New York, from secretaries with bucket list, doing “intro to acting” and they do it for a month and then they don’t do it anymore, to schools like mine, which are really trying to present a legitimate alternative to a top MFA program like Julliard and NYU.
So that’s my niche. It’s not just – “come take some acting classes.” It’s like boot camp, Navy seals, hardcore for people who are really clear, at least when they’re in school, that this is what they want to do. This is what they want to do for the rest of their life. And so, I really had to discover whether we could offer something online that had the same quality as we have in person. The format would be different. There are some adjustments specifically, in the Meisner work, which we can talk about, but I didn’t want to just babysit my students and take their money. That would be completely unethical and leave a very bad taste in everybody’s mouth. So part of it was discovering, will this work? And so actually when we finally did come back, I said to my students, “We’re going to try this for a week. And if it doesn’t feel right, we’ll put a pause in it”, thinking, “Oh, that might be a month.” Well, here it is 13, 14 months later and we’ve been going nonstop. So it does work, but it took a little bit of discovering and being willing to not do it.
One of the things that I’ve been surprised the most about these interviews is, all the success stories that are coming out of this, and, for such a really, really sucky time and being in the business that is really probably going to be one of the very last, if not the last, to come back because of the intimacy involved. I think people just, took off the blinders and they had to get creative and inventive, and some people have come up with some really ingenious ideas to handle this. Now, I’m not saying we turn everything into film and TV. That just makes all a bunch of theaters turn into production houses. But a lot of people are, are really finding new ways. And I personally think that’s cool. Maybe I’m just, you know, just trying to be as positive and be a Pollyanna about everything. Otherwise I’ll just devolve into floods of tears. And then I really will. I’m sorry.
Sean
I think it’s thrilling. No, I’m sorry to interrupt. I don’t think it’s Pollyanna at all.
Terry
I think we’re artists and therefore, we’re creators. And so you work with, necessity – the mother of invention. I taught at NYU for many years decades and one of the things that in NYU Film School, I taught in the drama school, but economic situations often created different strata of possibilities. Like if you came from a wealthy family and you’re doing a thesis project for film, you might have a lot more money for your film than someone from a lower class economic background. And so, obviously that’s unfair. And one of the things that my department did for students like senior projects was just say, “You have a $50 budget. You want to do a show with 10 people and roller skates and whatever. That’s great, but you have to make it work with 50 bucks.” And once you have that kind of set of handcuffs, it starts to really create possibilities. It’d be like writing a concerto and just using three notes that now starts to really create ideas if you’re truly a creative person, which luckily, we are.
Sean
I totally agree with you. I’ve said that many, many times that, the big genius ideas really come when, like you said, when your hands are tied, when you have to stop relying on money and you have to start relying on your mind and your creativity. That’s when you see moments that are like, “Whoa, where did that come from?” And I can usually recognize them when I’m seeing theater where it’s like, that’s because so-and-so did not have a lot of money for a set. And that’s awesome that they did that. It’s really cool. Well, let’s start by, having you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and your career as a prestigious acting teacher.
Terry
Thanks Sean. Well, of course I started out as an actor and was doing that starting from age four, never thinking I was going to be an actor, but started acting back then and high school acting and grade school acting. I went to BU, Boston University, to study French, I guess thinking I’d become like a diplomat or something like that. I had a good ear for a French accent and back then schools taught French. They don’t teach a lot of French these days. It’s not so practical. And then I never went to class. Like I didn’t really want to be there. But I saw in my first couple of weeks an audition notice, for Gilbert and Sullivan, which is a huge sub-genre, in Boston, for some reason, like, you know, HMS Pinafore, Pirates of Penzance.
Sure. All those shows and the Boston University Savoyards were putting on an Offenbach operetta, totally obscure that nobody’s heard of called The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein. And I have, he’s the guy who wrote an opera called Tales of Hoffman for your opera freaks — French opera. And so I auditioned and got in, was in the chorus and played a soldier. And like, this was great. And then they did some more Gilbert and Sullivan, and I got some parts and I started doing a lot of leads in Gilbert and Sullivan, which was at Harvard, at BU, at MIT. And anybody could be in them, you didn’t have to go to those schools. It was like a club and then I started to do some straight plays at Harvard at what is now, ART. But back then they didn’t have an acting program.
And what I realized very quickly was I had no idea what I was doing. And that’s what a lot of actors start out with. You know, you’d never start the violin just winging it. You’d have classes before you’d give a performance, but so many actors, especially kid actors and even high school actors, start out just because we have an innate understanding of what it is to be human. And we know how to mimic people. And we love stories because they’re so part of culture. And so you can get a little bit, you can go far with that, but not too far. You know, ultimately the best actors are trained actors. And so then I went, “Holy cow, I better get some training”, and auditioned for NYU and got in. Luckily, because it’s the only place I applied to. And, um, that was it. I was an actor.
And then one day I sort of fell into directing because when I was acting, I had ideas about what everyone else should do. I wanted to tell the director how to put costumes on people and where actors should stand and how they should say their lines, which any actor will tell you is like a complete “no-no”. Actors don’t tell each other what to do. So when I got this opportunity to direct at American Place Theater, just by accident, but very fortuitously, that was great. And I went, okay, I’m home. Now I’m a director. And then I quickly learned, I won an award. I when the Drama League’s directing award for emerging young directors and it’s like, okay, that’s my career now, directing theater. And then very quickly I learned that theater directors really don’t make a living unless you’re Joe Montello or Julie Taymor, and you’ve got Lion King or Wicked on Broadway and are getting that weekly residual.
It’s very hard to make a living just as a straight play theater director doing off-Broadway, off-off Broadway, and regional work. It’s pretty tough. So I went, how do you make money? I mean, I want to direct. And that’s where teaching ultimately came in.
There are three ways that directors back then made money besides directing; one was to be on staff at a theater and be like, a literary manager, artistic director, or associate artistic director. That would have been at like the Public Theater, Playwrights Horizons or Manhattan Theater Club, or Circle Rep, which was around back then. But none of those places need anybody. The second interesting way apparently was to direct soap operas. And there are a bunch of soap operas shooting in New York at the time. And so he said, okay, that’s weird, but I’ll try it. And I got an in, I had a friend who David Petrarca, who’s a wonderful director.
He had a gig at Guiding Light and he said, “Great, you go shadow.” And that’s how you got started. And I did it for a day and it was like, “Oh, I I’ve getting body aches.” Just thinking about it. Not that there’s anything wrong with soap operas. There’s some good acting that happens there sometimes. And they work really hard, but it just wasn’t for me.
And so the third way was to teach. And after I’d graduated from NYU, I still didn’t know what I was doing as an actor. Totally. Even though I had a great experience, I came upon a masterful teacher who became my mentor, William Esper, who passed on a few years ago, but he had trained with Sandy Meisner. He started his studio in 1965 and he was one of new York’s best kept secrets because, at the time, the big teachers were Stella Adler who was still alive, Lee Strasberg, Uta Haagen, and Sandy Meisner. But Bill Esper was as good as any of those. And I was fortunate enough to be in his class.
And so when I discovered that to support my directing, I should teach, I went to Bill and I said, “Bill, I really want to teach.” And I, you know, anybody can say they’re a teacher, you don’t need a license to teach. But I knew that what I wanted to teach was the Meisner work, which Bill had shared with me so beautifully. And I didn’t dare teach it unless I knew how to teach it. And I wanted to be around him. And so, he said, “Well, I don’t need any teachers. I’m sorry. I just don’t have enough students to take on another teacher.” And I said, “How about if I just stick around and sit in the back of your class and watch you teach until you ask me to leave?”
And that began a 30-year relationship as an apprentice teacher and then a teacher with him, until I left in 2015 to start my studio.
Now, I was still doing the teaching to support or directing. I was doing a lot of directing at the time, but I started to fall in love with teaching and realize it as really my life’s work–that something about imparting this incredible technique that Mr. Meisner created, and that Bill shared with me that works so well and really helping actors to realize their potential was what turned me on the most. And I didn’t miss directing because when I got into the scene work of Second Year, there’s a lot of directing in that. Like, it’s, there’s some interpretation on my part of how I see Streetcar Named Desire. So became fulfilled–this was all a series of happy accidents.
But ultimately that’s how it started and that’s where it is right now. And I love it.
Sean
Excellent. Can you please explain the, Sanford Meisner technique of acting to our audience? Talk about the similarities, maybe the differences to other techniques.
Terry
Yeah, I’ll do my best. I would say first of all, I think many of your listeners would understand that most really good acting training is all derived from this Russian fellow Stanislavski. Back in the thirties, you know, American acting up to then was very much like melodrama.
“YOU MUST PAY THE RENT!”
“I WON’T PAY THE RAT BACK” — sort of bad silent film acting.
And then meanwhile, this guy Stanislavski was in Russia working with Anton Chekhov and rehearsed The Seagull for two years. That was a two-year rehearsal period, which given today’s three weeks and then previews schedule of off-Broadway, it is just unthinkable, but that’s kind of amazing.
And then they brought that work to New York and the members of the group theater, which was Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg, Sanford Meisner, Stella Adler, Cheryl Crawford, uh, Clifford Odets, the playwright. This was kind of this very liberal passionate group of theater makers went and saw Stanislavski and the Moscow Art Theater and got their minds blown and said, “Well, teach us about your training.”
You know, the work was just so organic, so natural, they’d never seen anything that was so true to life. American acting like that didn’t exist. So first of all, no one cares what kind of training you’ve had. No audience member says to themselves, “You know what, sweetheart? I feel like some Strasberg acting tonight, don’t you”? No, no, no. I, you know, it’s not like Chinese food versus Italian food. All good training should help an actor to be able to say – you give me a script and I know what to do to turn it into behavior that’s authentic and meaningful and honors the writer, but also honors me as an artist in my imagination so that it feels like the part was made for me. And it feels true to life, right? It feels like I’m watching real life unfold in whatever format.
It could be a farce, you know, it could be Michael Frayn, it could be Tennessee Williams. It could be a new play. It doesn’t really matter. It could be a film, a TV show, good acting as good acting. And I think we can all recognize it. So when I went to NYU, I studied a hodgepodge of techniques, all derived from Stanislavski, which is basically about just creating truthful behavior. That’s kind of what it boils down to now. Strasburg is very associated with something we would call the Method, right? So that’s Al Pacino a bunch of other people, great work, obviously. That’s early Stanislavski because Stanislavski developed his method over years. And at the beginning he was doing something I heard you speaking to, I think your most recent podcast was a wonderful Korean actor. And he was talking about understudying this fellow and having to create a stabbing.
And you talked about sense memory, and sense memory comes from Stanislavski and this idea of something else called affective memory, which is where you use your history, like if something terrible happened to you when you were younger, that could be a source of authentic emotion. And you would kind of get back in touch with that, through the senses and through written through memory. I need tears, I need anger. I need whatever that is. That’s a good, authentic personal source for me. So that’s what Stanislavski was doing at first. That’s what they all did in the group theater and Strasberg. A couple of years later, Stella Adler went to Paris to visit with Stanislavski, who happened to be there. “let’s hang out and see what’s going on. She said, Oh, we’re doing the, sense memory stuff, and affective memory.”
And Stanislavski said, “I don’t do that anymore. What now I’m kind of into the imagination now.”
And I find that much more right. You don’t have to have experienced anything if you can imagine it–it’s just as potent. And so he’d moved on and she came back and reported to everyone and Lee Strasbourg said “Well, too bad. I’m still gonna do this.” A fork in the road in American training happened in that moment. Stella Adler went more towards using the imagination, because you know, let’s say you had a really perfect childhood. I mean, that’s kind of hard to imagine, but let’s say you were very happy and had great parents. Where are you going to get your trauma? Are you going to say, can only play happy parts, right?
How are you going to play someone who had an abusive childhood if it’s not in your actual experience? And this idea of the imagination is saying, well, if you can dream it with empathy, then you can get connected to it just as well. Because after all, that’s what acting is. It’s imagination. So Meisner very much went along that road of let’s come up with the work from the imagination. But he made a very important contribution, which is why a lot of people consider his work to be foundational. When I went to NYU, the very first thing I did in acting class was Streetcar Named Desire. Now, that’s how a lot of acting techniques start. They start with scene study, right? First day of class let’s do a scene. And that would be like going to ballet and starting with Swan Lake or starting the, you know, the piano with Beethoven.
That’s just not how performing arts are done. Right? Performing arts are done with first position, second position, plie and scales and arpeggios. Now no one goes to Carnegie Hall to hear scales. But if you do a lot of scales, you become very musical. Meisner’s background was as a pianist before he became a man of the theater. He went to a conservatory called the Damrosch Conservatory and studied piano. And so some kind of synthesis happened in his mind with how can I apply the principles of piano study to acting training? And he said, well, we need the equivalent of scales and arpeggios and exercises. And so he came up with this thing that starts the Meisner training, which is very sequential. So, each class builds on the class before it, until at the end of the first year, you’ve got a lot of balls in the air.
Step-by-step just, as you would, if you were learning a musical instrument or tap dancing, um, starts with the thing called the repetition exercise. So if I were to look at you right now and you were my partner, I’d say, “It looks like you’re wearing a hoodie” and then you’d repeat back to me, “looks like I’m wearing a hoodie” and I’d repack repeat back to you. “Yes. It looks like you’re wearing a hoodie” and you’d repeat that back to me. Now. That’s not Chekhov, that’s not Tennessee Williams, but it’s the seed of Chekhov because it already has within it some really important things for acting specifically — really listening. And where’s my attention? My attention is on you. That’s very useful for acting because actors get very self-conscious and a lot of bad acting has as its source people worried about themselves. Where am I going to do with my hands? What do I look like?
So if I put my attention on you, I start to become very free, right? And out of that little tiny seed of listening and truthfully responding and starting to work authentically from moment to moment, he started to add elements to the technique until by the end of the first year, you’re able to improvise and live out any imaginary circumstance that could happen to you, right?
As you know, it’s not character work because in his mind, character work was using all the parts of yourself that you discovered in the first year and painting portraits of other people using those ingredients. So there’s always some connection to you. Robert Duvall, who studied with Meisner said that character acting is you bent. Just a little bit different version of you. Like if you’re playing Laura in The Glass Menagerie, we know from Tennessee Williams script, certain facts about her. We know that she’s insecure, that she has low self-esteem, that she’s yearning for connection.
That she has was a very domineering mother in Amanda, that she lives in her fantasies, which is what she calls her glass menagerie. And there’s something poetic about her. We know that she also has a hard time following through with things, everything she starts, she gives up. So if you’re a very successful actress, meaning not in your career, but you, you keep your appointments. You always follow through. You’re very busy rash, right? Well, you can’t make Laura that because that’s not right, that’s not Tennessee Williams’s stories. So you have to kind of ,like a remixing board, bring down the part of you that’s effective and confident and start to raise the part of you that could understand low self-esteem. And so that kind of adjustment and having accessibility to all your parts and especially through empathy, right? Because you really need to empathize with a character rather than judge it.
Right. If you’re going to play, I let’s just say Donald Trump, which is a fascinating character, I would say, you can’t judge him as being arrogant or narcissistic or anything like that. You understand that about him, but then you’re going to be sort of distancing yourself. You have to say what happened to this guy? What happened with him and Fred and Mary Trump his parents growing up in Queens that led him to be the kind of guy who never says I’m sorry? Who’s so interested, who’s so susceptible to flattery and also susceptible to attack, right? Where does that all come from? Cause I think it comes from a great deal of insecurity. Why did he keep trading in his girlfriends to get younger and younger girlfriends and wives so that he could feel eternally youthful and stuff like that? And through that kind of empathy and understanding, you can start to build a character.
So those are some of the things that that Meisner does. And, um, you know, his basic premise is that acting is doing, right? Acting is not feeling. Acting is doing. That’s why we say to act, is an action. And so the question is always, what am I doing? And what does everything mean? And who is my character and what are my relationships and what are the given circumstances? And if I can start to understand some of those through the process of the training, you can start to create that behavior reliably.
You know, my work when I got out of NYU was hit or miss, and a lot of actors report this. Some parts just happen. And then the next part it’s like, I don’t know what I’m doing. And because of that scene study model, because a scene study model teaches you how to do that scene, but it does not teach you how to do a scene from a play that you might write, Sean, right? Because that play hasn’t been written yet. Whereas if we get this foundational approach that teaches you how to approach any script and how to get access to the behavior that lives inside you, then you’ve got a toolkit for life and you can take it anywhere. You can take it on stage, you can take it to Hollywood, you can take it anywhere. It’s really amazingly practical and totally places. The actor as an artist, which is really special.
Sean
I really like watching, Meisner actors quite a lot. I mean, I just, I, I feel like when they’re acting, they’re so immediate they’re so in the moment, and there is the connection, with their scene partner or partners, if it’s a big group scene. And it feels like they’re always just connecting with, with like this particular prop or this particular person, or when they walk in, they’re connecting with the room. And the effect that it has on me is I see a thinking, feeling, human being because of that focus. And it, I think to me takes all of that unwanted artists out. And I just, I am seeing a real person up on stage or, or in a film. I mean it just feels like I’m there, it feels like the scene breathes and it feels like it’s alive. Yeah. To me. And I’m, I can usually tell because I think that the best actors, when you’re up on stage or on screen, there’s like an internal vibration happening with them. Like they’re just up there and they’re awake and, they’re paying attention. Even if they’re drunk or they’re passing or they’re playing passing out or sick or something like that, your mind and your eye just directly gravitates to them. And it’s because they are just so there. Yes. Yes.
Well, it’s, it’s true. And I know that, it’s a lot of that is I think discipline. It takes probably a long time to look that natural and a lot of training as well. It’s funny–my husband, David and I went to, actually this was the trip before the trip before the shutdown. Se saw the gender flip version of Company. Are you familiar with, with this? They’ve turned Bobby into a female character and, in my opinion, it’s incredible. It really is. Afterwards, they had a question and answer and we totally lucked out because we had Patti LuPone up there as part of the panel. And then, I think it’s, uh, Marianne Elliott is the director. And, uh, um, I forget the very, very talented lady who played, who played Bobby, but somebody asked a question like, “How do you get up there and take that journey every single night, and then completely rewind and then take it again the next night?” Patti LuPone, who I love, but I kinda like love her because I’m afraid of her leans down right into the audience, and she goes “Training.” That’s all she said. And of course the rest of us were like, yeah, but it’s true.
I mean, I think that to have that naturalness and that fluidity, you really do have to train, in that sort of emotional world, accessing your emotions. Because in addition to all of that, you have to do the basics of acting, which are remembering your lines and your costumes and, and your blocking and things like that. And I’ve taken an acting class here and there mostly for empathy as a writer. That, to me, was overwhelming enough. So it feels like all of that stuff has to be like second nature. Is there a focus on making, uh, just the basics of your experience acting in front of the camera or on, on the stage, it’s like a nature so that you can really access that natural place that comes.
Terry
But I think it’s like anything–it’s practice. You know, you look at athletes and like a baseball player, a second baseman, they practice so many ground balls so that it’s not even thought, you know, it just happens. It’s in their muscle memory. So, I think the more you practice with a good teacher, you start to cultivate habits of performance that you just can’t help. But you know, that thing, you were talking about an actor walking in the room and being in touch with other people and sensing the space and interacting with props. That’s when you’ve done it so many times, that’s just natural, and the best actors are fascinated with that. And also they have some other, you know, there’s a talent factor here. That’s kind of what you’re born with, like a sort of an affinity for telling stories and affinity for transformation and a love of that.
You know, like you can’t be an actor if you don’t love conflict, which means you have to understand that the imaginary world is safe. Like if you go, “Oh, wait, someone’s yelling at me. I got to shut down,” You can’t be an actor because maybe in life, that’s not, you know, I don’t walk around New York, saying “Please somebody pick a fight with me,” but boy, would that be a great thing to happen in a in a play or in a movie, “please pick a fight with me. Let’s have it, let’s mix it up!” Because that’s, that’s the kind of richness that I want to act. So you have to kind of love action if you’re an actor.
Sean
Oh, absolutely. I think I recall seeing Meryl Streep interviewed and they asked all of these things like do, “You play these characters that are constantly in trouble and constantly, at odds with everyone and the situation that you’re in. Are you, are you like that?” The interviewer asked are you like that Meryl? She said, “um, no, you don’t in life. You don’t want any of that.” But of course, in drama, you do need the conflict.” As a writer, I need conflict myself. Um, so it’s, it’s funny that you say that, that flashed me back to one of my favorite moments of Meryl Streep.
Terry
And sometimes students screw that up. Like they don’t make that differentiation. You know, one of the things that the work encourages, cause there’s so much improvisation before we get working on scripts, is freedom. And like, whatever’s going on, you say it in the exercise. If you say that shirt looks ugly, you don’t worry about social norms or something like that. And, because it’s safe and you could be really truthful and it’s an exercise in subtext. But I had a student years ago who was very restricted, very proper, grew up on the Upper East side and had a very kind of patrician household and went to fancy, private schools, but really wanted to be an actress. And, you know, I think both her parents were very successful attorneys. And so there was a lot of unlearning, which is a lot of what acting training is.
You’re learn these tools, but you also have to unlearn a lot of conditioning and defenses to get into a more primitive, responsive kind of place. And so she came, she was very stuck in the work, very “appropriate.” And then one day she came into class and said, “You’re going to be so proud of me.” And I said, “Why, what happened Victoria?” And she said, “I had a fight with my boyfriend over the weekend and I kicked him!” And I went, “I am not proud of you for that. Not at all. You don’t want to take this work and, you know, mix it up with people in the deli and kick people in your life. You can know how you feel about it, but you have to be very discerning about what you actually live out and really keep that kind of stuff in the acting class and onstage.”
Sean
Wow. You know, that’s, that’s a, that’s an odd day. Yeah. Yeah.
Terry
Weird things happen in acting classes, you know?
Sean
Absolutely. Okay. Now, before I ask you my questions about COVID and the Coronavirus, I have one follow up question from something that you mentioned before that follow-up question is, can you still speak French?
Terry
“Un petit, un petit!” But not too much, you know, if I went to Paris, which I haven’t been to in a long time, I pick it up a bit, I think. I can read it better than I could speak it. More Spanish because Spanish is like all over New York and I like to go to Mexico and Dominican Republic and stuff like that. But I think it helps cause there’s a, there’s a character, you know, I love French movies and, it’s fun, you know, it’s just, it’s fun. It helps. I think that was the precursor of the transformational ideas. Like just to be a different person, you know, who speaks a little bit different and, I found Persians to be very snobby, not, you know, that’s a kind of a stereotype, but, when it comes to like Americans that there’s some judgment of us as being a little less classy and a little less sophisticated than they are. And so that’s interesting to me,
Sean
I love the French language. I think when women speak it, it sounds beautiful and women, but when men speak it, it sounds dirty. My with David and I have gone to France many times and I get by with the same 20 phrases or so, and, and the more we go, the easier it gets for me. It’s funny, cause he’s an actor. I love that you said that because he’s an actor and he doesn’t speak a lot of French. Like all learn all of the phrases, you know, “would take me here”, whatever. But when he speaks his five or ten phrases that he knows, boy, the Frenchman really comes out. That’s cool. He, he did play, uh, Dr. Caius in the Merry Wives of Windsor whose French, so he started to fall back into that.
Terry
They’re doing that in Shakespeare in the Park this year. Are they? Yes. That’s, that’s, that’s kind of the comeback of theater that they’re only going to do one show, not two, but that’s the show they’re doing,
Sean
You know, I should go. I’m not a huge fan of Shakespeare and I’ve never been to a show at Shakespeare in the park.
Terry
Oh, you got to go. I saw a Meryl Streep there. I saw her, do The Seagull.
Sean
You know, I’m going to do it. Yeah. I’m going to do it. I’m going to follow up with you Terry. And just, you know, I’ve just sometimes when I’m watching Shakespeare, I feel like there’s a schism between what they’re saying and, or a chasm, if you will, of what they’re saying and how I’m hearing it. I feel like every line I sort of have to translate from the dialogue into how I’m hearing it in a modern way.
Terry
I don’t think that’s you, I think that’s bad Shakespearian acting, right? When you watch Benedict Cumberbatch, Patrick Stewart, Mark Rylance, speak Shakespeare, perform it. I mean, look at Romeo and Juliet. “What light through yonder window breaks. It is the East and Juliet is the sun.” If you really understand what you’re saying as an actor, instead of trying to speak verse, cause that iambic pentameter “look what light through yonder window breaks. It is the East and Juliet is the sun arise,” you know what I mean? You’re going to get lost. But if you turn it into human communication and you have a masterful person doing it, it feels contemporary, which is a miracle.
Sean
First of all, I apologize for the car alarm going on. Like I was saying I live on 10th and 52nd in Manhattan. So that’s like background music for me
It’s typically when an actor is sort of modernizing it and breaking down the dialogue a little bit and they’re not just, you know, reciting what sounds like poetry, they’re actually saying what they mean and they’re direct. That’s when I get it. I, interviewed an actor named Carley Street. She’s very, very popular in Canada. And she does a lot of understudy work here in New York. And I asked her about that and I said, “Why is it that I am not connecting? Because you do so much Shakespeare.” She says, “Because there’s too many flowers. There’s too much pink poetry going on.” She said, “You get out there and you say it and you’re direct about it. Because chances are that if a person of that time, Shakespeare’s time, if they were delivering that line like that, people would probably be looking at him like, what, what are you doing? Why are you talking like that rather than the direct manner with the intention behind it?
Terry
Absolutely– Shakespearian acting at The Globe. Theater was like a sporting event. People were wandering around. Men were playing all the women’s parts. They were orange sellers. It was like being at Yankee Stadium. And if you couldn’t catch people’s attention, then the show wouldn’t work. Right? We just lost, just this past weekend, a wonderful actor, Joe Siravo I don’t know if you know about him. He, on “The Sopranos,: he was, Tony Soprano’s Dad, Tony soprano. He also was in Oslo on Broadway. He got sick a couple of years ago. He was my first Shakespeare teacher at my studio. And his whole mission as a teacher was to debunk the notion that Americans couldn’t do Shakespeare. He trained at NYU and was a masterful actor and a beautiful teacher and a beautiful soul. And unfortunately he got sick and died at the age of 64, but gosh, she was good at teaching Shakespeare and making it feel like, “Oh, I can do it. I can make it real.” He was a master at that.
Sean
Oftentimes people will say, “Just let it wash over you.” Do you agree with that sort of philosophy or that theory, if I just sort of like, let my mind relax that eventually I’ll pick up on the big, broad strokes of the piece.
Terry
I like to watch people doing things and interacting and have it feel real. You know, I don’t watch The Godfather and let it wash over me. I don’t watch Silkwood, which is a great movie with Meryl Streep and Cher and let it wash over me. No, I want to watch real human beings doing real things. And when that’s done well, you know, I saw Dustin Hoffman do Shylock in Merchant of Venice, with Lily Rabe, I mean like really good actors make Shakespeare feel real. And that’s what it should feel like. The washing over thing doesn’t work very well for me. I like that when I go to the symphony.
Sean
Yeah. I, you know, I’m glad that you I’m glad that you’re in my court because I just thought to myself, I really would like to understand from moment to moment to moment what’s going on. And, and the best actors are going to be able to break down those beats and feed them to me if you will. I’m glad you brought up Lily Rabe. I love her. How great is she? I mean, just like she’s like a total prodigy, but just an incredible actor. I saw her for the first time in Steel Magnolias like 15 years ago, where there was a production with like Delta Burke and Chrissy Ebersole. And I didn’t know who Lily Rabe was, but about halfway through the first act of that, the first act break, cause it’s a total and four parts, everybody out there, if you haven’t seen the play, everyone’s seen the movie I leaned over to David and I said, “She is stealing this whole thing from all of these dynamite actors.”
And I was like, who is she? She is incredible. And it’s been wonderful to watch her work. Yup. Wow. Okay. I’ll stop fan girling over Lily Rabe. And we’ll move on a little bit here.
Now you had said that the first couple of days after the shutdown, which was, I believe March 12th, was the first day where you had no, no theater at all that you felt not great, and that’s completely understandable. What was your rebound process like what did you have to do to pull yourself out of that place and get back into teaching and doing what you love to do?
Terry
Thank you for asking that question. I remember it so well, March 12th was a Thursday, March 13th, Friday the 13th, was my last day in person teaching at all. We were about to go on spring break. Our spring break coincided with NYU’s spring break, where I had retired from, but I still had a lot of connections. I’d stopped teaching there just a few years before and on that Thursday, I was petrified as I told you, and I was angry and, I didn’t know, you know. NYU had said, take spring, break off and take another week off and then we’ll come back for a week of online and then we’ll be back. Like they imagined the pandemic thing being a three-week event. So I wandered over to NYU in Washington Square that Thursday, I had a little bit of time and was hoping I would see my former boss, who’s a wonderful teacher and boss named Rosemary Quinn, who used to work with Joseph Chaikin and the Open Theater and Jean-Claude van Italle and, um, the Roy Hart theater in France, um, and a great, great administrator and teacher and inspiration. And she was so jolly. There was nobody there and NYU was empty, which was weird on a Thursday. But they’d sent the kids home early and they said, administrators didn’t have to come in, but she was there. We bumped elbows. And she basically shared with me that NYU had basically told every teacher there and every department “We’re going online, either you do it or you’re fired.” Like there’s no choice because NYU had already gotten the tuition. They weren’t about to get money back to students. They didn’t have it to get back. So make it work.
And one of her teachers said, I guess she was a bit old-fashioned and said, “I can’t do this, so they didn’t come back.” But everyone else was on board reluctantly, with a lot of confusion; and Rosemary, with the biggest smile on her face said “Who better to figure this out than us because we’re improvisers. So this is a moment to improvise now.”
So that kind of just shifted my sails a bit like, “Oh, maybe this is possible.” I was supposed to go to Mexico that Saturday morning. I had tickets and Thursday night I canceled everything. I had an Airbnb in Mexico, I was going to go with my family. And, I was like, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get back. That was the fear of going to Mexico, not of getting the virus, but just like that the walls would shut down and a us border and customs would say no flights in.
So I canceled everything. And that Saturday, the 14th–I had, recently been nominated to join a wonderful organization that’s been instrumental throughout as a guide and touchstone for me throughout this, which is called the National Alliance of Acting Teachers. And it’s a countrywide elite group of acting teachers, mostly in universities, NAAT, for people from all over the place, from Utah, Wyoming, Texas, California, Oregon, and New York, um, uh, and a few studio teachers, but mostly college teachers. And we had our first zoom meeting that Saturday, 70 acting teachers on a zoom call, where we kind of all put our heads together and like, what are we going to do? And how are we going to go forward? And how are we going to take care of our students? And how are we going to teach? And one particular colleague was very angry, a little bit like me at the time and very doubtful.
And said “There is no way that this can happen. Okay, we can do table work, we can do like beginning work on scenes. But the full embodied training of an actor with touch and bodies and objects and space, no way we can’t do it.”
And then this other woman from another school, these are top acting program, said, “But no, actually it’s quite possible. I dated my husband in Cameroon, Africa on Skype for two years. And when I would say sweetheart, good night, and I want to embrace you, I reached my hand towards his face on my computer screen. And he reached his hand towards me. I felt something in my body. It wasn’t just this digital flat experience.” And then and he was going, “no, no, no.” And she was going, “yes, yes, yes.” And it got so heated. And meanwhile, 68 of us are just like watching.
And I started to get nervous because this was supposed to be a collegial support group. And instead, it was turning into a battlefield and then kind of all at once, we all kind of went, “Oh, that’s the work.” That’s two people having a scene. That’s two people working moment to moment with full emotion in their bodies. So connected on zoom, okay. This might be able to work. It was like this 68 people or hive mind all happened at the same time. And that gave me some hope.
So Rosemary’s conversation with me, gave me hope. That moment gave me hope. And I spoke to a friend who is a kind of a business advisor to me, just like a guru who understands a lot about how business works. Because when I started my studio, I had to pivot from being just an acting teacher to like, I have to pay rent and I have to do payroll, and hire teachers and scheduling and hire staff. And there’s a lot of other stuff that goes into having an acting studio. And by the way, it’s not like when I started my studio in New York said, you know what we need right now, more than anything, another acting school. It was the silliest thing to do, Right? I mean, if I looked at the market, right. But, but it worked out.
So this guru friend said to me, “You’re going to be okay.” Because they were writing me at that point. And they were like, “I think we should wait. I don’t think that this is going to work. Let’s just pause for a bit. Are you going to give us a discount? We don’t think this is worth it.” You know, many of them pay for their education. A few of them might have money and a few of them might have parents supporting them. But most of them are bartenders, baristas servers, babysitters. Well, there were no restaurants, no bars and no babysitting in New York. And a lot of people were leaving town or their parents were saying, “Get out of New York,” because New York was a hotspot at that point, New York had way more cases than other places. And so they’re saying “Come home to Minnesota, right. Where you’re safe.” they’d given up their apartments. They have no jobs, and so they’re kind of saying this isn’t going to work. But my friend, the business friend said, “People are going to be very isolated right now. And so it’s going to be very meaningful for them to be in community. And when you have a zoom class with 20 people in it, it’s going to feel like a community, even though everyone’s in their own separate space.”
And the other thing is people are going to want to do something meaningful. And to me, this training is meaningful to them. They’re not going to want to stop doing meaningful things. It’s going to be hard to find meaningful things to do. And so to be in community and to do something meaningful is going to carry them through. “If you can find a way to teach, call every one of your students, don’t email them.” Now we do all our business through email and then we meet and it’s all personal. So that week, that week of spring break, I called every one of my students. We made a hundred calls. I have another acting teacher. He had some students too, and we just listened and it’s space for them. And there was a lot of doubt, a lot of worry, a lot of suspicion, a few people were like, “Yeah, we’re gung ho.”
But majority of people were they’re like, “I don’t think this will work. I don’t know if I want to do it. This feels weird. It’s not what we, you know, it’s not what we signed up for.” I said, “Why don’t we just meet and see, and that first class back.” So that would have been 14th, 15th, 16th to the 23rd of March, 2020, that first Monday we all met and I have for different groups. And so I had four different groups that had their first class on Monday or Tuesday, and we just talked that night. It was like three groups. It was like a lot of shattered souls, a lot of stories to tell a lot of trauma and we didn’t do any work until the very end. And then we just did a little bit of work at the end of that first class. And it was working.
That was, it was meaningful. People were open, there was a resonance to it. And I said to them, as I said, at the beginning of our conversation, “We’ll try it for a week because if it’s not excellent, I don’t want to do it. But if it is, let’s do it, let’s see if it works. And if it doesn’t work, I’ll be the first one to shut it down.” And at the end of that week, we kept going and I only lost one student. And that was before we started, she was a mom with three kids, school-aged kids, one of whom had special needs. She couldn’t even go to the bathroom by herself. It made no sense for her to train.
And we didn’t know when it would end. I mean, we were hoping, okay, maybe it’ll end and we can have the summer session in person. And then that didn’t look likely. Maybe we’ll be back in the fall and in person. So, everyone who started this past September, will be finishing, and we’ll have an entire year online. That’s very not what we expected, not what we anticipate, and somewhat disappointing and heartbreaking, but we’ve done really great work. And that was the evolution of going forward.
And then there was also just the like figuring out how do you do a scene online? You know, the Meisner work has two people in the same space. If we were working together, you and I in a scene, and we’d be pretending that, you on 52nd street and 10th Avenue and me in Bed-Stuy, were in one space. And if I knocked on the door, you’d hear my knock and you’d go, “I’m going to the door” and you’d walk over and open your door. And then I’d come into my camera. And we pretend that I just came into your space. So there’s certain sort of agreed upon conventions that we have to do to kind of make the thing work. Because we’re pretending that we’re in the same space. We’re not pretending we’re on a zoom call or pretending that we’re living this out in space. And then the rest of the class, we could have 18 other people in this zoom call, they’d have turned their cameras off and they’re just watching. So we’re the only two people where it’s happening and my camera’s off. And I’m watching and I’m taking notes and sometimes I’ll turn my mic on and I’ll give them some side coaching just to kind of reorient them. And it kind of works, it more than kind of works.
And then the movement department, cause I have movement training. They had to figure out–because a large part of their work has to do with touch. Well, that’s the part that’s least satisfying kissing, hugging, dancing, shoving, you know, that doesn’t work as well on zoom clearly, you know, but they figured out how to do that voice work. I mean, we’ve, we’ve figured out how to do it. And so in some ways it’s an advantage. Like if I were in class right now and you’re in front of me and I’m teaching you, there’d be 20 people behind me looking at the back of my head. But in class they’re looking at my face and there are no cheap seats on zoom. There’s no balcony on zoom. Every seat is an orchestra seat. And, and if I– I have a big computer, I have an iMac–so if I put you in closeup, I can see details on your skin that I might not be able to see in person.
One other thing is that some students very shy students, you know, sometimes actors can be very shy. I’m sure you know that, they felt more comfortable in their own homes, something about doing their work and having their Teddy bear there and you know their mug of hot cocoa from downstairs or whatever, made them feel a little freer to let us see more of them. It’s interesting how it’s worked out.
Sean
Wow. I I’m in my mind still trying to put the concept together of us being in the same room, right. When we’re not, and there’s this and in my mind, I’m thinking, you know what? I can imagine that I can imagine that that door behind you was a door that I could walk over and use if I needed.
Terry
That’s right. That’s right. That’s exactly it. So I’d go off camera. You’d be doing your thing. I’d knock on the door. You’d hear the knock. Cause it’d be picked up by the mic. Either I’m wearing earbuds from using this Yeti mic and then you’d look over your shoulder at your door, we’d see your door in your camera. And um, I’d say, “What was that? What are you doing?” I say, “It’s me Terry.” “Oh, I’ve been waiting for you to come in.” And then I’d come into my door and to say, “What took you so long?” And you know, and we’d be in this agreed upon thing. It’s so weird.
Sean
Now with that exercise, did you encourage people to get together your students to get together and sort of like tailor their actual physical rooms to look like one room at all?
Terry
No, no, that would, that would be cool. But no, it’s just agreed upon. So, the decor never matches. The door is never lined up. It’s just the magic of theater — you have an empty space and you say “Welcome to the forest of Arden.” And once we say it’s the Forest of Arden, we agree.
Sean
Wow. You know, I’m surprised that there are, I bet there are actors who were sort of doing that in their minds are saying, you know, okay, I know what this person’s office looks like. I’m going to put this over here. That’s going to pull me in.
Terry
You also get some weird things — I mean like pets, sometimes people live in studio apartments and there are dogs and cats and birds and they’re wandering around and like they’re distractions. I’m really strict about attendance, and my students have been great, you know. This isn’t flaky because the business isn’t flaky, so we don’t want to encourage those habits, but like I’ve had some students recently, letting them miss class or miss part of class to go get vaccinated, obviously. Because that’s what’s happening.
I have a woman studying in Puerto Rico. I have people in Japan, Canada, –this has opened up borders, right? You don’t have to come to New York and rent an apartment to study acting at my studio right now. So I’ve had people taking class at two in the morning from Israel, from Japan, Vancouver. So this woman’s in Puerto Rico. She’s wonderful. A wonderful actress named Ana Isabel, who’s in the new Spielberg West Side Story, she is one of the sharks. She’s great. She’s so good, and she does her exercise that she says she has to go get vaccinated. She’s in the car, her iPhone is on her dashboard. She’s driving in Puerto Rico. I mean, I’ve just been like, what would Meisner think about, you know, a Puerto Rican actress taking acting class from Puerto Rico in her car on her way to get vaccinated. I mean, this is a strange world we’re living in right now, but she didn’t want to miss any class. Right. So she wanted to hear everything.
Sean
That is a very, very strong testament to your leadership qualities that you can, you can pull people in, from all over the world and keep them and have them be that passionate and that committed. And also, good on you and your other teacher for calling all of those students. I mean, I’m sure that meant so much to them. And even if it was just like a shoulder to cry on, on the phone just to get it all out even, or if it was, you were telling them, “Look, I’m still here for you. Your world is not completely falling apart. This is you’re still here.” You know? I mean, I just, when you said that, I thought that was really super cool that you did.
Terry
Yeah. It was very, very good advice and it was one of the best and most catalytic things we did, yeah.
Sean
No doubt. Um, where do you feel theater stands now as of today in the process of reemergence?
Terry
Poised, impatient, ready to go. Somewhat stymied by equity? I would say, um, I mean, I think equity is trying to be very careful, but I think it might be being a little too careful compared to SAG-AFTRA, who are up and running. I think — do you listen to Ken Davenport?
Sean
I don’t listen to him regularly, but I’ve been to many of his seminars.
Terry
Yes. You know, he’s a sassy producer who does attention-getting things and likes to opine. But I like him, and he predicts Broadway will be back in November. I think it’ll be back in September, October. I mean, we talked about Merry Wives of Windsor. I think there’s going to be a lot of outdoor performance. I think–it was kind of interesting a couple months back, they did a production of Godspell, with like a plastic curtain in Massachusetts and Nathan Lane just last week and Savion Glover, did a performance in a Broadway theater for invited members of the industry, obviously socially distanced. I think facilities are very tricky, especially Broadway houses are not ready for it, you know, they don’t have touchless bathrooms and the seats are old. I think a more modern place like St Ann’s Warehouse might be able to come back quicker and also just has less of an economic burden. If you’re going to do it socially distanced, what a, ticket’s going to be $600 each.
I don’t think that makes sense. So I’m imagining though that actors can’t wait to get back to work as far as I can tell. It’s just what we love to do, especially dancers, especially if you’re in a musical, like, what are you doing? You know, you might be taking class. A friend of mine, who’s a Broadway dancer, had to develop another business during the pandemic. And she makes like these, homemade books she customizes books and book binding and stuff like that to make journals and stuff like that. But she can’t wait to get back onto a stage and get into projects. Writers have certainly never stopped working that, was continuous — the writers’ rooms and Hollywood and playwrights, there are a lot of amazing stories that I think are going to come out of this.
Terry
I keep thinking about the “Roaring Twenties,” which came right after the Spanish flu. And I think after things are safe, there’s going to be a Renaissance of art and activity. But I do think that– my sense is that Broadway will be back in the Fall. Theater will be back in the Fall, probably with known hits first–so Wicked and, Lion King and, and Hamilton, but just open somewhere in Japan, maybe, Taiwan, and then other things will start to happen after that. I pray, but you can’t risk people. We’re not at herd immunity yet. So even if you’re vaccinated, I think they’ll have a passport. I imagine that they’ll require audience members to be vaccinated and stagehands and ticket takers and all the actors, but, you know, kids aren’t vaccinated yet.
And so we don’t know what happens with them. And, and let’s say your child is around or you’re around a child. And then even if you’re vaccinated, it’s not proven that you can’t carry it. And then you go see someone who can’t take the vaccine or something, and then your grandmother dies and then what happens? So we don’t want that. I think it’s wise that it’s coming back slowly, but I think everyone’s chomping at the bit. I know I am, and I’m going to cry when I’m in a theater that first time, and I bet you are too Sean, and the lights go down and we do that thing that we’ve been doing for all our lives. And we’re in a communal space sharing stories with live actors on stage. That’s going to be the best day. I can’t wait.
Sean
Neither can I, and I would say probably 18 guests that I’ve interviewed for this show, this particular series of my show, have said the same thing. Everybody’s going to be on their feet crying, we’re going to be standing up as the curtain is drawn.
Terry
I’m getting upset now. I mean, I just can’t wait. It’s, it’s so meaningful.
Sean
Yeah. Yeah. It’s like I had said before, one of the first groups I interviewed, a young female administrator had said that it’s going to be mythic. It’s almost mythic when that’s going to happen. And that overwhelms me because never did we ever think ever, ever, ever, think this was going to happen, and now we’re just charging through to get to it. But we’re, we’re making good things happen–ourselves and for other people. And people are stepping up like you and supporting everyone and getting them to that place. And that’s cool. That’s really, really cool. I’m very, very impressed with, with everything that, that you’re doing in this circumstance. Absolutely.
Terry
Film and TV are back with some special rules, but, you know, another thing I do is I coach a lot of actors more prominent actors. And they were out of work for six, nine months like that just dried up. And one guy, Chris Messina, who’s a wonderful actor, came and took my class online just to have something to do and stay kind of alive. And, and since, I don’t know, September in Vancouver, everything’s opened up now, they’re shooting in New York, they’re shooting in London, they’re shooting in Australia. And so I’m having to say no, because all of a sudden everybody’s working. And just before this podcast, I got a call from a very big actor who needs help. I hope I have time and everybody’s working. And that’s also exciting with weird rules. As I was talking to this guy, he was down in Atlanta, someone says, “Wait, where’s your mask, man.” In LA I’m working with Natasha Lyonne on season two of Russian Doll. She’s, she’s astounding.
Sean
You’re not kidding. She is great.
Terry
Her set got closed last week because someone got Covid, but they test every day and someone got tested and, they traced it, they do contact tracing, and it went back to hair and makeup. So for four days for sets closed and that’s happened a lot.
Sean
Yeah, It changes every single day. And the line continues to move, you know, it moves forward, moves backwards. I don’t have children, but I can only imagine how much more difficult it must be to manage having children who are going to school one day and not the next day. So many kids test positive, then we shut the school down. And
Terry
The kids, I have a seven year old and the kids love being at home because they can play on their devices. They don’t want to leave when they’re at school, they enjoy it. But, but my son’s in New York city public schools, and it was one day, then two days, it was three days now, next week it starts to be four days. And he’s mad because he likes to play, you know, Minecraft and stuff like that with his friends and, you know, lie on the floor when they’re having zoom school and play with our dog. But the education is not as good.
Sean
Yeah, We’re a little more strict here. My sister is a teacher in Alabama. She says they’ve been back since I think August of last year. And they’re teaching, live in school, she has two kids that go to school as well, and they’re back in class, but it’s very strange how it’s just so different everywhere. And it’s, it’s just confusing. And we read so many different headlines every day. I quoted this guy, maybe I’ll meet him someday, but there’s an actor named Telly Ayum who’s a Broadway actor. And he said, “This is like performing a mental hit on everybody.” And I thought, “Whoa, that’s absolutely true.” I mean, that’s what it feels like. And we’re all trying to get our bearings back.
Terry
But look, it’s done wonders for self-tapes and auditions, right? It’s really putting the power back in actors hands. There was self-taping before, but I don’t think too many actors are going to be going to casting directors offices anymore. You know, you’ll either have a zoom audition, or you’ll do a self-tape and it even for theater.
Sean
So many people will be used to filming their auditions now it’s, it’s, it’ll probably be a little less expensive than to cast a show, which I don’t know. There’ll be good things. And there’ll be challenges about how we emerge from this. I feel it’s just going to have to be us getting back there before we realize what worked and what worked then we’ll be working in the present. But you know, that’s just life in the time of COVID-19 ladies and gentlemen.
I have one more question for you besides giving out your social media information. But before I ask it, I just have to say the actress that was in a Company in London was Rosalie Craig. Whenever I forget a name, usually it comes to me within the show, and I wrote down. She was phenomenal and I want to give her the credit where credit is due. The whole entire cast is brilliant. How have you surprised yourself during all of this? What’s something that’s come to you where you were like, “Where did that come from out of me?”
Terry
Wow. You’ve you struck me dumb.
I think I’ve surprised myself with how much I need to spend time with my family. I was used to going to the studio. I mean, when I first opened my studio, I taught five nights a week and six days a week, because that’s what you do when you open a business. And so I wasn’t going –I was afraid my son wouldn’t know me. You know, he was two years old and he wasn’t, I mean, that’s, that’s hyperbolic, but I needed to cut down on that, but still. And so I’ve been shaving my schedule down more and more so that I can have time with my family. Cause that’s super important. And now I see them every day. Not all the time! My wife’s a therapist. And so she’s downstairs, zooming, and I’m upstairs zooming. But we have all our meals together and we spent all this time together and I don’t want that to stop.
I think that’s just how I took for granted that quality time was important. That’s what I told myself, but actually quantity isn’t bad either. Like last night I was teaching a class. My son comes in and sits on a stool behind me and is watching the work. And every day he comes home from school at 2:30 and I teach a class four days a week. At that time, he’ll come right into this room and give me a hug during class. Most of the time it happens that they’re onscreen and I’m watching them and they can see me. And that’s kind of cool for me, but also for them to see the human being who’s teaching them. So I think that’s the thing that comes to mind most is just what to value. And I also started guitar lessons during the pandemic, like just quality of life stuff. You know, I always played guitar. I love guitar, but I, I started taking classical guitar. I was a blues guitarist and fingerstyle jazz. And I had found this amazing teacher and I’m learning all this Renaissance music and we have zoom lessons every Sunday and that’s become important to me. And we got a pandemic dog, a rescue dog. And so all this stuff around home and life really got concentrated and valued. I think that’s kind of been special, very special.
Sean
That’s marvelous. And I’ve heard that many times during the season, including the interview that I had with Ray that you listened to, that you referenced earlier, that he connected so much more with his daughter and it was nice to sort of get back to that family basic. I think that’s really neat. I do. And you know, we’re fortunate that we have people in our houses that we can do that with. I mean, I don’t know how people who don’t have another person there. I don’t mean to bum everybody out. Sorry.
Terry
No it could be tragic. You could get so lonely because you miss community and connection, or you, you walked down the street and you don’t trust that stranger in the mask or not wearing the mask. And, you know, there’s so much fear and distrust and isolation.
Sean
Yeah. And it’s going to take us a while to get back to trusting and not feeling awkward when we don’t have a mask on. I agree with you on that. Please give our audience your social media information and your website information so they can follow and keep up with all the wonderful things going on with Terry Knickerbocker studio and you.
Terry
Well, thank you. Well, we have a website, uh, you got to, it’s a lot of letters, but it’s terryknickerbockerstudio.com, on Instagram at @terryknickerbockerstudio on Twitter @TKnickerbocker. And we’re on Facebook too. No Tik TOK. We have a bunch of videos on YouTube, but we don’t really stay active there. So that’s all the places you can find us
Sean
Your website is great.
Terry
Really?
Sean
Yes, it is. Yeah.
Terry
My fourth website in five years, you now just have to keep,
Sean
I know I need to take a page from you and get on my website and update it. Okay. I’m making excuses here, but I also have websites and Facebook pages and stuff for all of my different plays and musicals and stuff like it a little bit. It’s insane. It’s crazy. Um, Terry, this has been so great. I mean, I loved interviewing you. I feel like I should be paying you for a class that I’m taking from you on the basics of acting, acting styles and Meisner. You have done such a great job explaining to us all and just a very real, way of how students were struggling and teachers are struggling, but that they’re finding themselves again and that they’re getting their feet under them again. And that there will be an after. And it’s to your credit again. I know I’ve said this a couple of times it’s to your credit as a leader, I mean, be an acting teacher. Absolutely. Great. Cool, cool, cool. But leadership qualities are rare and you have them, and I think that that’s really what’s driving your tremendous success that you’re having right now and that you’ll continue to have.
Terry
Wonderful. Thank you. You know, that’s so kind, and you touched me with those kind words and you know, I stand on the shoulders of everyone in my life, starting with my parents and all the teachers I had, especially Bill Esper, and my family and, and my students, my staff, I mean, it really takes a village. And I think the best thing that I can keep doing is to stay curious and not think I have all the answers and cultivate as much humility as I can. I mean, take credit when credit is due. And I say, no, no, no, but I mean, I have achieved a lot and I’m really proud of it, but I’m also so eager to keep learning. And, you know, I go to therapy every week and I’m still trying to unpeel the onion and figure stuff out.
And I learn a lot from my son a lot–a lot in a lot for my students. And gratitude is really helpful. I want to say one more thing about acting training, because a lot of people don’t want to train, right? The biggest, hurdle we face with a potential student is “two years? Can I do it like a weekend?” There’s this really bizarre anxiety that they’re going to miss pilot season, and they don’t have time because they’re going to get older, which is so weird because that’s not how it used to be. And I’m an old fogy and I know all that, but you can’t learning the violin in a weekend. You can’t learn ballet in a weekend, but people have the idea that, “Oh, I know how to act. I just need a few tips. Just give me how to do self-tape tips,” or “I don’t need training.”
“I’ll just get a coach” and you can’t learn how to do it from a coach. And so it’s actually the people who want to do this are less and less, right? We’re sort of doing something that’s a dying art, not theater, and acting will always be there, but training is fading and it’s so sad. But so necessary to be good. If you want to do this, you have to want to be good at it. And the only way to get really good at it, for most people, is to train and train seriously. And so if you love acting, if there’s someone listening to this who literally loves to be an actor, training is an investment in your talent and the time goes by quickly, and then it’s with you the rest of your life. And I so believe that in my bones.
Sean
Yeah. And, and it’s ongoing. It’s funny. David was talking to his mother who was a very, very proud mom when he wins awards and stuff for his acting. But he said, “I can’t come back and see you this particular weekend because, (we’re from California) because I have acting class.” But an acting seminar that weekend, she’s like, “Why are you taking acting lessons? You already know how to act.” She just, you know–and I agree. I mean that you have to continuously learn all the way. There’s always new techniques. There’s always new styles. There’s always shaking off the cobwebs. And we’re so fortunate that we have teachers like you who understand that and who do say, “Hey, you know what, give yourself some time to learn and you’ll be good.”
Terry
Yeah. And you gotta be brave. You have to really peel your skin off.
Sean
Yeah. I don’t know how actors do it. I’m not a great actor, but, we’re very, very lucky that we have teachers like you, who are teaching everybody, um, uh, how to be better actors all the time and doing so with heart and, and grace.
Terry
Thank you for this conversation and for doing what you do, and for being such a lover of theater and a, and you’re doing God’s work really. And I looked at the guests you’ve had, and there are a lot of them are very obscure. Not everyone would know who they are, and you’re really making space for people to have voices. And I’m grateful to be among them and meant to be with you. So thanks.
Sean
Terry Knickerbocker. Now you’re going to make me cry. That’s true. You’ve been such an amazing guest and I just can’t tell you how much I appreciate you being on the show. You’re, as I had said earlier, I knew this would happen. And your distinct voice as an acting teacher has broadened the perspective of the “Act Two, Places” series. And I wish you many, many broken legs in your career, and teaching all of these wonderful actors. I hope they know how lucky they are. So just keep doing what you’re doing as we navigate our way towards the best future for theater. Thank you so much, Terry.
Terry
You’re welcome back at you.
Sean
Well, folks, the 11 o’clock number has been sung and the bowels have been taken. So it’s time to lower the curtain. Once again, a big thanks to great acting teacher, Terry Knickerbocker of Terry Knickerbocker studio, such an awesome guest. And I learned so much. You can find more episodes of your program is your ticket on the Broadway podcast network, who has honored me with a place on their incredible theater podcast platform. Broadway podcast network is all about creating an engaging immersive user-friendly experience, where theater stories of all kinds can be easily found, shared, and enjoyed. Please visit them on mylandingPage @bpn.fm/ YPI, Y T that’s vpn.fm/ypi, Y T Broadway podcast at work also as an app, which you can and should download your program is your ticket. It’s also on Facebook Your program is your ticket. I’m on Twitter @programticket, Instagram @yourprogramisyourticket, YouTube and your program is “YourTicket” iTunes, Stitcher player, FM podcast, addict, Podbean Pocket cast, Deezer tune-in listen notes and the UK based theater platform, FSP, FYI. I appreciate all good ratings reviews and subscriptions. Folks take a little time to visit theater websites and see what they have to offer. As we transition through and out of this pandemic, watch their content, give them all great ratings and reviews to most importantly, donate, donate, donate the fastest way you can help as always. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time. And remember the theater is for everyone.
