Student Blog: Starting Stella Adler

Hello everyone, and welcome to my first blog post! My name is Charlie Perkins (they/them) and I am going into my junior year as a theatre arts major, with a concentration in musical theatre, at Long Island University Post Campus. This summer, however, I am a student in group A of the Stella Adler Summer Conservatory program. This post is going to be a little introduction into my first two weeks there.

The first class I am taking is scene study. Now, I love a good scene study class, and this one is no exception. We have done some work in this class on actions and tactics, which I felt well equipt for due to my training at LIU Post. I was just given a scene from “Proof” by David Auburn, in which I will be playing Catherine. I first read “Proof” a few years ago, with it being one of the first plays I ever read. I highly recommend checking it out because the writing style is wonderful and the plot is very intriguing. 

My second class is technique. So far, we have done a lot of exercises about what words mean to us. We brought in our personal definitions of the words “love” and “war,” and had discussions about their connotations. We also brought in words to describe our favorite colors, then did movements to see how those words felt in our bodies while our classmates tried to guess what words we had chosen.

My third class is practicum. This one is less of a class and more of a time where we get to check in with the head of the program, so he can see how we’re doing. Our group is joined by group B for this section, so we get to see what people outside of our cohort are working on.

Shakespeare is my fourth class, which begins the next day. We took a few days to investigate iambic pentameter, and then we brought in three monologues to choose from. I decided on one of Phebe’s monologues from “As You Like It.” I’ve never read this Shakespeare play, so I’m excited to dive into it. 

My fifth class is ensemble. This one is probably my favorite class. It’s two hours of trust building. Some of that is learning to trust the others in our group, or our ensemble as the name would suggest. However, some of this class is about trusting yourself. We do exercises where we stand in front of the class and just exist, or do something that scares us. This may sound scary, and at first, it was, but the more I did it, the more comfortable I got in front of others and within myself.

Starting off my Wednesday is a three-hour-long TV and Film acting class. I don’t get a lot of this at LIU Post, so I was excited to try it. Three hours may sound like a long time, but it really does fly by. We were given sides to cold read on the first day, and then we brought them back the next week after feedback to see how we’d improved. Honestly, I thought I was going to be terrible at this, but I’ve already learned a lot and am improving by leaps and bounds.

After another scene study class, I have voice and speech. I just took a full year of voice and speech at LIU Post, so I was a little worried that this would be a lot of repeat information. However, my teacher has a different approach to voice and speech at Stella Adler, so it’s been quite interesting. There is still a lot of breathing and we haven’t actually gotten to make sound yet, but as I learned in my first voice and speech class last fall, the prep work with my breath is crucial.

My last class on Wednesday is dance. I do not consider myself a dancer by any means, so I was really nervous for this class. Plus, I have asthma and have just been diagnosed with tendinitis in my knee, so the cards were really stacked against me. However, I talked to the professor, and he has been the most accommodating dance teacher I’ve ever had. I have had professors in the past that have had issues with my disabilities, but it was no problem in this class. I did what I was medically able to and that was that. I have never felt more seen by a dance teacher. We’re doing a lot of ballet technique to start off, and next week we’re starting floor work, so I’m very excited to continue pushing myself in a safe and healthy manner.

My last class that I haven’t talked about is movement, which is different from dance. So far we’ve been doing a lot of work about respect and consent around even the smallest touches, which is super important to me. This class has my favorite professor, who is an energetic and enthusiastic person.

So far, I haven’t found a class or a professor at Stella Adler whom I’ve disliked. Thank you for coming on this little journey with me, and I look forward to sharing more in the coming few weeks. I’m sending out lots of well wishes that your summer has started off well.