from the National Alliance of Acting Teachers
Welcome
Welcome to the third issue of Parodos, the peer-reviewed journal of the National Alliance of Acting Teachers!
How do we best train actors in America? For a half-century, the answer in academia has been something like this: start with a heaping base of Stanislavski, sifted through Adler or Hagen or Meisner or Strasberg; slather with Skinner or Linklater; mix in a dollop of Spolin, a pinch of Alexander, a smidge of Grotowski and/or a dash of Viewpoints; pour over Shakespeare & Chekhov, top with the flavour du jour and bake for three years. Tasty as this may sound, does it work? Often, yes. Could it be better? Sure. Is it equitable? Well…
As recent social upheavals like the #MeToo movement, Black Lives Matter and Anti-racist theory have increased calls for diversity among faculty and students and corresponding instructional changes across academia, Acting programs — whose curricula has been largely modeled on pedagogy and literature created by white men of European descent — have found themselves at ground zero of this push for equity. It’s a reckoning we can agree that’s long overdue, but what is the recipe? Equity, yes, but how do we achieve it?
And so, we ask again: How do we best train actors in America, right here, right now? How do we meet this moment? In search of answers, PARODOS’s editor, Brandt Reiter, sat down one-on-one with the heads of some of the most prestigious acting programs in the country. First up in our ongoing series is Carl Cofield, Associate Artistic Director of the Classical Theatre of Harlem and Grad Acting Chair of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Before we go, we’d like to remind you that we’re always searching for material for the next issue; please don’t hesitate to contact Parodos Editor Brandt Reiter if you feel you have something valuable to add to the conversation.
As always, we hope that in these pages you will find ideas that assist you, excite you, provoke and challenge you. We hope most of all that you will engage with them — and with us — as we continue this journey together.
Issue No. 3
Brandt Reiter, Editor
Jane McPherson, Patrick Mulryan, Copy Editors
Amy Herzberg, Hugh O’Gorman, National Alliance Co-Executive Directors
Jane McPherson, Managing Director
CARL COFIELD
Chair of Graduate Acting at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts
Interviewed by Brandt Reiter
CARL COFIELD: I grew up in Miami, Florida, and my uncle was an actor. My uncle was a contemporary of Ossie Davis & Ruby Dee. And Burt Reynolds had a theater in Jupiter, Florida, called the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theater, of all things, where you [brought] in snowbird actors who wanted to really develop their craft and still keep working when they were away from TV and film. They would come down to Jupiter and do all sorts of exciting work. My uncle was part of this company of actors, so I’d go to the theater with him and, you know, what had a profound effect it had on me — seeing what these actors and these creators could do to an audience.