Robert Lewis (actor) - The Actors Studio

The Actors Studio

In 1947, Lewis co-founded The Actors Studio, a professional actors' workshop, with former Group members, director Elia Kazan and producer Cheryl Crawford. The Actors Studio was an attempt to recapture the close ensemble nature of the Group, and to evolve and refine the methods first explored by the Group in the 1930s.

The first year, about fifty young actors were invited to join. Lewis taught classes for advanced members with emphasis on inner action or intention, while Kazan, who preferred to work with the younger actors, held forth on technique exercises such as sensory recall, imagination and improvisation.

In the first year alone, Robert Lewis' group, meeting three times a week, consisted of Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Mildred Dunnock, Jerome Robbins, Herbert Berghof, Tom Ewell, John Forsythe, Kevin McCarthy, Karl Malden, E. G. Marshall, Patricia Neal, Beatrice Straight and David Wayne, to name a few.

Lewis eventually left The Actors Studio over differences with Kazan and Crawford involving the production of a play (later resolved) and a desire to concentrate on his burgeoning directorial career on Broadway. Indeed, 1947 saw the opening of his first big commercial Broadway hit, Alan Jay Lerner's Brigadoon.

Years sfter Lewis' departure, Lee Strasberg was asked to join the studio. Years later, Lewis differed with Mr. Strasberg over certain particulars of The Method – as did others. Despite any such differences, The Actors Studio flourished under Strasberg's leadership and he became Artistic Director several years later, a position he maintained until his death.

The Actors Studio, which is still active today, became one of the leading centers for the Stanislavski System, or Method, of dramatic training, producing some of the most influential performers in American theatre and film in the later half of the Twentieth Century.