Acting Studios Are Struggling. Does It Matter?
- 6 years ago
Acting Studios Are Struggling. Does It Matter?
The Atlantic Acting School moved into the Chelsea neighborhood 26 years ago, when “no one wanted to be there” and “rent was cheap,” said Ms. McCann.
Last fall, after 43 years in New York, Ms. Boyer gave up her studio space, delegated most of her teaching responsibilities to her associate artistic director,
and returned to her hometown of Toledo, Ohio, to open a theater there.
So, over the last two years, Mr. Lawson and his team have been looking for an affordable space,
but the specifics for what the school needs — at least 20,000 square feet of office and open studio space at an affordable price — have proved to be a daunting challenge.
Around the same time, the school was offered the opportunity to buy its East 4th Street building, which was located across the street from the experimental theater La MaMa, next door to New York Theater Workshop,
and included a theater space, offices, dressing rooms and a downstairs class area, for $90,000.
For much of the 20th century in New York, independent acting studios, many of them inspired by the Russian theater master Constantin Stanislavsky
and the formation of the Group Theater, trained actors who revolutionized the craft and became marquee names, like Marlon Brando and Ellen Burstyn.
This year, two other schools with long track records, the Atlantic Acting School
and the T. Schreiber Studio, have made significant compromises in order to keep a toehold in Chelsea, the Manhattan neighborhood they helped gentrify.
Successful acting programs affiliated with higher education include Playwrights Horizons, at
New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and the Actors Studio, at Pace University.
The Atlantic Acting School moved into the Chelsea neighborhood 26 years ago, when “no one wanted to be there” and “rent was cheap,” said Ms. McCann.
Last fall, after 43 years in New York, Ms. Boyer gave up her studio space, delegated most of her teaching responsibilities to her associate artistic director,
and returned to her hometown of Toledo, Ohio, to open a theater there.
So, over the last two years, Mr. Lawson and his team have been looking for an affordable space,
but the specifics for what the school needs — at least 20,000 square feet of office and open studio space at an affordable price — have proved to be a daunting challenge.
Around the same time, the school was offered the opportunity to buy its East 4th Street building, which was located across the street from the experimental theater La MaMa, next door to New York Theater Workshop,
and included a theater space, offices, dressing rooms and a downstairs class area, for $90,000.
For much of the 20th century in New York, independent acting studios, many of them inspired by the Russian theater master Constantin Stanislavsky
and the formation of the Group Theater, trained actors who revolutionized the craft and became marquee names, like Marlon Brando and Ellen Burstyn.
This year, two other schools with long track records, the Atlantic Acting School
and the T. Schreiber Studio, have made significant compromises in order to keep a toehold in Chelsea, the Manhattan neighborhood they helped gentrify.
Successful acting programs affiliated with higher education include Playwrights Horizons, at
New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and the Actors Studio, at Pace University.