HB Studio at 65 Years
The approach to acting at the Herbert Berghof (HB) Studio has always had a socialist bent, reflecting a lifelong effort by our Viennese founder to contend with the impact of the American free market system on the conduct of art. HB Studio is run on a shoestring so that class fees can stay low, because we understand that many of the actors who survive in the business for the long haul sacrifice financial security to do so. In our neighboring playhouse, the HB Playwrights Foundation Theatre, artists volunteer their time and patrons attend for free. For Herbert Berghof and Uta Hagen, who were outspoken about their progressive beliefs (Hagen was blacklisted in the 1950’s), the context within which we make theatre, and the purposes for which we make it, were as much at issue as the craft itself. When theatre becomes a product, then the market begins, inevitably, to influence its content. There is the opportunity to compete, but also pressure to conform to popular taste. This is not so much a criticism as a circumstance that must be acknowledged. Our intention at HB is to foster an experimental space in which theatrical art may be created, developed, and practiced despite financial obstacles or incentives, an atmosphere in which risk is a goal, not a liability. We welcome professionals and “amateurs” alike; any one who loves the work itself and is ready to take it seriously is welcome at HB. At sixty-five years of age we are still asking how our teaching can best serve a theatre that represents our national character at its best.
Herbert Berghof, born in Austria, was a protégé of Max Reinhardt. He began his career in Germany's subsidized state theatre system where artists found steady employment as members of a company performing in repertory. Herbert, whose mother was Jewish, came to the United States in 1939, a refugee from a Germany transformed by Hitler. His mother and father perished in a concentration camp. His approach to the art of theatre was shaped by these losses. Herbert used to tell a story about a day in 1938 after Kristallnacht – Night of Broken Glass. He was rooming with a fellow actor from the German state theater. They were walking along a street together. As they passed the broken shop windows and scrawled epithets condemning the Jews, the fellow gradually drifted away from Herbert until he had crossed over to the opposite side of the street. When Herbert returned to their shared apartment, the fellow and all his belongings were gone.
Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that Herbert would expect from his students not only technical proficiency but character; courage, a giant investment of faith, a questioning mind. He was hard on us when he felt we were showing weakness or egotism, or when we took the easy way out. We ask ourselves, as Herbert Berghof asked his students, what would art be like in this country if the creative search were never influenced in any way by the pursuit of fame, or acceptance, or financial gain – if the only purpose of that search were to reveal our common humanity to one another in all its beauty and with all its flaws? Could we get back to the impulses we knew as children, inventing make-believe games to help make sense of who we are and where we are and why we do what we do? This seems a question worth asking in an age where “messaging” and marketing have taken hold of our attention to such a degree that the means of delivery begin to overshadow the content of the communications. While we are examining the motivations of the characters we wish to portray, it makes sense to also examine, with the same humility, our own objectives and concerns. Are we seeking an answer or seeking recognition? Are we selling soap, or tickets, or are we committed to telling a story that may educate and challenge us?
Acting is one of the tools we have to examine our experience and our response to experience. We have experienced how the urge to make oneself popular or one’s work profitable can tempt us to falsify our results rather than seek a more challenging or discomfiting truth. We recognize that we tend to want our “truths” to be attractive and to show us in an admirable light. But those moments of uneasy revelation, when what is found may not be what was sought or expected, are the real gold to be panned from the stream of our experience. Ultimately, they form the most exciting aspect of any creative work we might undertake. Our task is to create a place of safety where such realizations can take place. Herbert would have been the first to say that he wanted his students to succeed, to be well compensated, to make a mark. But he also taught us the value of having an incubator space in which, again and again, we consciously shift our focus back to this art of self-examination and self-revelation, toward a deeper understanding of the human condition.
Now, nearly 20 years after Herbert’s passing and six years after the death of Uta Hagen, HB operates as an association of active theatre artists bonded by mutual respect and a practical approach to acting. We have spent long hours in conversation about the future of HB. We are learning to shape our collective voice so that it can serve us as powerfully as the voices of our founders. While many of us draw upon our founders’ approach to the craft, we do not teach a prescribed methodology. We agree that what is shown on the outside must have roots in the individual actor’s own experience and impulses, and that the conclusions we draw must have meaning for many. We agree that we must continue, in our work, to challenge the clichés that arise when we become too adept at handling dramatic material in familiar and comfortable ways. We seek form through the meticulous examination of content, on the page and in the world around us, honing our instincts and imagination so that we may be propelled into genuine action.
The actor’s work is a lifelong process that benefits from ongoing study. HB is as important a home to its faculty as it is to our students and alumni. Together we continue to test ways to raise the standards for ourselves and for our students while maintaining the open door policy that helps level the playing field for those with limited means. To our curriculum of ongoing master classes in acting technique, scene study, playwriting and directing, movement, voice, and speech, we have added a rotating menu of short-term workshops on topics of special interest. And drawing on the success of our 6-week Summer Intensive program, the new Hagen Institute at HB Studio now offers a year-long integrated program of study that offers daily immersion in the fundamentals of acting technique, movement, voice, and speech.
Technology has changed our students’ lives irrevocably. Our culture is swamped with information, but we experience so much of it on the surface, in short bursts, “multi-tasking,” “tweeting”, “friending”. We are visually, aurally, sensorally over-stimulated; this, we find, can militate against depth of experience even as it opens up wider channels for communication. With such broad access to resources and materials, we begin to believe we’ve seen it all, so we lose our ability to be surprised or swept away. We protect ourselves, naturally, by pursuing equilibrium; we can become so adept at it that we lose the vulnerability we need to drop into a role. When we do drop in, we risk getting sidetracked by our individual need for self-actualization, mistaking that for the shared seeing that gives art meaning.
There is, too, an urgency to our students’ efforts that belies the real time it takes to develop into an artist. Theatre at its best is “slow food,” but the professional marketplace loves youth and maneuvers quickly, shifting from trend to trend, drawing upon the popular attention paid to moments of success. Our students see that in order to compete, they must wade out into the media stream with whatever they have, ready or not; get a buzz going, get a foot in the door. It takes discipline and self-knowledge to balance that imperative with an authentic search for meaning. It takes effort and patience to build a technique that will sustain a talent when instinct falters.
We are fortunate to attract an eclectic, international mix of students of all ages and backgrounds. That diversity of awareness and experience brings vitality and energy to the HB venture, even as it challenges us to stay open to one another. We have opened our Studio spaces on weekends to experimental projects organized by students and faculty: performance labs, workshop productions, an improvisational comedy troupe, playwrights’ readings, solo projects, and open mic events. We debate what is the best way to provide constructive critical feedback. The HB Ensemble, a company selected by an annual audition process from the student body at large, meets regularly to share work-in-progress and presents two fully staged projects annually in the HB Playwrights Foundation Theatre. All of these initiatives serve the common purpose of fostering a sense of creative freedom, opportunity, and community in which we may challenge one another as friends and colleagues to strive toward our highest potential. The principles that Herbert Berghof and Uta Hagen laid out for us remain essential. Our capacity to hear and see and question one another, with understanding and compassion but also with rigor, brings us into the present. •2011
Written exclusively for “The Soul of the American Actor.” Printed with the permission of the author.
EDITH MEEKS Executive Director of HB Studio. Ms. Meeks studied acting with Herbert Berghof and Uta Hagen, and began teaching scene study and acting technique at HB Studio in 1987. In New York, she has acted in many productions for HB Playwrights Foundation, Circle Repertory Lab. Her regional work includes: “A Question of Mercy” (Philadelphia Theatre Co.), “Dancing at Lughnasa” (Actors Theatre of Louisville), Rosalind in “As You Like It,” “Abundance” (Best of Philly Award), “Tartuffe,” “The Stone House,” Nora in “A Doll’s House,” The Voice of the Prairie,” and Lily in “The Last Good Moment of Lily Baker” (People’s Light & Theatre Company). Her film work includes: Todd Haynes’ “Poison and Safe,” “Dadetown,” “Berenice,” “All the Ships at Sea,” and “The Snow Field.” Ms. Meeks served as Senior Officer, Information and Research, for the New York Foundation for the Arts.
