It Arrives JEFF COREY; EMILY COREY
Improvising Out Loud,
05/2017
Book Chapter
In June 1951 a federal marshal delivered the long-dreaded subpoena to my home. He was an amiable fellow who simply had a job to do. I was trying to come up with an idea for a radio show when the ...doorbell rang. As he handed me the envelope, which had “Personal and Confidential” written by hand on it, I told him, “Boy, this is very sad.” He was sympathetic and not at all happy about what he had just done. After he left, I opened it. In a childish impulse, I spat on my subpoena to show my contempt of
In 1955 I was invited to speak about acting styles at a weekend conference of the California Educational Theatre Association high up in the mountains of Idyllwild, California. The association gave me ...a ridiculous topic—style in the theater. I had been teaching for only a few years, but every instinct I had concluded there was no such thing as a theater style, and I stood up and said as much in front of hundreds of very distinguished acting teachers.
As a young actor in New York, I worked with a range of teachers and directors who defined themselves as
The Past as Prologue JEFF COREY; EMILY COREY
Improvising Out Loud,
05/2017
Book Chapter
Antonio, Prospero’s usurping brother in Shakespeare’sThe Tempest,sincerely repents his evil past, and when his moral sensibilities are restored he says to his comrades, “The past is prologue.” All ...through the writing of this modest chronicle, Antonio’s cryptic phrase kept coming to mind. To me it suggests that there are periods of time that are terminated but not necessarily concluded. They are not marked with finality. The past hangs in and maintains itself as new ventures transpire.
Our past is, indeed, prologue. The future doesn’t filter out what I choose to remember. The point, of course, is to let
Pathos-Logic JEFF COREY; EMILY COREY
Improvising Out Loud,
05/2017
Book Chapter
A good actor in the course of a career is bound to portray all sorts of pathological personalities. It is profitable for the actor to research the bizarre spectrum of misfits, perverts, emotionally ...impaired souls, recluses, and frantic folks who, fearing their ability to be spontaneous, indulge in what freud called “a flight into reality.”
The actor, however, is at a disadvantage. He knows the outcome of the play and is painfully aware of the consequences of his character’s actions. regardless, during the course of his performance he has to be in a mode of constant discovery. He has to
Whatever evolutionary process brought speech to humans brought in its wake a need to go beyond words as reflections of literal things and facts. Aristotle in hisPoeticsaffirmed that “the greatest ...thing by far is to be master of metaphor. It is the one thingthat cannot be learned from others;and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies the intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.”
This need to intricately state that one thing is similar to another is universal and prevails in all languages and all cultures. It is insufficient to declare
Maelstrom JEFF COREY; EMILY COREY
Improvising Out Loud,
05/2017
Book Chapter
My years of teaching acting are an honorable footnote to the catastrophic Hollywood blacklist. It began in 1947, when the House sub-Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), chaired by Congressman ...J. parnell Thomas of New Jersey, subpoenaed nineteen of the most successful Hollywood writers and directors on the suspicion that they were trying to infiltrate Hollywood with communist principles. The first ten witnesses (Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalton Trumbo) vigorously challenged the committee’s right to probe into their personal, social, and political beliefs and,
Be Yourself JEFF COREY; EMILY COREY
Improvising Out Loud,
05/2017
Book Chapter
In all my years as a teacher, I have stressed the importance of an actor bringing as much of himself to a role as possible—even if he has never experienced what his character is going through. In ...Patrick McGilligan’s insightful book,Jack’s Life,Jack Nicholson eloquently describes what he learned in my class in the following manner: “you have at least seventy-five percent in common with any character you’ll ever play, if it’s Hitler or Peter Pan. What you have to find is that twenty-five to five percent difference, and that’s what you have to act. The other part
Battalions of Trouble JEFF COREY; EMILY COREY
Improvising Out Loud,
05/2017
Book Chapter
My backyard studio on Cheremoya Avenue accommodated a class of twenty students. The backside of the studio was the third wall of a handball court that also served as my children’s basketball court. ...Our backyard was quite large and contained a massive carob tree that grew an abundance of edible pods. Two avocado trees stood at attention at one end of the yard, while a wild plum tree and a pomegranate tree brought up the rear. It was a cozy, welcoming environment, and many of my students began arriving early to get their weekly basketball and handball workouts in before
