John Strasberg | |
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| Born | John Carl Strasberg May 20, 1941 New York City, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Actor, director, acting teacher, writer |
| Years active | 1959–present |
| Parent(s) | Lee Strasberg Paula Strasberg |
| Relatives | Susan Strasberg (sister) |
| Website | johnstrasbergstudios |
John Strasberg (born May 20, 1941) is the son of Lee and Paula Strasberg of the Actors Studio, and brother of actress Susan Strasberg.
John Strasberg is an American actor, director, teacher and writer, the son of Lee Strasberg and Paula Strasberg and the brother of actress, writer Susan Strasberg.[ citation needed ]
After graduating from the Bronx High School of Science in 1958, he spent a year at the University of Wisconsin before beginning to study acting with his father. His professional career began in 1960 as an Assistant Stage Manager at the New York City Center, and shortly after, he began his acting career off-Broadway in Five Evenings. [1] He began teaching in 1964, when his father was ill. His career has remained multi-faceted throughout his life. He acted and stage managed during the three years of the existence of The Actors Studio Theater, acting in Marathon ’33, [2] and stage managing Dynamite Tonight, Marathon ’33, and Blues for Mr. Charlie, during which he became one of the youngest Production Stage Managers on Broadway, and his father's production of The Three Sisters. [3]
He taught acting at Columbia Pictures from 1966 to 1968, and acted in several television shows and films. He returned to New York to teach at his father's school Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in 1969. In 1971 he taught a workshop at the National Film Board of Canada. After returning to New York he acted in the Circle Repertory Company's production of Lanford Wilson’s The Mound Builders. [4]
He became Executive Director of The Lee Strasberg Theater Institute in 1975. After leaving the Institute in 1977 he taught privately and produced a play Slugger directed by Marshall W. Mason. In 1979 he founded John Strasberg's The Real Stage in New York City. In 1980 he began teaching and directing in Europe, primarily in France and Spain, where he directed productions of William Shakespeare, Aristophanes, Henrik Ibsen, Eugene O'Neill, Luigi Pirandello among many other writers. Several of these productions won awards. Under Founder and Producing Artistic Director Sabra Jones, he was also Co-Artistic Director of The Mirror Repertory Company, where Geraldine Page was the Artist-in-Residence. Strasberg directed The Mirror's productions of Paradise Lost [5] by Clifford Odets, Inheritors [6] by Susan Glaspell, Joan of Lorraine by Maxwell Anderson, Vivat! Vivat Regina! [7] by Robert Bolt, and Rain by John Colton.
In 1985 he began living and working in Europe. In 1996 he returned to New York upon publication of his book on acting Accidentally On Purpose: A Memoir on Life, Acting, and the Nine Natural Laws of Creativity, [8] an award-winning documentary [9] [10] of the same name was also created.
He created John Strasberg Studios, an International Center for Creative Development and Theater Research. In 2005 he created The Accidental Repertory Theater, which in 2011 produced several plays which he wrote and directed: Playing House, a modern play inspired by Ibsen's A Doll's House , and Adams' Apples, a modern play inspired by Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard . Strasberg is a life member of The Actors Studio.
Geraldine Sue Page was an American actress. With a career which spanned four decades across film, stage, and television, Page was the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards, as well as nominations for four Tony Awards.
Clifford Odets was an American playwright, screenwriter, and actor. In the mid-1930s, he was widely seen as the potential successor to Nobel Prize–winning playwright Eugene O'Neill, as O'Neill began to withdraw from Broadway's commercial pressures and increasing critical backlash. From January 1935, Odets's socially relevant dramas were extremely influential, particularly for the remainder of the Great Depression. His works inspired the next several generations of playwrights, including Arthur Miller, Paddy Chayefsky, Neil Simon, and David Mamet. After the production of his play Clash by Night in the 1941–42 season, Odets focused his energies primarily on film projects, remaining in Hollywood until mid-1948. He returned to New York for five and a half years, during which time he produced three more Broadway plays, only one of which was a success. His prominence was eventually eclipsed by Miller, Tennessee Williams, and, in the early- to mid-1950s, William Inge.
The Group Theatre was a theater collective based in New York City and formed in 1931 by Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford and Lee Strasberg. It was intended as a base for the kind of theatre they and their colleagues believed in—a forceful, naturalistic and highly disciplined artistry. They were pioneers of what would become an "American acting technique", derived from the teachings of Konstantin Stanislavski, but pushed beyond them as well. The company included actors, directors, playwrights, and producers. The name "Group" came from the idea of the actors as a pure ensemble; a reference to the company as "our group" led them to "accept the inevitable and call their company The Group Theatre."
George Hearn is an American actor and bass-baritone singer, primarily in Broadway musical theatre.
Harold Edgar Clurman was an American theatre director and drama critic. In 2003, he was named one of the most influential figures in U.S. theater by PBS. He was one of the three founders of New York City's Group Theatre (1931–1941). He directed more than 40 plays in his career and, during the 1950s, was nominated for a Tony Award as director for several productions. In addition to his directing career, he was drama critic for The New Republic (1948–1952) and The Nation (1953–1980), helping shape American theater by writing about it. Clurman wrote seven books about the theatre, including his memoir The Fervent Years: The Group Theatre and the Thirties (1961).
The Hayes Theater is a Broadway theater at 240 West 44th Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Named for actress Helen Hayes, the venue is operated by Second Stage Theater. It is the smallest Broadway theater, with 597 seats across two levels. The theater was constructed in 1912 for impresario Winthrop Ames and designed by Ingalls & Hoffman in a neo-Georgian style. The original single-level, 299-seat configuration was modified in 1920, when Herbert J. Krapp added a balcony to expand the Little Theatre. The theater has served as a legitimate playhouse, a conference hall, and a broadcasting studio throughout its history.
Lucille Lortel was an American actress, artistic director, and theatrical producer. In the course of her career Lortel produced or co-produced nearly 500 plays, five of which were nominated for Tony Awards: As Is by William M. Hoffman, Angels Fall by Lanford Wilson, Blood Knot by Athol Fugard, Mbongeni Ngema's Sarafina!, and A Walk in the Woods by Lee Blessing. She also produced Marc Blitzstein's adaptation of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera, a production which ran for seven years and according to The New York Times "caused such a sensation that it...put Off-Broadway on the map."
Robert Lewis was an American actor, director, teacher, author and founder of the influential Actors Studio in New York in 1947.
The Circle in the Square Theatre is a Broadway theater at 235 West 50th Street, within the basement of Paramount Plaza, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The current Broadway theater, completed in 1972, is the successor of an off-Broadway theater of the same name, co-founded around 1950 by a group that included Theodore Mann and José Quintero. The Broadway venue was designed by Allen Sayles; it originally contained 650 seats and uses a thrust stage that extends into the audience on three sides. The theater had 776 seats as of 2024.
The Walter Kerr Theatre, previously the Ritz Theatre, is a Broadway theater at 219 West 48th Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. The theater was designed by Herbert J. Krapp and was constructed for the Shubert brothers in 1921. The venue, renamed in 1990 after theatrical critic Walter Kerr, has 975 seats across three levels and is operated by ATG Entertainment. The facade is plainly designed and is made of patterned brick. The auditorium contains Adam-style detailing, two balconies, and murals.
The Vivian Beaumont Theater is a Broadway theater in the Lincoln Center complex at 150 West 65th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Operated by the nonprofit Lincoln Center Theater (LCT), the Beaumont is the only Broadway theater outside the Theater District near Times Square. Named after heiress and actress Vivian Beaumont Allen, the theater was one of the last structures designed by modernist architect Eero Saarinen. The theater shares a building with the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and contains two off-Broadway venues, the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater and the Claire Tow Theater.
The John Golden Theatre, formerly the Theatre Masque and Masque Theater, is a Broadway theater at 252 West 45th Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Opened in 1927, the Golden Theatre was designed by Herbert J. Krapp in a Spanish style and was built for real-estate developer Irwin S. Chanin. It has 800 seats across two levels and is operated by the Shubert Organization. Both the facade and the auditorium interior are New York City landmarks.
Marshall W. Mason is an American theater director, educator, and writer. Mason founded the Circle Repertory Company in New York City and was artistic director of the company for 18 years (1969–1987). He received an Obie Award for Sustained Achievement in 1983. In 2016, he received the Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theater.
Jon Robin Baitz is an American playwright, screenwriter and television producer. He is a two time Pulitzer Prize finalist, as well as a Guggenheim, American Academy of Arts and Letters, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellow.
Julia Dorn Heflin was an American journalist, theatre producer and teacher. Throughout her long and varied career, Heflin taught drama with Lee Strasberg, worked on Broadway, staged a production of Clifford Odets's Waiting for Lefty on the streets of Moscow, and led the drama department at Mount Vernon College in Washington, D.C. for 22 years.
John Douglas Thompson is an English-American actor. He is a Tony Award nominee and the recipient of two Drama Desk Awards, three Obie Awards, an Outer Critics Circle Award, and a Lucille Lortel Award.
Amy Herzog is an American playwright. She is known for her poignant and character-driven plays that explore themes of family dynamics, personal relationships, and the complexities of human experience. She has received a Drama Desk Award as well as a nomination for a Tony Award.
The Big Knife is an American play by Clifford Odets. The original production was directed by Lee Strasberg, who had worked with Odets at the Group Theatre, and starring fellow Group Theatre alumnus John Garfield. The play debuted at Broadway's National Theatre on 24 February 1949 before closing on May 28 after 109 performances. The Big Knife marked the return of Odets to Broadway after a six-year hiatus in which he toiled in Hollywood as a screenwriter and motion picture director. The play concerns the disillusionment of a movie star with the Hollywood's studio system and disgust with himself, as he has lost his idealism in the pursuit of success.
The Mirror Theater was founded by Sabra Jones in 1983, who was also the Founding Artistic Director. The first program of the theater was the Mirror Repertory Company (MRC). Founding members of the company included Eva Le Gallienne, John Strasberg, and Geraldine Page. Sabra Jones reached out to Ellis Rabb, artistic director of the APA Phoenix Repertory Company, John Houseman of the Mercury Theater, and Eva Le Gallienne of the Civic Repertory Theatre Company. The company was intended to be "an alternating repertory company in the classic sense" of actor-manager leadership, which Rabb, Houseman, and La Gallienne pioneered. Alternating repertory refers to when one company performs a variety of plays in the same season with the same actors, which was formerly a mainstay of theater tradition. This system has been attributed with helping actors grow in their craft through a wide variety of roles. MRC was funded in its inception primarily by philanthropist Laurance S. Rockefeller, with additional donations from philanthropists and actors such as Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, and others.
Sabra Jones is an American actress, director, writer, and producer known for her expansive collection of artistic work and for founding The Mirror Theater Ltd. She has produced over 172 theatrical productions in New York City, London, and around the country, including the 1982 Broadway production of Alice in Wonderland. Jones has acted on Broadway, at the Metropolitan Opera, in numerous regional productions, and in select television and film roles. She currently lives between Manhattan and Vermont, working as the Founding & Producing Artistic Director for The Mirror Theater Ltd and for The Mirror’s Vermont chapter, the Greensboro Arts Alliance and Residency.
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