Introducing – The Legacy Project
The Legacy Project is essential to enlarging the mission of the National Alliance of Acting Teachers – to cultivate, support and inspire leaders in the field of actor training – by providing a rich and robust trove of wisdom from legendary teachers in the field.
The project’s mission is to elevate standards of training and enable a deeper understanding for the art of teaching acting via recorded reflections from legendary teachers on their own work in their own words. We believe exposure to these mentors will provide actors and other teaching artists alike with unique and unparalleled in-depth explorations about what constitutes effective and inspired instruction. These multiple perspectives will broaden the viewer’s landscape of technique, help develop their diagnostic eye, hone their ability to teach to individual students, while learning to cultivate an instructional atmosphere tailored to imaginative and creative risk-taking. Training methodologies will include but not be limited to: the Stanislavski System, Michael Chekhov, Grotowski, Clown, Games, Improvisation, Physical approaches to training, Voice, and the Pedagogy of Scene Study. The result will be a one-of-a-kind instructionally humanistic series that nurtures the highest artistic and pedagogical standards while offering viewers the opportunity to refine their craft as teaching artists, elevate their practice, and reconnect with their passion for the craft of acting and teaching acting.
For access to the entire interviews, please contact Managing Director, Jane McPherson at jmcpherson@actingteachers.org
The Legacy Project and Digital Theatre Plus
The National Alliance of Acting Teachers is proud to announce that we have partnered with Digital Theatre+ and our first installment of the Series: Legendary Acting Teachers on Acting and Actor Training is now available on DT+!
Included in the series:
Insights Into Acting
Teaching Actors: The Process
The Actor’s Profession
This series includes excerpts from The Legacy Project, interviews conducted by the Alliance in 2021 with esteemed acting teachers Stephen McKinley Henderson, Joanna Merlin and Ron Van Lieu. These highly renowned actor trainers share their experiences and the knowledge gained over many years of coaching actors and working in the theatre and film industries. We dedicate this inaugural series to the beloved Joanna Merlin who passed away on October 15, 2023. She was an inspiration to all who had the privilege of being in her sphere.
Meet Your Teachers:
Interview Preview:
Watch this video for a glimpse into the insightful conversations you’ll discover in these interviews.
To access an interview in full, please contact the Alliance.
Watch the Compilations on Digital Theatre+
With a broad range of productions from world-leading theatre companies and thousands of resources from key practitioners and scholars, Digital Theatre+ is a powerful tool to inspire your students and enrich your Drama, Theatre and Performance courses.
Give your students access to exciting works from the likes of BroadwayHD, DV8, Gecko, Reckless Sleepers, Complicité, Frantic Assembly, the Stratford Festival, the Royal Shakespeare Company and many more. Plus, enhance your students’ studies with insightful essays and documentaries, innovative e-learning videos, engaging workshops and other resources on key theatre topics, styles, genres and practitioners.
Stephen McKinley Henderson’s eight Broadway plays include two Tony winners for Best Revival; A Raisin in the Sun and Fences. Both productions were directed by Kenny Leon and starred Denzel Washington. Stephen received a Tony nomination for Best Featured Actor and a Richard Seff Award as Bono in Fences. His second Tony Nomination was for Best Leading Actor as Pops in Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Pulitzer Prize winning drama, Between Riverside and Crazy. Other personal Broadway favorites are Torvald in the replacement cast of A Doll’s House Part 2 led by Julie White; Slow Drag in the first revival of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom with Charles S. Dutton and Whoopi Goldberg; and Van Helsing in Dracula, The Musical with an outstanding ensemble directed by Des McAnuff.
Off-Broadway as Pops in Mr. Guirgis’ play Stephen received an Obie and Lucille Lortel Award for outstanding lead actor. Other Off-Broadway roles include Pontius Pilate in the LAByrinth Theatre Company’s The Last Days of Judas Iscariot and Turnbo in August Wilson’s Jitney which transferred to the National Theatre of Great Britain earning Mr. Wilson the Olivier Award. Henderson has also been part of several productions at Kennedy Center, most notably as a member of the acting company for the historic 20th Century Cycle Readings. In the fall of 2013 Stephen served as Ruben Santiago Hudson’s associate artistic director for audio recordings of Wilson’s Cycle which were live streamed throughout the cyber world from WNYC/NPR’s Greene Space.
In Yale Repertory’s production of Death of a Salesman, Stephen played Charley to Charles S. Dutton’s Willy Loman. Early career regional roles for various companies include Azdak in Caucasian Chalk Circle, Bynum in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Creon in Antigone, Falstaff in Merry Wives of Windsor, Sizwe in Sizwe Bansi is Dead, Sitting Bull in Indians, Solyony in Three Sisters, and Winston in the Irish premiere of Athol Fugard’s, The Island for the Dublin Theater Festival.
In fall of 2016 Stephen was the Denzel Washington Endowed Chair at Fordham University. He is a Fox Foundation Fellow, a Master Teacher for The Lunt-Fontanne Ten Chimneys Fellowship Program, and Distinguished Alumnus of Purdue University Graduate School (MA) College of Liberal Arts.
Stephen delivered The Juilliard School’s commencement address and was conferred Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, May 19, 2017. He received the University of North Carolina School of the Arts’ Honorary Doctorate when he delivered their combined 2020/2021 commencement address. During his 30 years as faculty for the Department of Theatre and Dance, State University of New York at Buffalo, Mr. Henderson served periods as Head of Performance and Department Chair. He retired as Professor emeritus in 2016.
Stephen’s work appears in six Oscar nominated films: Denis Villeneuve’s, DUNE; Denzel Washington’s, Fences (for which Stephen received a Virtuoso Award from the Santa Barbara International Film Festival); Greta Gerwig’s, Lady Bird; Steven Spielberg’s, LINCOLN; Kenneth Lonergan’s, Manchester by the Sea; and Stephen Daldry’s, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Noteworthy television work includes Halle Berry’s directorial debut, BRUISED for Netflix; the FX/HULU series, DEVS; WU TANG: An American Saga; and NEWSROOM for HBO. He may be seen this year or next in DUNE, Part 2; Ari Aster’s, Beau is Afraid; Lila Neugebauer’s, Causeway; and Alex Garland’s, CIVIL WAR.
Michael Feingold of the Village Voice wrote in his eloquent obituary for playwright August Wilson, :
“To think of the great characters and scenes in August’s plays is to think of an epic parade of great African American actors who have seized their moment to make theater history: James Earl Jones and Mary Alice in Fences, Charles S. Dutton in Ma Rainey and The Piano Lesson, S. Epatha Merkerson confronting him in the latter, Roscoe Lee Browne sagely ironic in Two Trains Running, Stephen McKinley Henderson oozing malice in Jitney, Ruben Santiago-Hudson and Lisa Gay Hamilton glaring a skyful of weaponry at each other in Gem of the Ocean.”
In 2023 the Off Broadway League honored Stephen with the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award. That same year the Drama Desk presented him with the Harold Prince Award, “recognizing an individual’s lifetime of outstanding contributions to the theatre.”
Joanna Merlin (1931-1923) was an actor, teacher and former casting director, and the last living student of Michael Chekhov. She was a faculty member at New York University’s Graduate Acting program at the Tisch School of the Arts and served as President of MICHA, the Michael Chekhov Association, since its founding in 1999.
As a Casting Director, she was the recipient of two Casting Society of America Artios Awards for casting Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor and Sondheim’s Into the Woods. As Harold Prince’s casting director, she cast the original Broadway productions of Sondheim’s Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd, and Merrily We Roll Along, as well as Evita, Candide, and On the Twentieth Century, among others.
As an actor, her several Broadway credits include Becket opposite Laurence Olivier, A Far Country with Kim Stanley, and Fiddler on the Roof in which she created the role of Tzeitel, Tevye’s eldest daughter. Films include Sarah’s Key, The Wackness, Invasion, City of Angels, Class Action, Mystic Pizza, Fame, The Killing Fields, The Ten Commandments and recently, Active Adults on Amazon. She has appeared on The Good Wife, Homeland and had a recurring role on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as Judge Petrovsky for 11 seasons.
Joanna was a co-founder of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts (formerly the Non-Traditional Casting Project) and was a member of the Tony Awards Nominating Committee. Her book, Auditioning: An Actor-Friendly Guide, was published by Vintage in May, 2001, is still in print. The Spanish translation was released in 2016 in Madrid.
From the Alliance Executive Committee,
Our Executive Committee joins the national chorus of grief in mourning the passing of Alliance colleague, mentor, master teacher and friend, Joanna Merlin. Since the Alliance’s inception Joanna was an integral part of our community. A celebrated and revered pedagogue in the Teacher Development Program she not only taught the work of Michael Chekhov, she lived it, with ease, form, wholeness and beauty in all she did. Her grace, kindness, patience and open-hearted nature have been a model of excellence in our field for generations of actors and acting teachers alike. So essential was her role in our association that she is one of three inaugural interviewees for the Alliance’s Legacy Project. Over the years Alliance members gathered time and time again at our annual conferences to hear her speak and answer questions on her approach to actor training and specifically her experiences with Michael Chekhov himself. In an epic career spanning 70 years as an actor, casting director and teacher Joanna’s professional and personal impact on our field is immeasurable.
Ron Van Lieu was the Master Teacher of Acting and eventually Chair of the NYU Graduate Acting Program where he taught from 1975 to 2004. In 2004 he was appointed the Lloyd Richards Professor of Acting and Chair of the Acting Program at the Yale School of Drama where he taught until 2017. He now serves as a Professor of Professional Practice on the faculty of Columbia University.
Ron trained at New York University Tisch School of the Arts. His acting credits include major regional theaters, leading roles off-Broadway, New York Shakespeare Festival, The Public Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, and a member of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s acting company. His directing credits include productions at Playwrights Horizons, The Public Theater, Syracuse Stage, the Greer Garson Theater in Santa Fe, and over 50 productions at the NYU Graduate Acting Program
In 1993 he was awarded the New York University Distinguished Teaching Medal, the university’s highest award given in recognition of outstanding achievement in classroom teaching.
In addition to his university work, Ron is a founding faculty member of both The Shakespeare Lab at the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater where he headed the actor training for 10 years, as well as The Actors Center in New York where he continues to teach both professional actors as well as teachers of acting. Students who have trained with Ron over the past 43 years have won every major award in the field of theater and acting including the Pulitzer Prize, the Academy Award, Tonys, Drama Desk Awards, Golden Globes, Emmys, Obies, etc. Ron serves on the Advisory Council of the National Alliance of Acting Teachers.
