BBC Radio 4 Extra

What's So Great About ...?

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Lenny Henry explores the iconic status of people or things held dear by many

Series in which Lenny Henry explores the iconic status of people or things held dear by many

What's So Great About ...?: Series 1

What's So Great About ...?: Series 1: Episode 2: Method Acting

Series 1

Episode 2

Episode 2: Method Acting

Method Acting

BBC Radio 4 Extra - What's So Great About ...?, Series 1, Method Acting

Can Lenny Henry be convinced to go Method?

4 Extra Debut. Will Lenny Henry follow in the footsteps of Robert De Niro? Can he be convinced to go Method? With Ellen Burstyn.

In the second of three programmes in which Lenny Henry challenges the iconic status of things we often take as read, Lenny Henry goes to New York to question the mystique that surrounds the 'Method' school of acting.

In New York, on still only part-gentrified West 44th Street, stands an old converted redbrick chapel. Just a small plaque indicates that this is the inner sanctum, the private home of The Method. It's the legendary Actors' Studio, the space created in 1947 by Lee Strasberg and others to provide a safe place for some of the world's greatest actors - often the biggest Hollywood stars of their generation - to come and practise their art. Here came Marlon Brando, James Dean, Dustin Hoffman, Lee J Cobb, Jane Fonda, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Rod Steiger, Cissy Spacek, Robert de Niro, Shelley Winters and dozens of others and here they listened and rehearsed and criticised and supported their fellow actors and directors. They were all devotees of The Method, a training discipline evolved by Strasberg from the teachings of the great Russian actor and teacher Stanislavski. For many, though, The Method has come to signify 'mumbling and scratching', a sort of slightly inarticulate style of performance that in seeking to be internalised and 'real' ends up just being dull. British actors reputedly despised it and Laurence Olivier is famously said to have told Dustin Hoffman to stop trying to find an interior motivation in his character 'and just ACT, dear boy!' 

Seeking enlightenment from stars like Ellen Burstyn and experts and aficionados, Lenny tests his reservations about The Method and finds that when he actually has a go it's not quite so unconvincing as he at first thought... 

PRODUCER: SIMON ELMES 

(repeat).

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Episode 2: Method Acting

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