Alvin Epstein, friend, mentor, collaborator, died the other day. I feel so fortunate to have had him in my creative life since I was a precocious 13-yr-old eager to learn all I could from this master actor, director and philosopher. I'm re-posting this tribute to Alvin below. And I include for your viewing pleasure an excerpt from his performance in my 2009 film, We Pedal Uphill. Alvin was the best kind of teacher. He never shied away from making clear choices and was always open and eager to put them to the test in rehearsal. I'm so grateful to my sister, Leora, for her having helped to facilitate my own last visit with him in October. I will miss him as long as I live.
Lessons from Actors: Alvin Epstein
Alvin Epstein, actor and director, has been one of my mentors. Over the 40+ years I've known him he's taught me many lessons. I'd like to briefly describe three of them here.
1. The Sign of a True Professional = More Rehearsal.
Alvin appeared in my film, We Pedal Uphill, which we rehearsed in New York but shot in various locales all across the country. It's a tapestry film, composed of thirteen short slices of life, each with a specific point of view set in a specific context chosen as a reflection of some aspect of the culture of fear that permeated the landscape in post-911 America. Alvin and Molly Powell's scene was all about the commercial railroads, their decay, graft, neglect and we shot this portion of the film in Omaha. We spent a few weeks rehearsing in New York, then our tiny crew flew to Omaha for about 4 days of shooting, most of which involved Alvin driving a Ford F-150 pickup truck with Molly in the passenger seat and Yours Truly in the backseat shooting. Although I had known Alvin for years and had even written one stage role with him in mind I had never had the pleasure of directing him in a performance. I quickly noticed something kind of wonderful about him.
Alvin could never get enough rehearsal.
At the end of our first rehearsal in my apartment in New York, he asked if we might just run one little bit again after I'd wrapped things up. Of course, we did. Then at the next rehearsal he asked whether we might schedule another session beyond what he had in the calendar. Naturally, we did. I mean, as writer-director of course I could hardly resist the allure of more rehearsal. And I can't imagine that his scene partner, some thirty years his junior could have easily brushed aside the request of the most senior and most experienced person in the room.
And when we were shooting in Omaha and one day of shooting got rained out, it was Alvin who first suggested we order pizza and run lines in Roland's hotel room.
The hunger to dig deeper. The knowledge that practice doesn't make perfect (because in art perfect is simply a non-issue) but that practice uncovers depths previously unimagined. These are important lessons he taught me as we worked on this film together. And of course, it wasn't lost on me that on a project with a cast of over 40 speaking roles, the one who had been at this the longest (he was 80 when we shot We Pedal Uphill), was the one actor who was always eager for more.
When else have I ever had an actor request more rehearsal?
Guess.
Never before or since.
2. Trust the Unnameable.
For a few months before my move to New York, I took some acting lessons from Mr. Epstein. We focused on Shakespeare soliloquies, mostly. And my most vivid memory of this was how long we spent (a month or more) working the opening speech from Richard III. Again, there would be no glossing over a phrase or word or comma. Alvin was curious to explore together how these ideas being conveyed felt in the body. How does it feel to be disfigured, to be overlooked, to hold a secret power and gift that has yet to be put to use. All these things and more were grist for the mill. But none of the work was done sitting down. It was all first and foremost to be found intuitively in the body, through the breath, through the eyes, the spine, the shoulders, the feet in their connection to the floor, and of course, through the voice. I can't explain this very well because Alvin's approach was not really analytical. It was more feeling than thinking. And yet it was thoroughly grounded in the text. I mean he did not let me get away with pretending to understand a given line, no matter how short. We needed to confirm EVERYTHING.
I still marvel at it to this day because it's one of those times when I feel I learned something so deeply that I almost can't name it. But I will say this. There are times when I am writing when I cannot possibly explain a choice that seems to have sprung through me onto the page in the form of dialogue. And yet I feel intuitively that it must remain for something it provides. Something unnameable. I guess it's the trusting of the unnameable that I'm talking about. Sometimes we just don't know why something must flow the way it does. And if we question or demand explanation or justification of it, we risk killing it.
3. Plays are Dialogue. Dialogue is Character. Characters Must be Heard. With Audience Present.
Ever since I started writing plays as a teenager, I heard them in my head. I have yet to meet a playwright who doesn't. It's just part of the process. If you write music, you hear it in your head. And dialogue is a kind of music. It exists, not on the page, but in the bodies, coming out of the mouths of the characters we create.
Alvin had been a family friend, a theatre companion and had been on stage in several shows I'd seen with my parents. Elyse Singer may recall that when at the age of 14 we decided to mount a production of Pinter's Old Times, it was Alvin who helped us with some of the songs in the text we had never before heard. He was a close family friend who generously offered to help whenever he could.
Shortly after I'd graduated college, Alvin Epstein moved to Boston to teach at the A.R.T. Institute. And we started going to concerts and shows together from time to time. When I asked him to read my latest play, he answered in a funny way. "I hate to read plays," he said. "I have no patience for it. But I'm curious to hear what you've written. Maybe you could come to my house one afternoon and I'll make us some tea and maybe you can read it to me aloud. How's that sound?"
And thus, began a wonderful kind of ritual. I think we did this 3 times at most. But each time I learned so much. Because it's one thing to "perform" one's own dialogue in one's head while alone. It's quite another thing to "perform" every line of dialogue to an audience of one. And one who just happens to have one of the keenest bullshit meters I've ever encountered in the theatre. When a line of dialogue didn't ring true as organically of that character, I felt it, he felt it, we both understood it immediately in the air between us without having to say a word about it.
Lesson learned here? There really is no substitute for hearing the play aloud. With a witness.
Here's an excerpt from Alvin's performance in my 2009 film, We Pedal Uphill. I know that he enjoyed sharing the scene with Molly Powell as much as she enjoyed playing with him.
End of play.
