This Was Our Friend!

From Peter Kass's New York Times obituary:

Mr. Kass’s main notoriety was as a fervid and prolific preparer of actors. As a teacher at Boston University in the 1950s, at New York University in the 1960s and 1970s, as a private instructor and in tandem with the vocal coach Kristin Linklater, now the chairwoman of Columbia University's graduate theater program, he became known for his belief that the actor was always bigger and more important than the character he played.

He was “a holy madman of the theater,” Ms. Linklater once said, “whose whole point was that there is no limit to what the actor can do.”

As a classroom provocateur, Mr. Kass would rail at, deride and even physically engage with his students. He imbued hundreds of actors — including Olympia Dukakis, Faye Dunaway, John Cazale, Maureen Stapleton, and, more recently, Val Kilmer — with the sense that they need to be psychologically astute, emotionally courageous, brutally honest and self-examining even to the point of self-immolating.

“He was brilliant in the way he saw human behavior,” said J. Michael Miller, president of the Actors Center, a nonprofit educational and support organization for actors, who was a co-founder of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University in 1966. He believed, Mr. Miller said, that the student should make the work “absolutely spontaneous and absolutely personal.” He emphasized “that if you’re going to take ownership of a character, you have to give yourself to it totally,” without being “confined by what might seem appropriate or civilized.” [...]

“He never even raised his voice to his children,” [his son] Robbie Kass said. [Nor to his friends.]  “If he raised his voice to his students, it was out of passion, to get a performance.”

Comments

[Ron]

Wow, Amba, that is one awesome obit! Simply amazing! "A holy madman of the theater!" That phrase alone will stick with me...

[RW Rogers]

I'm with Ron. Thanks for sharing that, amba.