Gurus: The Story of Acting from Stanislavsky to Succession

A Conversation with Estelle Parsons from Next Chapter Podcasts

We're very excited to drop a bonus episode this week from our friends at Next Chapter Podcasts, who have done so much to bring actors, and especially Shakespeare, into th

12 - Moscow Art Theatre - a Hard Birth

The tortured early days of the Moscow Art Theatre, a sprawling behemoth that would come to employ hundreds of actors, directors, designers and technical staff, tour conti

21 - Season Finale - Kahn, Yionoulis, Rosato and Lefevre in Conversation

In the Season One finale, we take a look inside one of the top training programs for actors in the country, the Drama Division at Juilliard, created in 1968 by John House

20 - The French Connection Part 2

Copeau and Bing return to Paris after the war, launch a school, and struggle to meet the high expectations of the audience they had built. Michel Saint-Denis, back from t

19 - Neal Huff in Conversation

Neal Huff has had a remarkable career including multiple Broadway and off-Broadway shows, and numerous roles in film and television. His training journey has been equally

18 - The French Connection Part 1

This episode begins the story of Jacques Copeau, his lover and collaborator, Suzanne Bing, and his nephew, Michel Saint-Denis. Around the same time that the First Studio

17 - Michael Cerveris in Conversation

At the age of 25, Michael Cerveris was playing the hot new kid from Britain in the TV series Fame. Fast forward 30 years, Cerveris is a seasoned pro with 10 Broadway cred

16 - Collision Part II

We return to the story of Michael Chekhov; his auspicious start from the early days of the Moscow Art Theatre, his exile from Russia after the revolution and the rocky ro

15 - Jessica Pimentel in Conversation

Jessica Pimentel is best known for her role as Maria Ruiz on the Netflix original series Orange Is the New Black, and won 3 Screen Actors Guild Award wins and one nominat

14 - Suler and the First Studio

The MAT was too big, too unwieldy a place for Stanislavsky to develop his burgeoning system. Instead he created a smaller space more conducive to his explorations. Enter

13 - BD Wong in Conversation

BD Wong seemed to come out of nowhere when he won multiple Best Actor awards, including a Tony, for his role in David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly in 1988. In this intervie

11 - David Patrick Kelly in Conversation

David Patrick Kelly's training journey - which he considers to be still ongoing - was of the “school of hard knocks” variety - his words. He considered going to Juilliard

10 - Breakfast at the Slavianski Bazaar

In 1897, a fateful meeting lasting 18 hours between Constantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, would give birth to the Moscow Art Theatre. The MAT would b

9 - Cherry Jones in Conversation

Cherry Jones is an American actress. Having started her career in theater as a founding member of the American Repertory Theater in 1980, she then transitioned into film

8 - Anton Chekhov’s Story

The shift in theatrical styles at the end of the 1800s was prompted by a parallel literary transformation. In fiction, figures like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky opened the doo

7 - Alan Ruck in Conversation

Alan Ruck has made over 100 appearances in films and television, and on stage. He is best known for his role as the friend of Matthew Broderick and hopeless hypochondriac

6 - Succession

When we drill down into the biographies and training histories of the cast of the hit show, "Succession," there's no uniformity of background. Some of them carry the pedi

5 - Young Kostya: To Be Young, Gifted and Rich

Stanislavsky, the early days. If you set out to raise a child who would grow to become a great actor, director, and theatrical guru, this is how you would go about it: ex

4 - Sir Herbert

What came before Stanislavsky? In the late 19th century, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree was an actor, director and theater owner in London. He was the original Henry Higgins i

3 - Alfre Woodard in Conversation

Alfre Woodard has been astonishing audiences with her humanity, her truth, her beauty, and her versatility as an actress since she first came into view in the early 1980’