[Theater
is ephemeral, and many theater workers leave little behind, except perhaps in
the memories of those who associated with them. On the web it’s sometimes easier to find
information even about obscure figures, but I could find almost nothing about
my acting teacher, Elizabeth Dillon, who died a few decades ago. Then, to my delight, I found the article
below, which gives a vivid impression of that quirky teacher who for me was an
absolute lifesaver in the area of acting. I have used what I learned
practically every day since I had her class, and I will always be grateful to
her. Besides, she was fun. Meet
Elizabeth! —Kirk Woodward
[Alan
Geller’s profile of esteemed acting teacher Elizabeth Dillon was originally published
on 10 February 2016 on LinkedIn, the business and
employment-oriented online service.]
You are a character actor
trapped in the body of an ingénue. You won’t be ready to work in this business
for thirty years.
With those words, my acting teacher, Elizabeth Dillon, whom
I adored, dropped the curtain on my dream. It was an ordinary Tuesday night in
the windowless basement room that we called rehearsal space in HB Studio on
Bank Street in Manhattan’s West Village. It was March 1980, I’d been acting for
seven years, and I had just turned twenty-two.
Then she turned to the whole class and said, “If there is
anything else in the world that you are interested in, please do it. To be an
actor, you must be obsessed. You mustn’t be able to think of anything else. It
is too hard to do if you aren’t completely focused. Totally, completely
focused.” - Alice Melott, Everything in its own time
This is a portrait of my mentor that I've wanted to write
for some time. I only hope that I do the late great Elizabeth Dillon justice in
this caricature of an unforgettable teacher and artist.
To get a sense of who Elizabeth Dillon was you'd need to
start with someone that was a poster child for the cause of chain-smoking
Marlboro cigarettes lit from a cheap plastic Bic lighter. Combine that with a
woman that strongly resembled the particular stand-in photo of Annie Lennox
wearing sunglasses above. While born in Long Island, New York, Elizabeth spoke
with a clipped British accent and carried herself with the regal demeanor of
television and film star Diana Rigg in the role of a judge, or hosting an
episode of Mystery, a British television show. (See video above).
Elizabeth had quite a bit more edge though - she could be extremely formidable
at times.
Elizabeth ruled the basement studio (the school's best
classroom in my opinion) of New York City's HB Studio's main building in
Greenwich Village like royalty. She taught beginner, intermediate and advanced
acting scene study and technique classes five times per week and was a
contemporary of Herbert Berghof's (The HB of HB Studios). I saw Herbert in a
dated play set well over a century ago called Easter, by Augustus
Strindberg and it was simply the greatest onstage performance that I'd ever
witnessed.
As Elizabeth would say, “When you play a character, it
demands no more than what's required in real life - but no less either.”
Herbert brought such a remarkable, full, physical and psychological life
(including a scene-stealing cough that his character, a landlord had that you'd
swear was real) onstage that he made the other actors that he shared the stage
with look like stiff, wooden marionettes that could talk. It was like watching
a creature from another, more intellectually advanced planet communicating with
a lower level of humanity.
Inspired, I made a decision on the spot to become a
professional actor and to study acting at HB Studio.
Elizabeth came recommended by my friend and a former student
of hers because unlike Berghof and his wife Uta Hagen who taught working actors
and accepted students through a grueling audition process, she accepted
beginners like me and taught “the craft” of acting.
The students, some of whom looked like severe outcasts from
music videos, others who were full-time students at the school and others that
were corporate types that wanted to try their hand at acting sat in the back “audience
section” of the cool, dark basement studio facing a curtain three quarters of
the way across the room that had numerous pieces of furniture and props behind
it that were used for our scene work.
Elizabeth sat in the middle of the studio off to the far
right behind a wooden teacher's desk that allowed her to address the seated
students as well as the scene work up front from an equal vantage point. Prior
to her arrival, the desk was “arranged” by an assistant like a Broadway stage
set with a cheap gold ashtray, a pack of Marlboro cigarettes, a back-up book of
matches in case her Bic lighter didn't work, a yellow legal pad and an ice-cold
can of Coca-Cola. When Elizabeth arrived, she'd typically place some books and
plays on the desk that she'd refer to intently while smoking.
As you can already tell, Elizabeth wasn't everyone's cup of
tea. Most acting teachers at HB Studios asked you to pair up with another
student and they'd have you go off during the week and rehearse an acting scene
that you'd agree on (sometimes without the teacher's involvement) and expect
you to come in, perform in front of the class and patiently wait for the
teacher's comments and criticism.
Not so with Elizabeth. She provided her students with her
home phone number and when you needed a scene assignment, you were expected to
call her Sunday evenings between 6 PM and 8 PM for both scene
and scene partner assignments (unless you were doing a monologue). During those
calls she'd call you ”Dahling,” talk up your partner: ”Oh,
she's wonderful, Dahling,” and give you some tidbits about the play,
the specific scene and the characters that you were assigned.
Here's how things worked in the class: Once Elizabeth
arrived and settled in, she'd announce the names of the students that she
wanted to perform in front of the class along with the name of the play that
they were doing a scene from. The chosen students got up and set the stage area
and while doing so Elizabeth would light a cigarette with her cheap Bic
lighter, open up her copy of the scene that was about to be presented and we'd
sit in silence as she intently studied the scene (as if in a trance) while
puffing away, scribbling notes onto the legal pad and nodding her head as if to
silently say: “Got it. Um Hmm. Yes; or shaking it from side to side to say No.”
After about five minutes of this she'd straighten up, look directly at the
class and go into an intro monologue that very much resembled what you see in
the Diana Rigg Mystery video above. Then she'd say: “Alan and Susan; take
all the time you need. . . And whenever
YOU'RE ready.”
If there was one quote that I'd attribute to Elizabeth
Dillon, that was it:
“Take All The Time You
Need. . . And Whenever YOU’RE Ready.”
As the actors performed their scenes there'd be more furious
head nodding and shaking while Elizabeth appeared to internalize the action
while furiously scribbling down notes on her yellow legal pad. To see this was
to observe active listening at its finest.
After you completed your scene you could either stand in the
stage area in the middle of your set and converse with her or sit down in one
of the two chairs set up across her desk and face her interrogation head on.
All of this was done right in front of the entire class which could see and
hear everything.
If a particular scene were poor Elizabeth would ask: “Did
you rehearse Dahlings?” If the actors said yes, she'd ask “How often?” “Once,”
was the typical reply. “It shows babies. It shows.”
“Conflict fuels the scene,” she'd say. “It's your friend.”
She'd tell us to break each scene down to “beats” or
bite-sized chunks based on a character's motivation.
I learned more about discipline from this particular acting
teacher than from practically anyone else that I had come across up until that
time. Much of what I learned from Elizabeth about focus, taking pride in one's
work, gaining a rock solid understanding of your subject matter, cutting
through B.S. has carried over into my current profession of the recruitment and
placement of corporate professionals.
I spent years studying on and off with Elizabeth,
slowly progressing to her intermediate and eventually advanced “Invitation Only”
Friday evening class designed for working actors. One year my classmates put on
an Academy Awards type show for the students and I won a “Dilly Award” named in
Elizabeth's honor for a realistic monologue that I did. Another year she
selected me to be her assistant in exchange for a free class and it became my
job to neatly arrange her desk with the Marlboro cigarettes, gold ashtray and
Coca-Cola which were constants in her life.
Eventually I had observed Elizabeth's entire catalog of
scenes and knew what she was going to say before she said it.
I recall one day when she arrived late, when I took her seat
behind her desk and did an Elizabeth Dillon impression for the class that had
everyone in stitches. She stepped in while I was in the middle of my
impersonation and laughed along with everyone else. Around that time I knew
that I needed to move on both to doing professional work as well as to another
teacher (which is a story for another post).
Years later my university's speech and debate club invited
me to represent them as a judge at a High School debate competition for
non-debate categories such as poetry reading and “Oral Interpretation of Drama
and Prose.” In the final round I was one of three university-age judges in the
room (think of Simon Cowell's role on X Factor) and I decided to channel
Elizabeth. How? I looked at the contestants before they started and told them
to:
“Take all the time you
need. . . And whenever YOU'RE ready.”
[Geller is a sales and leasing consultant at Princeton
Audi Volkswagen, His LinkedIn profile
of his acting teacher was followed by a slew of comments from other former
students of Elizabeth Dillon. I’ve
cherry-picked some of the responses to post as an afterword to Geller’s memoir.
[Before I post them, however, let me pass on Kirk’s
final remark about having been an Elizabeth Dillon student:
I always wanted to take Elizabeth’s class
again, to see if I’d gotten any better at acting, but I never did. I wrote her a few times, though, and always
got a letter back. Her last one to me
was signed, “Elizabeth the Mad.” She
knew I’d understand.
[And now, those other comments. ~Rick
Neal King, LCSW, CHT
Strength-Based
Motivational Psychotherapist; Developer of Thought Management Programs;
Clinical Hypnotherapist; Author
I also recall
Elizabeth Dillon in the early 90’s. I was in that basement class. I even got to
be one of her pet note-takers on the first day of class as well as drive her home
many nights after class. As she had me write the student names down and she
chatted with each for a few minutes she would whisper several descriptive words
that I would jot next to their names.
This was her way to recall a bit about each person and assign
scenes. Some of the whispers included, “bovine”,
“tall”, etc. We loved her. A classmate and I formed a theater group with
other classmates and Elizabeth came to all our shows. If anyone remembers me in their class -
please say hello!
Joseph Dobrian
Owner, Dobrian,
Frances, Bowie, & Long
I also studied
with her in the early 90s. She was drinking regular Sprite then. She was very
good with beginners, in that she would train out of you the mistakes that all
baby actors make (“indicating,” for example). What I didn’t like about her was,
first, she insisted that there was only one way to play any scene: her way. If
you played it just the way she would have played it, fine; if you tried it any
other way, woe betide you. This was especially a problem because in a few
cases, she would fail to grasp what was really going on in a scene, and would
instruct you to play it wrong -- which you had to do, even though you knew
better. Second, she had her favorites. She would deify some students and ignore
others; if you weren’t one of her favorites, you would maybe perform at the end
of the session, but more usually not at all -- even if you had put an X on your
card to show that you hadn’t been called on the week before. “If you have the X
on your card, you get to go next week -- guaranteed.” I once got fed up with
her and told her, “OK, now we all know what your damn guarantees are worth,”
and she didn’t mess with me after that. But in 1993, I produced and starred in
my own play, Off-Broadway. A good play, if I say so myself, and it did OK for a
first play by an unknown. But when I told Elizabeth about the upcoming show,
all she said was, “Oh, nobody’ll come to it.” When I heard she was dead, I
remembered that it wan’t nice to say anything bad about the dead, so I just
said good.
Celia Bressack
Dues Mgr at
NYCity Bar
“It wasn’t a
gift...it was a loan!!!” Yes, she was an original...and had moved on to Diet
Sprite by the time I studied with her in the early 90s - wed, and then the
friday class. It was my class that discovered her passing, when she...who NEVER
MISSED A CLASS - NO MATTER THE WEATHER...did not turn up for class. She was
found by a cop and a former key student/friend, surrounded in her bed by well
worn editions of the plays we were doing scenes from for class Friday night. I
have many ladies rooms memories of her right before class. She’d be there,
reapplying her lipstick and powdering her face. Always lips and powder! I
believe she found her calling as a teacher because she may have suffered from
stage fright - but class was definitely her “show” and time to shine! Thank you
for remembering her so beautifully - weren’t we lucky!
Dupé Adeoye
Change
Management & Performance Improvement Leader: Culture; Diversity,
Leadership, Entrepreneurship Skills Development
How many times
did I peruse this? “Once?”....... “Take all the time you need... And whenever
YOU’RE ready.” “I learned from Elizabeth about focus, taking pride in one’s
work, gaining a rock solid understanding of your subject matter, cutting
through B.S. has carried over into my current profession of the recruitment and
placement of corporate professionals.” “... An Elizabeth Dillon impression for
the class that had everyone in stitches. She stepped in while I was in the
middle of my impersonation and laughed along with everyone else.” ... It takes
a special kind of person with self belief to laugh along! .. A glimpse into the
past ...lessons for the future too, with admiration and respect. “When they
made her (Elizabeth Dillon), they broke the mold.”....The principles that she
instilled lives on.... Thank you for sharing. I will add a quote that you’ll
recognise too “.... This isn’t a race. This IS about quality.” All the time
needed.... a soul searching timeout too. Alan, Thank you. You’ve taken me full
circle. ... Time for the next steps.
[As readers can readily see,
I didn’t edit or “correct” any of the comments above (other than selecting them
for posting on ROT). I
pretty much took any remarks from former students of Elizabeth that added
something to Geller’s recollections; others were mostly congratulatory or
appreciative expressions.]
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