"Portrait of a Mentor"

by Alan Geller

[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.]

Herbert Berghof, Acting Teacher

By Kirk Woodward

[Finding an acting teacher can be a haphazard experience, often more luck than good planning. The best teacher for one student is not the best teacher for another, and a famous name isn’t always a guarantee that the fit will be productive. Kirk Woodward, who’s contributed many interesting articles to ROT over the two years I’ve been editing the blog, spent a short time studying with Herbert Berghof, one of the best-known acting teachers in New York and, indeed, the country. But both Kirk and I spent most of our training with far less-well-known teachers, he with Elizabeth Dillon and I, Carol Rosenfeld, women who were respected in the field and gave us tremendous gifts and practical knowledge and with whom we worked for many years. As a sometime teacher of acting myself, I have always advised my students that they should be sure to select a teacher who works for them, regardless of the reputation or renown and irrespective of whatever helpful advice other actors might give them. Still, it can be both fun and valuable to work, however briefly, with famous people, if only to see what it is that made them so well-noted. Useful and sometimes even brilliant knowledge can come from those encounters as well, of course. That’s usually why those teachers became famous—because they’re good. ~Rick]

I’ve only studied with one well-known acting teacher, and I’m not certain how well-known he is these days. His name was Herbert Berghof (1909-1990), and he and his wife, the illustrious actress Uta Hagen (1919-2004), founded the HB Studio on Bank Street, where I studied in the 1970s and – a plug here – where students continue to get an excellent education in performance techniques from theatrical professionals at reasonable prices!

To join Herbert’s class you had to interview with him. I don’t remember anything about the interview, except that it took place in his classroom and that I couldn’t figure out why he’d want me in his class. He did accept me, though, probably because I’d already studied with a good teacher at HB named Carol Rosenfeld. Unfortunately my acting was so full of bad habits that Carol hadn’t been able to help me much, and I really shouldn’t have been in Herbert’s class at all. I guess he had to accept someone. It wasn’t until a couple of years later, when I found a wonderful acting teacher named Elizabeth Dillon (also at HB), that I was able to start making progress.

I doubt that I performed more than two or three scenes in Herbert’s class. I wasn’t ready for him, and he wasn’t focused enough on people like me to help me much. The only scene I remember doing was one from Shaw’s Saint Joan. I prepared diligently for it and still wasn’t very good. All Herbert said was, “I must see you in a realistic scene.” I have no memory if he ever did or not.

Mostly I just had a great time watching and listening to him. Herbert was a burly man, bald on top, with penetrating eyes. He had come to the United States from Austria in 1938, fleeing the Nazis (I’m pretty certain he told us that Karl Jung helped him escape, but I haven’t been able to document that account), and he had a distinct accent. Like many male acting teachers he was surrounded by a coterie of young women who just happened to sit around him, helping out in class, eager to be within his aura, or possibly to get his help in being cast in something. He offered straightforward comments on scenes, and he told fascinating stories, one of which I will retell below.

Herbert’s approach to acting, like that of many other acting teachers in the United States, was based on the work of the great Russian director and teacher Konstantin Stanislavski, with a strong emphasis on practicality. I have read that when Bert Lahr, considering joining Herbert’s production of Waiting For Godot, asked how Herbert would get a laugh out of a particular one of Samuel Beckett’s lines, Herbert replied by dropping his pants.

So here are my notes on what Herbert said during the year I studied with him. I have grouped the quotations, added comments where I feel they might help, and occasionally phrased something a little differently for the sake of clarity, without, I hope, distorting the meaning.


FUNDAMENTALS OF ACTING

[Herbert asked the famous German director Max Reinhart, his first teacher, how you know when your concept of a character is right.] “When everything in the play makes you walk and talk.”

If what you’re doing doesn’t make you want to walk and talk, you’re in trouble; replace it quick.

There’s no ‘ignoring a person’ in general. An action is necessary, or you’re ‘hung.’ [Herbert said that when he has no action to play, his shoulders go up.]

The best moments in a performance are always intuitive – the result of previous work, but never planned.

Each performance has to start from scratch. You cannot allow yourself the lived part.

Every step has to further your objective – in pursuit of something.

The reason you talk is because of the other person – not because you have lines. You have to talk to people, or a person, you want things from.

[Eddie Foy, Jr.:] “I’m not acting, I’m just reacting.”

[Your character is] not you, but made out of you.

Not the whole foot, but a toe at a time.

I want you to bring in some secrets.


DEALING WITH THE AUDIENCE

[George Bernard Shaw:] “The faster you talk the play, the slower it gets.”

[Max Reinhart] “If you cater to an audience, you will see their backs.”


DANGERS

Most actors like to work on what they can already do. [Herbert made a comparison to pianists:] Actors always want to work with their strong hand.

The difference between meeting the character and accommodating your weaknesses to the part.

Playing the part as you is a corruption.

The biggest problem in an exercise is determining what is true and what is false.

The danger of commenting on a scene rather than living it.

“Casual” or “natural” isn’t the same as “real.”

You must divide the scene into beats, and say, “What happens in this beat?” and then, “How do I make this happen?” Then you make a long list – you won’t use all of it…


MAKING THE WORK SPECIFIC

Particularlization – as when reading a novel and you start to cry – something touches you personally.

I want to see you eat an ice cream soda. I want you to know what happens to the straw.

Bert Lahr only asked one question: “Is it phony or is it real?” This was the result of a thousand opening nights, when nothing phony would play.

Fred Astaire – his ease is not “qualitative’ – it comes from the actual steps.

The last thing I want to know about Chekhov is that he’s Russian. The first thing I want to know is why people want to move from Ohio to New York.

Comedy is impossible with any muscular tension. What is untruthful just won’t be funny. [Quoting Hugo von Hofmannsthal:] “Pushing an old lady over the cliff can be funny, but it has to be a real old lady.”


ACTING “MADNESS”

Acting “madness” – actors become interested in the how rather than the what, and the action gets lost, so the scene seems to be in pieces.

If I put my shoes on first, and then my socks, I don’t have to play crazy anymore.

If I’m told “Your mother died” and I say “Oh my God – now I have to sell my opera tickets” – my mind is still on something very specific, and to me appropriate.


SUBSTITUTIONS

[A “substitution” is an equivalent that an actor uses in preparing a role. I may never have been a king, for example, but I may have had the experience of getting applause for something. I can use that experience as a substitution for the adulation that a king receives when entering the throne room. I may also use the audience that once applauded me as substitutions for the courtiers in the palace. A substitution gives the actor the faith that the experience is believable for her or him.

[When Herbert got to the United States around the beginning of World War II, with his thick accent he was invariably cast as a Nazi. Imagine how this must have felt to Herbert, who was Jewish and whose family had been largely wiped out by the Nazis. How could he, with those experiences behind him, possibly play one of Hitler’s followers? Herbert made use of a rather drastic substitution. He was living at that time in a miserable apartment in the west Forties of Manhattan, and it was overrun with cockroaches. When Herbert had to say “Jews” in the character of a German officer, he used as a substitution the cockroaches that infested his apartment. This enabled him to say the lines of the Nazi believably.]


COMMENTS ON OTHERS’ WORK

The Good Doctor – “Chekhov on the Roof.”

[To a woman with great comic ability] Find – identify – those comic moments and do something else in them.

[Someone’s work is] passionate but not personal.

HERBERT’S FAVORITE ACTORS

I hope these quotations from Herbert’s classes suggest the vigor and creativity behind his approach to acting. So, we might ask, who were his favorite actors? He admired many performers, but the two that he referred to the most in class – I invite you to guess – are you ready? – were Lassie (the dog) and Dean Martin (the singer). Neither acted on the stage; both made movies.

Reflecting on these unconventional choices, I realize that Herbert uses them to tell us important things about acting. Lassie’s strength is focus. Lassie focuses strongly – one might say perfectly – on whatever important is going on in a scene. By comparison, human focus can often be weak and wavering. Focus, Herbert is saying, is the foundation of good acting.

And his designation of Dean Martin as an outstanding actor is a way of saying that we all can contribute to the craft. Watch Martin in the movies he’s made. He’s not one of those actors who transforms completely for each role. (Actually there are fewer actors of that sort than we tend to think.) However, he uses what he has, and as a result can handle roles that are comic, serious, or parody. He understands what the script requires; he fulfils its requirements using the gifts he’s got; he does his job. One could do worse.

[One coincidental aspect to Kirk’s recollections of studying with Herbert Berghof (whom everyone at HB, even those who never studied with him, called Herbert) is that it was through the Studio that I reconnected with Kirk back in the ‘70s. Kirk and I were classmates in college at the end of the ‘60s, but we were both ROTC cadets and went into the army shortly after our graduation. He and I were good acquaintances then, both active in the university theater (and worked in the shop after graduation until the army called), but we weren’t friends. We had no contact for the ensuing five years. I think it was the wife of our college director who, when she learned I was in New York City and taking classes at HB, wrote me that Kirk was also there. Now, Kirk had no telephone back then so I had no way to locate him except to leave a note for him in the HB admin office—they wouldn’t give me his address—so that’s what I did, giving him my address and phone number (I was camping out with my cousin, who lived in the Village near the Studio and had just graduated from NYU law school). I was a little surprised when Kirk actually got the message and called me. We arranged to get together for dinner at my apartment—I cooked (like me, Kirk was a bachelor then). I made a casserole that included shrimp, a favorite food of mine so I thought it would be a big treat for Kirk. Well, it would have been! I was greatly chagrined to learn—only after I casually mentioned, “I hope you like shrimp”—that Kirk’s deathly allergic to shellfish. But he had planned to eat the casserole, which he’d spotted on the kitchen counter, without saying anything about his allergy. I’ve never forgotten that dinner—and I shudder a little every time I think about it. (I quickly threw together something else from whatever I had in the pantry—another casserole, I think, of a far simpler recipe. I wonder if Kirk’s wife knows that he might not have survived long enough even to meet her if things had turned out differently. Why he never spoke up right away, I’ll never understand—didn’t want to embarrass me, I guess.)

[Personally, I have a hard time with the Dean Martin focus—not Kirk’s explanation here, but Herbert's admiration of the singer-actor. There are so many far better actors Herbert could have held up as examples; I can't help feeling there must have been a little irony implicit in his invoking Dino that way. I guess, if you look at it as Herbert's attempt to make the point, as Kirk does, that even an actor of limited gifts can do excellent work by focusing on the job at hand, then it makes sense. I assume Herbert's explanation would be that if Martin could do what he did so well, then good/talented actors (like his students . . .) could and should do all that much better using Martin's example. As for Lassie, I recall that Uta Hagen had something to say on the subject of animals on stage:

[Even though the actors are in the midst of strong dramatic action, the audience will be riveted on a cat, sitting quietly in a chair, following a bit of blowing lint with its eyes. Now a cat cannot be as fascinating as a human being! But the cat’s sensory apparatus is more powerful than a human’s, and It is more single-minded in its purpose, with no mental distractions to blur its instincts. The cat really exists with strong, spontaneous, forward-moving attention, and so it can surpass the actor, who is predictably busy with his stage life.

[I think that’s the same as what Kirk calls focusing strongly and perfectly.

[As for famous acting teachers, I never studied with anyone as well-known in the business as Herbert. The closest I came, I guess, was director Terry Schreiber (K2, Devour the Snow, and The Trip Back Down, all on Broadway) at whose studio I studied after I left HB in the ‘80s. I only studied with him briefly because when I started at the T. Schreiber Studio, then on Washington Square, he didn’t have room in his class, so he put me with his colleague, actor Lee Wallace (Zalmen or the Madness of God and The Cemetery Club on Broadway; Private Benjamin and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three—the original version—on film). I got to like Lee so much, when Terry invited me over to his class, I asked if he minded if I stayed with Lee, and I did. (Lee also did many commercials and most people in New York recognized him as the man who looked like then-Mayor Ed Koch. Ironically, Lee’s role in Pelham was as New York City’s mayor.) When I was at Rutgers getting my MFA, two of our teachers were Avery Brooks (Spenser: For Hire, A Man Called Hawk, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine on TV; Paul Robeson and Are You Now or Have You Ever Been on Broadway) and David Margulies (Zalmen or The Madness of God, Comedians, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Cafe Crown, and Angels in America). These men were among the best acting teachers I ever encountered, but I never collected the kind of memorable statements from them that Kirk has from his year with Herbert.]