Robert Lewis (director)
| Robert Lewis | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
March 16, 1909 Brooklyn, New York, United States |
| Died | November 23, 1997 (aged 88) New York, New York, United States |
| Occupation | Actor, director, acting teacher |
| Years active | 1931–1997 |
Robert Lewis (March 16, 1909 – November 23, 1997) was an American actor, director, teacher, author and founder of the influential Actors Studio in New York in 1947.
In addition to his accomplishments on Broadway and in Hollywood, Lewis' greatest and longest lasting contribution to American theater may be the role he played as one of the foremost acting and directing teachers of his day. He was an early proponent of the Stanislavski System of acting technique and a founding member of New York's revolutionary Group Theatre in the 1930s. In the 1970s, he was the Head of the Yale School of Drama Acting and Directing Departments.
Robert (Bobby) Lewis was born in Brooklyn in 1909 to a middle class working family. Encouraged in the arts by his mother, a former contralto, Lewis acquired an early and lifelong interest in music, particularly opera. He studied cello and piano as a child but these eventually gave way to his love of acting. In 1929, he joined Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre in New York City. His musical background proved invaluable later when he became a director of operas and filmed musicals in Hollywood.
In 1931, Lewis became one of the 28 original members of New York's revolutionary Group Theatre. Formed by Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg and producer Cheryl Crawford, The Group was an ensemble of passionate young actors, directors and writers who came together to explore the inner processes of theatre craft.
Lewis and other members of the Group, such as Stella Adler and Elia Kazan, were proponents of a new form of acting based on the techniques of Russian director, Constantin Stanislavski. They believed the Stanislavski System, first taught in America in the 1920s by former members of the Moscow Art Theatre, Richard Boleslavski and Maria Ouspenskaya at the American Laboratory Theatre where Clurman and Strasberg had studied, resulted in a more truthful, more believable, and therefore more powerful stage performance than could be accomplished with more seemingly external techniques common at that time.
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