Ron Van Lieu

Yale School of Drama

By Ellen Orenstein

Ron Van Lieu currently serves as the Lloyd Richards Professor and chair of acting at the Yale School of Drama, where he also heads the committee on diversity for the school. From 1975 to 2004 he was head of acting at the NYU Tisch Graduate Acting Program, where he also headed Studio Tisch, a developmental workshop for graduates of the acting program. He was trained as an actor and director at the University of Iowa and at Tisch. In 1993 NYU awarded him the distinguished teaching medal, the university’s highest honor for excellence in teaching. He was a founding faculty member and head of training at the New York Shakespeare Festival’s Shakespeare Lab, where he partnered for 10 years with Rosemarie Tichler. He is also a founding faculty member of the Actors Center in New York City, where he continues to teach both actors and acting teachers.

One thing that has really struck me as I have watched you teach is that you allow actors such freedom to make their own choices. How do you do it?

First let me answer why I do it. I think that the expectation when people come to actor training is that a number of things will be done to them, so that when they leave that institution they’ll have a kind of road map. That’s partly true—in that if they go to a good institution, they are going to be given sound principles of craft in acting.

But, I think the most important thing that they need to be given is the trust in their own imaginations, their own humanity and their own sense of artistic license. They’re often surprised when that is offered to them. I think it takes a while for them to believe that, first of all, as creative people they’re entitled to do that and, secondly, that it’s wanted. Too often they think their job is simply to show up and do whatever they’re told.

What is it you look for when you select actors for your program?

The first thing I look for is individuality. People who are themselves. Who can sit down and talk with you, without trying to figure out who you want them to be; who are at home in their own bodies. And then I look for an active imagination, which, to me, is the ability to believe in the given circumstances of a play as if they were real. It’s the difference between an actor who illustrates—who is basically a mimic—and an actor who lives within. A collaborative spirit is also very important: that they’re not soloists, that they like to play with others. And I like people who have a lot of courage—because there is so much fear in the profession. And fear is, to me, the great enemy of creativity.

How do you see that courage?

They seem open to possibilities. If you work with them on material, they are not resistant to change. They’re not fighting themselves or you while they do it. Their bodies are not invaded with a great deal of tension. Nor are their voices. They seem to have a fluidity of emotional life moving through them. In other words, I would say they seem flexible.

How do you begin scene study with a group of actors?

I usually use an American realistic play. I ask them to read the play and to pick a character they feel excited about the possibility of acting. I ask them to make a list of all the character’s attachments, and I ask them to get interested in answering five questions: Where am I, who am I with, what do I want, what am I doing to get what I want, and what are the consequences if I get it or don’t get it? And then I bring them in without any rehearsal and with a script in hand, and I start working with them on what are, to me, the basics of how to work together.

The first point is that the text is the means of reaching one another—so that they’re always putting their main concentration on the other person, not on themselves. I ask them to understand that acting is both giving and receiving: You are trying to penetrate the other person and you are trying to be open and receptive to the other person. That exchange is the flow of life in acting.

And this is before you ever enter the physical world of the characters?

Right. I’m really on the lookout for what their habits are. I’m trying to discern what I think they are presently able to do which serves them as actors, and I leave that alone. And I’m able to see the kinds of things that aren’t serving them well—which are usually habits that they probably aren’t even aware of. I begin to try to give them alternatives to the employment of those habits.

For example?

One of the most basic habits is when people hold their breath every time they get close to a strong feeling. In life, it’s appropriate; in acting, you have to do the opposite thing. If you want to be able to release a feeling, you have to breathe into a feeling.

Usually, what I see is actors living in anticipation of everything—always ready to do the next thing, before they’ve taken in the present event. The fear actors have of doing something wrong is why they anticipate: They want to be ready and they want to do it right when the time comes. So maybe the most basic thing is to encourage them to find the lives of the characters more compelling than the fact that they are acting.

Have you found that you’re unable sometimes to get them past that?

It takes some actors a much longer time to trust that they can enter the work with a kind of openness that precludes so much preparation—and also that they will be able to come up with the result that’s going to be required. I try to encourage them to make the process so deeply involving, so personally engaging, and so useful of their imaginations that that’s their real delight in acting, and that whatever result is being asked of them will come out of the process in which they’re working.

You have such a specific and sophisticated way of bringing that out of them —can you articulate it?

Maybe I’m more of a coach than I am a strict definition of an acting teacher. There are basic principles that I do teach, but I’m most interested in how the person in front of me is using those principles. I won’t always do the same thing with every actor because I’m really interested in who that person is and what his or her imagination could release. I guess I’m looking for actors to appreciate that about themselves, not to erase themselves in the name of technique.

Did you have teachers who really stood out to you?

My first teacher was Joseph Anthony, who taught the Michael Chekhov technique. He was the first person within the profession who gave me the confidence to believe that I could be an actor.

The next was Lloyd Richards, who was my first acting teacher at NYU. He opened up my mind to the idea that you bring yourself into the world of the play, and at the same time you need to develop enough technique to transform parts of yourself into the character. And Olympia Dukakis helped me understand how to really, deeply do that.

Another great influence at NYU was Omar Shapli—he was a brilliant teacher of theatre games, based in Viola Spolin. From him I learned the joy of spontaneity, that acting is really a form of serious play, how to tap into my intuition rather than my sense of logic. I learned what it means to “be in the moment” from him.

Why do you teach?

I never planned it. I started teaching at NYU in 1975 as a substitute for Olympia. NYU offered me a job because of that. And I said I would only take the job if I could continue acting also. So, from 1976 to 1981, I combined teaching with acting. But during that period, the pleasure and the creative satisfaction I got out of teaching began to clearly feel more important to me than what I was getting out of acting.

Do you ever find that your reputation as a teacher—which is far-reaching at this point—can be paralyzing to your students?

Yes. Exclamation point. (Laughs.)

So how do you handle that?

I try to be as human and as accessible and as open as I expect them to be. Sometimes I resort to sheer clowning and self-imitation just to clear the air a little bit. And I try, as much as I can, not to fall into a directorial role within the room. I try to keep it about them: I’m not always answering the questions; I am offering the questions. They don’t always have to look outside themselves for the answer; they are in possession of the answer.

I think it’s the responsibility of all of us teachers to encourage actors to think independently and to value their individuality and to bring that into the work. Because I do think the profession conspires to take those things away from the actors. There is an art to acting. There are, in a way, rules—so that you’re working within an art form for which there is a form. But, it’s not just the form. It’s also the degree of freedom that you can find within that form. So, I use the phrase “freedom within form” all the time—just to keep reminding people that that is, ultimately, the goal.