The late Stella Adler, a celebrated teacher of acting whose students included the likes of Robert De Niro, Martin Sheen, and Marlon Brando, often reminded her students that the word “theater” did not always suggest entertainment and escape. The word comes from a Greek term meaning “the seeing place,” and, at its most profound, the theater, she said, “is the place that people come to see the truth about life and the social situation.”1 Because the theater is about the truth, there is, Adler said, one inviolable rule that an actor must learn: “Life is not you. Life is outside you. If it is
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