About Us

Since its founding in 1949, the school has trained thousands of actors many of whom have gone on to important theater and film careers.Its roots, however, go back even farther, to Jacob P. Adler, one of the great actors of the American Yiddish Theater, and also include Harold Clurman, Stella’s second husband and co-founder of the Group Theater. In 1969, The Stella Adler Studio became the first professional actor training school to become affiliated with NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. The spirit that has animated the Adler family for over one hundred years stems from the insight that growth as an actor and growth as a human being are synonymous.

The scope of the school’s current activities can be summarized in three categories: 1) Professional Actor Training, the core activity of the Studio; 2) The Stella Adler Outreach Division, which provides free acting classes to low income inner city teenagers and 3) The Harold Clurman Art Series which presents cultural events that are free and open to the public. Recent participants in the arts series include Julianne Moore, Harold Mabern, Harold Bloom, John Patrick Shanley, Mark Strand and David Amram.

The Stella Adler Studio upholds a unique focus in American actor training. Like Jacob, Stella and Harold, the studio affirms that the primary function of theater is to uplift humanity. A successful student for Stella is not necessarily one who becomes famous or rich, but one who connects to their deeper self and to our shared humanity. The school is a cultural center determined to train actors and support artists not despite, but in the face of a world in crisis. Programs like the Outreach Division help to create an environment for all students to become actors like Stella and those in the Group Theater: actors who are socially and consciously aware and whose awareness contributes to their ability to act passionately.