Alvina Krause, American Method Acting Teacher, is not Forgotten by her Students

Abstract

Although never as famous as the Method acting teachers in New York City, Alvina Krause influenced almost a century of actors, professors, writers, and community theatre organizers. A farm girl from Wisconsin, Krause’s original training was in oratory and elocution at the Cumnock School of Oratory and then the Northwestern School of Speech. This evolved into oral interpretation and then one day Krause was surprised to discover she had been assigned to teach acting. With her usual diligence and insight, she was soon led to the principles of Stanislavski. Her original training as coach for athletics and elocution served her well and her bold but effective classroom practices took her from the conventional to a nearly Zen intuitive understanding of what had to be done to take the actor to the heart of the character, but always in service to the original writing, as is the discipline of the oral interpreter. In the end, the university – moving to a corporate model – more or less pushed her out, but her former students found this fortunate and started a repertory theatre with her help and reputation in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. There her belief in excellent local repertory theatre has taken root and survives her death.