- Died
- Charles Erich Conrad was a famous acting teacher in both New York City and Hollywood, California, who was Chief Assistant to Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City before traveling to Hollywood CA in the late 1950's.
He worked as an acting coach and dialogue coach and, in time, set up the CEC Studios where he taught for several decades, eventually utilizing video equipment as part of his teaching.
He taught many famous actors during his career, including Jack Nicholson and Dennis Quaid.
He died of kidney failure, at age 84, in Washington State, and left behind a widow and 2 sons.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Tex Allen - Charles Erich Conrad (May 23, 1925 - October 29, 2009) was an actor, best known for his work as a distinguished film acting coach who has trained some of theater and film's most celebrated performers.
Born in "The Big Apple" (New York City), the only child of German immigrants, Charles Erich Conrad, spent his early years growing up in the city's "upper east side". In 1942, during World War II, and at the age of 17, he left the tenements that lined 89th street and patriotically joined the U.S. Navy. There he served as an armed guard on merchant ships. After the war ended and receiving his discharge papers and finished earning his high school diploma. He then was accepted to Adelphi College where he majored in English. His education then continued at the Carnegie Institute of Technology where he studied theater directing and graduated with a Master's Degree.
It was his directorial thesis of Anton Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" that earned him a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. However, he did not go because of a lack of finances. He once stated to a good friend, "I didn't have the money to get to London so I just turned it down. It was a decision I came to regret many times over." In 1952, as a young graduate of Carnegie Institute of Technology, Charles Erich Conrad began studying acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse Theater in New York under Sanford Meisner and was soon hired as Meisner's primary teaching assistant.
(Sanford Meisner was a member of Group Theater in 1930's New York with Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, and Clifford Odetts. Meisner broke with the group over a difference of opinion with Strasberg involving the validity of many of Strasberg's teaching techniques. Meisner founded the famous Neighborhood Playhouse, where he taught for some forty years). After directing a series of several short stories, Meisner recognized his talent and prospects as a future acting teacher and made him his senior teaching assistant. It was then that he was given the opportunity to teach and coach actors. Some of his students would become acting greats.
In the early 1960s, Meisner commissioned Charles Conrad with the task of training contract players at 20th Century Fox in Hollywood. However, the excitement of moving from New York to Los Angeles and from a salary of $95.00 a week at the Neighborhood Playhouse to $45,000 a year at Fox was short lived when studio's proposed acting program fell through. However, Mr. Conrad's tenure as Meisner's longtime assistant had earned him his own respected reputation as a gifted teacher. This paved the way for him to consider opening his own school.
Soon after, Conrad soon left Meisner and founded CEC Studio in Burbank, CA It was at the CEC Studio that Charles Conrad would emerge as one of the film industry's most distinguished acting teachers and where he would define and redefine the Meisner Technique. This evolution and refinement of the "Meisner Technique" and Meisner's teaching style (similar to the dispute between Strasberg and Meisner), lead to the development of the Conrad Technique. He rejected classic Meisner exercises in favor of simple, powerful handling of dialogue.
Like Meisner, Conrad relied on the Repetition Exercise of learning scripts (fast repetition of the words until they are memorized) without memorizing any actions or feelings. So that when it became time to perform an actual scene or exercise, each actor would depend on the other for his or her source of acting. But the most noticeable difference between the two acting techniques was that Conrad implemented the text of actual scripts into the exercise, stripped of any direction or pre-disposed feelings. This (rather than relying strictly on improvisation in order to bring in "Here and Now" moments)was the difference.
Unlike most exercises or performances, the words were simply memorized and were not meant to come to life, until your attention was on the other actor in the exercise. He believed that the technique would enable the actors to work in a highly intuitive state, spontaneously and naturally reacting to one other with the goal being to bring the exercise to life, just as if it was a real life moment.
The exercise was carried out with two cameras (one focused on each actor) with a table and two chairs and without the actors doing any kind of rehearsal together, whatsoever. His teachings were primarily for use in film and the intimacy of the naked truth that is only revealed through the eye of the camera, in the "Close Up" shot. The simplicity of Conrad's technique would allow the creative process to kick in resulting in each actor living moment to moment in a highly intuitive state. The work required that the actor stay out of his or her own way and allow their partner to create the circumstance in which true feelings would be engendered. In other words, Conrad's students were trained intuitively rather than cerebrally, which meant their work was usually spontaneous and natural with the source of acting for each actor being his or her partner, providing a loop process of re-acting, (not Acting). Conrad believed that the characters in scripts were in fact real in some time, place and existence in the universe. Once created and put down on paper, they did indeed exist. It was the object of the actor to get out of the way and allow the character to come to life trusting that the character knows how to behave and react in order to create the essence of each moment, in any given scene.
Some of his exercises involved teachings like "Zen in the Art of Archery". The objective of the archer was not so much to hit the target, as it was to hit one's self in the target open the door to that which can not be seen or even exist in an over rehearsed (manufactured or artificial reality) scene. The character comes to life in that moment, where the actor is no longer in himself, but in the eyes of his partner across the table. As with the archer being One with the arrow and target, his actual target is in each and every moment of the arrow in flight and the target being struck. Finding ones self being One with character the in the eyes of the partner, lead to the actor being displaced by the character in the script of the scene. No cameras were used in the first early years of The Charles Conrad (CEC) Studio.
In 1993, the much revered teacher decided to gradually retire and moved to picturesque Sedona, Arizona where he would commute on a once a week basis to his studio in Burbank. By early 1994 he was fully retired from teaching and lived in a secluded area on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State with his wife.
Charles Erich Conrad died, at the age of 84, from kidney failure on October 29, 2009 in Port Townsend, Washington. Charles Conrad not only succeeded in helping his students learn valuable life lessons, but also paved the way for dozens of young actors to reach stardom in film and television. Acting coaches also continue to teach his technique.
The student list includes (and is not limited to): Ed Begley Jr., Kim Basinger, Corbin Bernsen, Susan Blakely, Keith Carradine, Robert Carradine, Lynda Carter, Joanna Cassidy, Damian Chapa, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tyne Daly, Kevin Dobson, Michael Dorn, Robert Duvall, Greg Evigan, Teri Garr, Linda Gray, Veronica Hamel, Mark Harmon, Stoney Jackson, Penny Marshall, Ali MacGraw, Jack Nicholson, Chuck Norris, Tony O'Dell, Joe Penny, Michelle Pfeiffer, Valerie Perrine, Victoria Principal, Dennis Quaid, James Rekart,Diana Ross, Susan Sarandon, Talia Shire, Suzanne Somers, Philip Michael Thomas, Karen Valentine, Lindsay Wagner, Carl Weathers, Joanne Woodward and dozens more.- IMDb Mini Biography By: a CEC student
- Spouse? (his death, 2 children)
- The CEC Studio was located at 4110 W Burbank Blvd, Burbank, CA 91505.
- For a very long time, Jeff Corey and Charles Conrad (who had come from NYC where he had been Sandy Meizner's "Neightborhood Playhouse" chief assistant) were the two main and most prestigious acting teachers based in Hollywood.
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