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Each class started in the same way, with “sense memory” exercises, in which you tried to recall one of your sharpest memories of smell, hearing, taste, sight, or touch.

Every Thursday afternoon six students, out of thirty in the class, would sit in chairs onstage and try to get into a relaxed position – a position in which you could possibly fall asleep – while the remainder of the class was watching. In the first weeks we all started out with an exercise that was very simple, such as holding a cup of hot coffee or tea, trying to feel the weight of the cup, and then actually taking a drink … except of course that there was no cup, only the imaginary one you were holding, which was filled with imaginary hot coffee or tea that you were trying to taste.

Then we advanced to recalling some physical pain. I sat on my chair, and after I felt relaxed, I imagined that I was sitting in a dentist’s chair, trying to recall having my tooth drilled. In this exercise I was more successful than any of the others, perhaps because I had had so much experience in the dentist’s chair. After three or four minutes of recalling that drill – how it looked and how it smelled and even how it tasted as it bored its way into my tooth – I felt the pain so sharply that tears came to my eyes. Now I understood what a sense memory was.

Of course, the whole idea of the thing was not to be able to recall hot tea or a dentist’s drill, but rather to recall something that could be used onstage in other ways. For example: you’re in a play, on the witness stand, accused of a murder that you didn’t commit. The prosecuting attorney is grilling you. You’re in the hot seat, so to speak. If the actual situation and the author’s words don’t start your emotional motor going, you might try a sense memory of being in a steam bath – feeling the heat and tasting the salt as the sweat pours out of you – so long as you avoid any giveaway physical actions that are strictly steam bath behavior. Hopefully, the audience will see someone who seems to be sweating bullets because of the questions the prosecuting attorney is asking.

During these months in Strasberg’s classes, I used to sneak into the balcony of The Actors Studio and watch him give critiques to members. A very talented actor named Gerald Hiken had just done his first scene for Lee Strasberg. After the scene was over, Strasberg said, “Tell us what you were working on.” Gerald said, “I just wanted to show you how I normally work – using Actions, Objectives, Conditions, Obstacles … all the things I was taught in classes with Uta Hagen.”

Then Strasberg illuminated the mystery I had been wrestling with for many years. He said, “You did very well, Gerald, because we got it. We could see everything you worked on – all the Actions and Objectives and all the rest of it. But at the Studio we believe that if you have a relaxed body and a relaxed mind, and if you can believe that the situation the character is in is actually happening to you, then all those other things you were talking about are going to happen by themselves, only not in an intellectual way, but in a more natural, organic way. And if they don’t, then we have certain tools we use that might help you. But they’re not intellectual tools.”

These critiques that I snuck in to hear were for professional, working actors. Now more than ever, I wanted to get into the Studio.