Which American acting teacher and disciple of Stanislavski based her work on close attention to the text?

• A. Stella Adler
• B. Lee Strasberg
• C. Uta Hagen
• D. Viola Spolin

Answer: (A)

Stella Adler’s work centers on using the script itself as the doorway to truthful performance. She argued that real, convincing acting comes from a close, disciplined analysis of the playwright’s words—the details of the world the play asks you to inhabit, the given circumstances, and the subtext beneath each line. By digging into what the text requires—who the character is, what they want, why the scene unfolds the way it does—the actor discovers concrete, specific choices that feel authentic on stage. Emotion isn’t manufactured from memory or inner life alone; it arises from engaging honestly with the text and the world the text creates.

That focus on the script distinguishes this approach from others that emphasize different routes to acting. While the Method and other Stanislavski-derived lines often foreground the actor’s inner experiences or spontaneous improvisation, Adler stays rooted in the text as the primary guide to character and action.