I first saw this photograph of Stella Adler in the role of Bessie Berger in Clifford Odets' play,
Awake and Sing hanging on a wall with other photo memorabilia of the Group Theatre at the Stella Adler Academy in Hollywood. I'd usually stop to look at it whenever I was there because each time I did, I noticed something I hadn't noted before, and just the other day, while discussing
thought, I mentioned it to an actor who's prepping for a production that goes before the cameras this month.
Note and get from it what you will -- but just to remind you, the play was performed on a stage in a theatre, and what Stella was actually looking at was whatever objects stagehands had assembled to be used in other scenes and those walls were actually flats, the odor of which I can still remember, and in my experience didn't diminish from opening to closing night performances.
