Imagination/Affective Memory

Stella Adler discussed somewhere, in great detail, the front door of the house in which Nora (A Doll's House) lived with her family.  I think you can find it on YouTube.  Imagine if you were creating a character who lived in New York City or other major cities during 1911 or 1929, and what the sounds of the street were like and how they would impact your character's behavior.  We live in a particular environment in relation to the objects in that environment.

The Adler/Strasberg disagreement, discussed elsewhere on this blog, consisted of the isolation between the actor's personal, lived experience and what the actor has learned, but not directly experienced.  However, isn't the imagination derived from the actor's total lived experience?  That is, once you've studied the above clip, that environment is etched forever in your mind, and you can go back to it whenever you wish.  What you learn becomes part of your total lived experience.  Everything we think about is derived from something we already know.