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Remembering John Stix, a Teacher of Passion and Insight By RICHARD FELDMAN
We lost a master teacher and a rare man when John Stix passed away on October 2. John taught acting at Juilliard for 30 years, and worked in the theater, movies, and television for more than 50 years. He was teaching with enormous passion—and profound insight—right to the end of his life.
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| John Stix (second from left) and Richard Feldman teaching together. (Photo by Jessica Katz) |
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John used to carry around, on a slip of paper tucked into his notebook, a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: "God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please, you can never have both."John chose a life of truth, a life defined by curiosity, by a spirit of investigation and exploration, and a driving sense that there was always more—more to us than we knew, more to be revealed, more to be expressed. For John, it was the actor's job, the actor's glory to reveal, reveal, reveal.In that same notebook, he had compiled over many years exercises, thoughts, quotes, observations, ideas, reminders, revised thoughts, revised exercises—all interspersed, bouncing off one another, amplifying each other, all revolving around the task of the actor. The notebook is a portrait of a great mind: deeply thoughtful, willing to not know, and hot in pursuit of truth.The best tribute to John is to share a sampling of those writings:
Is the work personal, connected, exploratory, honest, reaching for the truth? Honest on the stage, in the moment, and revealing everything. You wish before you do something to know whether it's right or wrong. Therefore, it holds you back from giving yourself fully to what you're doing. Never worry whether you're getting it. The degree to which you get it varies—like making love—it's not always the same. I can strengthen your will, but I want you to strengthen your own will. What do you want to tell us that you're not telling us. The stage for you is now a place to work. You can be afraid and work, nervous and work—but work. A Year of Discovery:
to develop a sense of process
to live in the moment on stage
to enhance the range of imagination and expression
to break down bad habits
to reduce self-consciousness and inhibition
to provide an atmosphere of risk-taking and relating
to help the actor discover where blocks and barriers are
to explore the different facets of personality, which are normally subdued
to develop the NEED to speak
to combat anticipation
to find and release impulse and temperament
to work within a group
to discover what stirs that imagination
work on the whole instrument; mind; body; emotions Technique is to serve the imagination.
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| John Stix instructing drama students. (Photo by Jessica Katz) |
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On that same piece of paper on which he wrote the Emerson quote, John has recorded: "Old Greek definition of happiness: the exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope." By this definition, John had the happiest life imaginable. And it feels wrong to mourn too much a great life lived so fully and so long.But there is a hole in our world, and it is a truth of human life that just when a mind—through effort and time and grace and experience—has come to its fullest understanding, it disappears.According to natural law, all energy is conserved. Energy is transformed, not lost. But the accrued consciousness and wisdom of a lifetime, is that conserved? The accumulation of knowledge and experience that can flower into a kind of second sight that John possessed—is that conserved? If it is, it doesn't reside in the notebook, rich as it is, or in the exercises that will be carried on.John's wisdom resides in his students, in their bodies and minds, in their forever altered instruments. That wisdom is now living, unspoken, but fully expressed, in hundreds and hundreds of actors who, with John's great teaching, also chose a life of truth. A memorial for John Stix will be held at Circle in the Square Theater (West 50th Street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue) on Monday, November 22, at 5 p.m.Richard Feldman has been a member of the drama faculty since 1987.
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