Repertory Company


Anne Fielding, Director

Anne Fielding had the honor to attend Aesthetic Realism classes taught by
Eli Siegel beginning in 1953, and she studies now in professional classes for consultants and associates taught by Class Chairman Ellen Reiss.

In 1956, she married the late Sheldon Kranz, Aesthetic Realism consultant, editor and poet, whose poems appear in the book Personal and Impersonal: Six Aesthetic Realists.

She is teacher of the bi-weekly Aesthetic Realism & Acting class at the Foundation, and one of the instructors—with colleagues, Barbara Allen, flutist and Edward Green composer—of the Opposites in Music class.

Ms. Fielding was born in New York City; graduated from the School of Performing Arts where she studied with Sidney Lumet; later studied acting with Michael Howard and musical comedy with Charles Nelson Reilly. She is a member of Actors’ Equity and AFTRA, and one of the authors of the book Aesthetic Realism: We Have Been There (“I Believe This About Acting.”) She taught acting based on Aesthetic Realism at the HB Studio in Manhattan.

Anne Fielding is an Obie Award-winner for Distinguished Performance for the role of Sasha in the first American production of Chekhov’s Ivanov, which she was invited to recreate for the CBC television production of the play in Toronto. She has appeared on TV both here and in Canada, and for two seasons was with the American Shakespeare Festival Company in Stratford, Connecticut, where she appeared in Antony & Cleopatra, starring Katherine Hepburn; The Winter’s Tale; Richard II, starring Richard Basehart, and Henry IV, Part I, starring Roy Scheider, Hal Holbrook, and Sada Thompson . She played the role of Juliet in the New York Shakespeare Festival school tour, directed by Joseph Papp, and Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Central Park.

Off-Broadway at the Greenwich Mews Theatre, Ms. Fielding portrayed Mary Boyle in Juno & the Paycock by Sean O’Casey. Other off-Broadway productions include Montserrat by Lillian Hellman; The Beaver Coat, by Gerhardt Hauptmann; Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw; and in summer theatre she played The Girl in The Fantastiks. Anne Fielding created the role of Doris Diminish in the musical Goodbye Profit System, by Martha Baird and Tom Shields, at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation.

Ms. Fielding is a consultant with the trio There Are Wives, and with her colleagues Barbara Allen and Pauline Meglino , teaches the monthly Aesthetic Realism and Marriage class.

Among roles Ms. Fielding has played in productions by the Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company of Eli Siegel’s lectures on the drama are: Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House; Othello, in Shakespeare’s Othello; Lady Sneerwell and Sir Peter Teazle in Sheridan’s The School for Scandal; Petruchio in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew; Arnolphe in Moliere’s The School for Wives; Fay Fromkin in Arthur Kober’s Having Wonderful Time; Cassius in Julius Caesar; the Nurse in Strindberg’s The Father.

 


Bennett Cooperman

Bennett Cooperman is an Aesthetic Realism consultant and actor. He graduated from Syracuse University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts in 1976 with a degree in acting.

Mr. Cooperman has had a lifelong love for acting, singing and dancing. At Syracuse Stage, he appeared in Bertolt Brecht’s Galileo opposite Howard Da Silva, and in Bye Bye Birdie. At the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, Mass., he appeared in William Inge’s Summer Brave -- a re-write of Inge’s earlier Picnic -- and the musical Carnival.

Mr. Cooperman was a featured player on the daytime television series The Edge of Night. As part of his theatrical training, he attended the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan.

“I’m very grateful for what Aesthetic Realism is teaching me about the relation of life and art,” says Mr. Cooperman. An Aesthetic Realism consultant since 1987, he and his colleagues give consultations to people from as young as five years old to men in their sixties. In public seminars at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, Mr. Cooperman has spoken about the lives and work of important, loved actors in history—each in relation to a central question of men’s lives. For example:

• What Makes a Man’s Life Large or Small?—includes a discussion of the great 19th century actor, Edwin Forrest
• True Pride: How Can We Have It—taking up the life and work of Al Jolson
• Does Our Anger Make Us Stronger or Weaker?—the wonderful Jackie Gleason can help us to answer that question

In productions by the Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company, Mr. Cooperman has appeared as Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello, both Cassius and Brutus in Julius Caesar, Caliban in The Tempest and Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He has portrayed Mr. Puff in Sheridan’s The Critic and Charles Surface in The School for Scandal. He enacted the role of Wat Tyler in Robert Southey’s play of that name, and has been on the boards as the servant, Alain, in Moliere’s School for Wives.

Mr. Cooperman is a director of the monthly Saturday evening presentations at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation. He lives in New York City with his wife, Meryl Nietsch-Cooperman.

 


Timothy Lynch

Timothy Lynch is an actor and a labor leader—President of Teamsters Local 1205, representing working men and women throughout metropolitan New York. A union official for more than 16 years, he has spoken publicly about Aesthetic Realism as both the greatest training an actor can obtain and the education every union official needs most. He’s grateful to have learned from Aesthetic Realism that art and life are really inseparable. The justice to lines, a character, the playwright’s intent, which makes for good acting, is deeply the same as the justice all human beings deserve—including economic justice. An actor wants to represent a character truly; and whenever a union has a success, workers will feel that their “representative” did in some fashion truly represent what they were hoping for.

Mr. Lynch has appeared in many Off Broadway shows and in regional theatre, as well as in a variety of daytime television series and commercials. His New York theatre credits include The Lower Depths, Invitation to a March, Abercrombie Apocalypse, Out of the Frying Pan, The Moon Is Blue, and the American premiere of Ibsen’s little known Love’s Comedy. With the Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company he has played such diverse roles as Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Marc Antony, and Sir Toby Belch; Sheridan’s comic characters Sir Joseph Surface, Mr. Snake, and Don Farolo Whiskerondos; and more.

He has been invited to sing labor songs on many union picket lines, and to sing the great labor song Solidarity Forever before many thousands of union leaders and activists from around the country at Teamster conferences, as well as the national anthem broadcast live on international television before the first ever unionized boxing match in Las Vegas.

Mr. Lynch has studied at the New York Academy of Theatrical Arts, the Stella Adler Conservatory, the New York Theatre Workshop and the Aesthetic Realism Foundation. Before becoming a Teamsters official, he was an active member of Actors Equity Association, Screen Actors Guild, and American Federation of Radio and Television Artists. He’s very proud to be married to poet and critic Ellen Reiss, the Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism.

 


Derek Mali

Born in New York City , educated at Buckley School and Groton School; attended Yale and New York University, and graduated from Denison University with a BFA Degree in Theatre. Worked in theatre as stage manager, company manager and general manager; co-managed 40 to 50 shows including MacBird, America Hurrah, Your Own Thing and Bob & Ray: The Two And Only.

Member of Actors Equity and ATPAM (Association of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers). Has taught Aesthetic Realism in consultations for over 30 years and presented seminars on such subjects as “Justice & Comfort: What's the Relation?,” “How Much Should a Man Care For—Besides Himself,” ”Do We Know What's Best in Us?--& What's Worst?” Has acted in many roles with the Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company and has operated offset printing presses since 1973.

 


Carol McCluer

Carol McCluer was born in New Orleans but grew up in Brea, California. A graduate of CUNY with a degree in Education and Theatre, she began singing and acting professionally in 1973; appeared on the Julie Andrews Show; as a backup singer for Robert Goulet in Las Vegas; in a cabaret act; and toured South America with the recording group "Love and Kisses." She has performed in television specials, national TV commercials, voiceovers, regional theatre, and played “Melanie Sawyer” on the soap opera All My Children, where she had the pleasure of working with Gwen Verdon.

Since 1989 Carol McCluer has worked with the Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company, playing roles such as Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: Revisited and Lady Cunegonde in “Evil Seen Beautifully; or, Voltaire’s Candide” and Viola in "Absurdity in a Dukedom; or, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night."

Ms. McCluer is a member of the Screen Actors Guild, the Society for Children's Book Writers & Illustrators, the International Women's Writing Guild, and the Professional Legal Trainers Group.

A director of Saturday Night Dramatic Presentations at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, she is studying to teach Aesthetic Realism in classes taught by Class Chairman Ellen Reiss; is an avid reader and a software trainer, and lives on the Lower East Side of Manhattan with her husband, singer and rock critic Kevin Fennell and their daughter, Sara.

 


Ann Richards

Born in Oswego, New York, Ann Richards studied acting in children’s classes at Oswego State University. A graduate of Binghamton University with a degree in theatre, Miss Richards studied stage movement with Christopher Katt, comparative drama with George Wellwarth , and classical singing and acting, appearing in Guys and Dolls, Loot, La Ronde, Kiss Me Kate, and the English language premiere of the Latin American underground drama The Story of A Kidnapping. After summer and dinner theatre in Rhode Island and upstate New York in plays such as Company, Damn Yankees, Gypsy, The Roar of the Greasepaint, and A Little Night Music, she moved to New York in 1979. She has studied acting with Julie Bovasso and Anne Fielding, and singing with Felix Knight and Carrie Wilson.

A member of the Screen Actors Guild, the American Federation of Radio and Television Artists and Actor’s Equity, Miss Richards appeared off Broadway at the WPA Theatre in Album opposite Kevin Bacon. She was Connie Dayton in the daytime series Another World and has appeared in many television commercials. She has performed in Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company musical presentations, including The Great Fight of Ego vs. Truth! Songs about Love, Justice, & Everybody's Feelings.

Miss Richards has taught theatre to children, directing Grease, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz. At state and national educational conferences she has spoken on the value of the Aesthetic Realism method in teaching dramatic literature as well as in finding the drama in all aspects of the English curriculum. She teaches at Norman Thomas High School. Miss Richards is married to writer and educator Christopher Balchin.

 


Karen Van Outryve

Poet, consultant, and actress Karen Van Outryve began her study of Aesthetic Realism with its founder Eli Siegel in 1968. “ Like many actors," she says, "I often wished I felt in life the way I did onstage. When I heard ‘The resolution of conflict in self is like the making one of opposites in art,’ I knew I had to study Aesthetic Realism. That study has made my life better than I ever dreamed possible—and also enabled me to be a true artist.”

With the Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company, Ms. Van Outryve has performed a variety of roles--from the drama of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, to the comedy of Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Oscar Wilde. She is married to architect Anthony Romeo, and they are the parents of Alessandra Romeo. As a family, they are active in both community and national concerns, and are founding members of Housing: a Basic Human Right, advocating a nationwide solution to hunger and homelessness.

 

 


Carrie Wilson

An Aesthetic Realism Consultant, Carrie Wilson teaches the class “The Art of Singing: Technique and Feeling.” She is a graduate of Barnard College, and of the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre where she studied with Sanford Meisner. From 1969-1978 she studied Aesthetic Realism with its founder Eli Siegel, attending some of his great lectures on Shakespeare, Sean O'Casey, and Ibsen.

Ms. Wilson appeared off-Broadway in The Pinter Plays, and originated the part of Miss O in the Carmines-Fornes musical Promenade. Off-off Broadway, she created the role of Tina Schwartz in the Baird-Shields musical Goodbye Profit System. With the Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company she has appeared as Katherina in The Taming of the Shrew; Desdemona in Othello; Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream; Lady Teazle in Sheridan's The School for Scandal; Tilburina in The Critic; Agnes in Moliere's School for Wives; Laura in Strindberg's The Father; Magda in Sudermann's Magda; and Henrietta Brewster in Susan Glaspell's Suppressed Desires, and has sung in such productions as American Ethics, American Song; Ethics Is a Force: Songs about Labor, and more.

A mezzo-soprano, she attended the Goldovsky Opera Institute, and was featured artist in a Rachmaninoff program at Lincoln Center Library, under the auspices of Mrs. Serge Koussevitzky and the Musician's Club of New York, for which she was also soloist in the New York premiere of Julian Orbon's Tres Cantigas del Re at the Spanish Institute. She recently sang music by Sir Edward Elgar, including from “The Dream of Gerontius,” at a conference on the composer at the University of Birmingham, UK, and also sang the music of Marcabru at the Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference at the Centre d’Etudes Superieures de la Renaissance in Tours, France. In 2007 she presented recitals of British and North American music in Rosario, Argentina, accompanied by her husband, composer Edward Green. Together they also presented a paper at Ithaca College as part of a symposioum on Music and Lifelong Learning, entitled "Aesthetic Realism and the Art of Singing."

She has done film and television voiceovers for Imagery Film.

Ms. Wilson is a member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing, Actor's Equity, the National Association for Music Education, and the Lyrica Society for Word-Music Relations. She is included in Who's Who in American Art, Who's Who of American Women, and Who's Who in the World.