Jason Alexander has spent the week at Ten Chimneys, the home of the late Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, two greats in American theater.
Since 2009, the estate has held a fellowship week. They invite actors like Alexander to serve as master teachers.
Ten fellows, each with at least 20 years of acting experience, have worked with Alexander the week of June 19-26. One of the fellows is Tony Award-winning actress Beth Leavel.
"It's very exciting," she said. "It's a little scary. We have lots of homework which is great but the end result is going to be something that I use the rest of my life."
Alexander is teaching the fellows tools that encourage actors to be the verb they are acting out.
"By forcing actors to make decisions about what are you actually doing, so that you could show it to me without any words, forces them to commit in a much more profound way," Alexander said.
The Seinfeld actor developed his method after studying with a man named Larry Moss.
"They teach us these individual tools that are too boring to go into detail with, but it is very rare that they actually teach us a methodology so that when you hand an actor a script, if you say to us, what do you do, we kind of don't know," he said.
Due to scheduling, it took Ten Chimneys about three years to secure Alexander as a master teacher.
Alexander knows Costanza is the reason he is where he is today.
"It is a project I am blessed by. Incredibly proud of. I don't know why it continues to have this life, but I'm thrilled that it still means something to people."
