Jeff Zinn, former artistic director at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater and former managing director at Gloucester Stage Company, has spent his life in the theater. But a few years ago, a call from a historian put him on a different path — to a podcast about the influence of acting’s great teachers.
The historian, Zinn says, was asking about the late Ronald Bennett, who had been one of his mentors. Bennett was the British actor who created the 1960s theater program at Franconia College in New Hampshire, where Zinn studied in the 1970s. The conversation reminded Zinn of Bennett’s charisma and of his connection to the stories and legacies of other masters.
Zinn began doing his own research. Bennett, he confirmed, had been involved with the Michael Chekhov Players in Connecticut in the 1930s. And Chekhov had been a student of Constantin Stanislavsky, known for his groundbreaking acting training, now referred to simply as “The System.” Michael Chekhov was also the nephew of the playwright Anton Chekhov.
Zinn had already connected four dots in acting history. Within a few months, he connected hundreds more. What emerged was a story of how acting for theaters, movies, and television evolved over a century in various countries.
The story was full of “gurus” — figures like Stanislavsky, Chekhov, Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg, and Jacques Copeau who moved acting from artificiality and convention to the pursuit of truth and authenticity. For two more years, Zinn was absorbed in research on these people and their influence on the evolution of acting.
The result is the podcast “Gurus: The Story of Acting from Stanislavsky to Succession,” now streaming on Spotify, Apple, Amazon, and most other services.
“Gurus,” which Zinn recorded in a soundproof booth he constructed in his Orleans house, casts a wide net over the interconnected figures in theater’s rich history. Among them are many who were forced to flee Russia or war-torn Europe; Oscar winner Beatrice Straight; and the legendary teachers of stars like Marilyn Monroe, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, and Robert De Niro.
While pieces of these stories are familiar in the business, Zinn couldn’t find them collected anywhere. “I realized there’s a saga here that has not been told,” he says.
Initially, he tried to write out that history but, when he became stuck, he reached out to his friend director Brendan Hughes, who has worked with WHAT and the Harbor Stage Company in Wellfleet. The podcast was his idea, Zinn says. Hughes also connected him to the California-based Dwight Street Book Club, which ended up producing it.
The first 21 episodes of “Gurus” were released this past fall. Much of the sound design was done by longtime theater collaborator J Hagenbuckle in Harwich. To bring to life the words of historical figures, Zinn called on professional actors who have performed at Wellfleet theaters, including Robert Kropf, artistic director at Harbor Stage, and Laura Esterman.
Zinn also conducted Zoom interviews with award-winning performers, including Cherry Jones, Alfre Woodard, BD Wong, and Michael Cerveris. Conversations about their careers offer companion episodes to the ones focusing on acting history.
“Typical interviews with actors and celebrities are often more about gossip than the work,” Zinn says. “But many of these people have really interesting and eclectic training pathways and indelible memories about what they studied, and they were really happy to talk about their training.”
In the podcast, Zinn uses the hit HBO show Succession to reveal how decades of acting history in theater and film led to the television we’re streaming now. In one “Gurus” episode, Zinn dissects how different Succession actors represent the varied training systems that his podcast spotlights.
Brian Cox, Matthew Macfadyen, and Sarah Snook attended conservatory programs and have comprehensive training in both Stanislavsky’s “outer skills” (relaxation, movement, speech) and “inner skills” (concentration, imagination, and emotional memory). Jeremy Strong, who won an Emmy last year for his leading role on the show, uses many techniques from “method” acting, spending entire days inside the headspace of his role. Zinn also interviews Succession actor Alan Ruck.
“All of us are huge consumers of film and good television and have become aficionados of what good, truthful acting really is,” Zinn says. He hopes that the podcast reveals the machinery behind that kind of acting and helps explain why certain performances work better than others.
This first season of “Gurus” reaches only to the 1930s, and because there’s so much more to tell, Zinn is hoping to make a second season. While actors, theater students, and devotees have been his main audience so far, he believes his podcast — particularly the celebrity interviews — will have wider appeal.
The episode with Woodard — with whom Zinn performed A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters in December at Wellfleet Preservation Hall — is by far the most popular, he says. “The podcast is for everyone’s who’s ever wondered what’s under the hood of their favorite performances,” Woodard says, “and all who enjoy robust conversation on the art of storytelling.”
“People will write to me and say, ‘I have an M.F.A. in theater, and I never knew this stuff,’ ” Zinn says. “I didn’t either, until I started researching it. And I’ve been in theater all my life. I figure there are people out there who will enjoy getting into the weeds of this thing called acting, which is really a big part of our lives, whether we realize it or not.”
