About Us

Excerpts reprinted from a 1995 Article by Robert Carnegie

It was at some point early in our development that the founding graduates met to come up with a name for what we had been calling "our group." We arrived at "Playhouse West" as homage to our roots in New York and the work of Sanford Meisner at The Neighborhood Playhouse. We thought of ourselves as the group which would try to keep alive and promulgate the technique in the hostile climate of L.A. Keep in mind this was in the early eighties before "The Sanford Meisner Technique" became the imitated rage it has since become.

As a completely unique group in L.A., with a relatively new to L.A. training approach, we became very much in demand on our own merits, rather than on the basis of association with a name which has later become a calling card almost everyone uses to attract students. Our early classes, although free in charge, were as disciplined and rigorous as they are now, and only the serious could participate.