(From a transcribed interview)

Before I started studying, I started working as an actor. Oh no, that's not perfectly true. I went to NYU for about six months and studied directing and acting at night with a man named Wallace House. He put me in some radio shows and thought I had some talent. I was about nineteen, and for the next five years, I worked sporadically in everything that was around New York to do. But when I was twenty-four, twenty-five, I found myself very dissatisfied with the work I was getting and doing. I really had no idea what I was doing. I was an intuitive actor. I had acted in college. I acted in high school. I had acted in summer stock. But I basically had no training.

I had a friend who was studying with Lee Strasberg. And I was sort of opposed to method acting. I didn't think I liked it. I mean, I admired Brando but I thought method acting was mumbling and scratching your behind and stuff like that. But this friend showed me some of the method techniques and they were so simple, so easy, and I said, "This is method?" and she said, "yes." And I said, "Well, OK." So I sat down and I made a list of the actors I liked. I actually looked up where they got their training, and, invariably, they were either members of the Group Theater, members of the Actors' Studio, or studied privately with Strasberg, Stella Adler, or Sandy Meisner. So I said, "Well, I guess I like method acting." At least I admired the people. I liked some of the British actors, like Olivier, but he never made me cry. He never touched me, while Paul Muni and people like Lee J. Cobb, they did. And even among the British actors, the ones that I liked, like Michael Redgrave, turned out to be method actors.

Anyway. I wound up studying with Strasberg. I studied with him for the next twelve years. So if anyone is my mentor, it certainly is him.

We had very large classes, there were about 40 in a class at the time, and after I had been there about six years a couple of people in class came to me and said, "Hey, you know the work, why don't you start an exercise class, because we can't do enough work with that many in class." I said, "Oh, well, I don't want to teach. You know, those who can, do, and those who can't, teach, and those who can't teach, teach gym." But I needed the rent, so I charged a buck a head and I started teaching.

I was teaching on and off whenever I wasn't acting. Then Strasberg asked me, as early as 1967, that if he started a school, would I teach for him, and I said, "Sure, why not?" So, in 1969, when he started the Institute here in New York, I started working for him and I worked for him until 1974. I worked for five years, and the reasons I left the Institute were more business than artistic. I never had any artistic differences with Lee. I always agreed with his teaching and I admired his perception.

The Technique

The technique that Strasberg propagated is based on Stanislavski's system, basically a lot of sensory exercises and things like that. At first I emulated Strasberg, which most beginning people do. You copy the people you admire. Whatever changes have been made in it over the years that I've been teaching, which is almost 30 years now, are more evolution than revolution; the changes have come about from my own use of it as an actor. So, I consider myself pretty much an expert in that field, and I take a back seat to nobody.

The other area is how to use these techniques in scene work and when you're on the job working. I mean, it's one thing to teach technique, but, you know, people say, "Well, how do I use this--where do I use this?" And that, of course, also happens to be up to the actor, because it's like trying to tell an artist to use dark brown instead of blue. That's where their artistic taste comes in. And that becomes the hardest part of the work for the actor. Learning the technique is easy. Applying the technique, where you do this instead of that, that's the hard part, especially when you're on your own. You know, the teacher isn't going to walk on stage for you, or on the set. You've got to do your own work. And that's the part that I try to show the people. I get them to use their imagination, and even their fantasy sometimes, to stimulate the use. But it's always based in the sensory reality, because actors have enough fantasy. It's the reality that's lacking. Somebody once said that what I teach is practical method. I mean, when everything is going well, and God comes and touches you on the shoulder, you don't need method, you don't need schlep. It's when you get in trouble that you need a technique.

Also, there comes a time when you just go out and do it. Rehearsal techniques should become secondary. It's like a dancer. If you got to count, you're in trouble. It must become organic. And by the time an actor gets to performance, hopefully, the work is left behind. But, unfortunately, there are a lot of directors who don't allow you to do the work that you need to as an actor. I was on a set acting in one of those episodic horror television things, you know, monsters. Anyway, I was supposed to come into the scene drunk. So, I'm offstage, off camera really, and I'm working on what I'm coming in with. And the director comes up to me and she said, "Are you OK?" I said, "Yeah, I'm OK. I'm supposed to be drunk." She said, "Oh, oh, oh yeah, yeah." So then she goes away. They expect it to be "action" and you're drunk, and "cut" and you're sober. They really think that's how the system works. It's crazy.

The Philosophy

My philosophy of teaching is to discover what's unusual about a person and quickly develop it. What's different about you, what do you have to offer; otherwise, we'd all do Hamlet the same. I don't audition actors, because I think that's nonsense. When I interview students, I just want to have a feeling that they know what they're about. I ask two questions that are really important. First I ask, "Why do you want to act?" Or I put it in a paraphrase like, "Why do you want to go into a business where 85% of the people are out of work?" And I don't expect a particular answer. But I like them to have an answer, which means they've thought about it. Not just "Well, I don't know. It looks like fun." Well, it's not fun. There's a lot of hard work involved. That person is going to leave when they find out how much hard work is involved. The second question is, "What do you expect from a teacher?" That's the hard one. I wasn't crazy about Strasberg when I met him but he was teaching something that I needed. I needed a very strong technique. I didn't care about his personality. He was teaching something that I needed and that was very important.

If you want to learn acting, you go to someone who teaches acting. You don't go to someone who is going to give you a job and teach his opinion. Everyone has opinions. Most teachers just teach you their interpretation of the scene. That's directing. And there's a difference between teaching and directing and nurturing somebody and letting their own imagination take wing. There's a huge difference between real professional training and some seminar where you get your scene critiqued. When Joe Namath came up from Alabama, he was this phenom of a football player. He still had to get professional training. When Sugar Ray Leonard came from the Olympics, he still had to learn to box professionally. There's a difference, and unfortunately, if you look at most television or you look at most movies you can't tell what the difference is. It's only when you look at the older actors who have been stage trained, and you say, "There is a difference, and it's not just personalities."

I always have had this thing that I would do "it" well. No matter what "it" was. Even if "it" was tending bar, I'd be a good bartender or I'd build a good pair of shoes. But there's a huge cost involved and it's time, and it's effort, and it's not just money. It's "Do you want to do it?"

What the students have to say about Ed Kovens

Michael Mariano

I am learning from him that in order to create reality in imaginary circumstances, it's vital to compare yourself with the character you're playing where you and the character are the same in actions and feelings, use yourself; where you and the character differ, use sense memory work to connect analogously to what the character is experiencing--which will make it real for you. I've also learned not to be concerned with trying to "show" the audience what's going on with the character; if you are experiencing it, the audience will too.

In New York, there have been a deluge of people in the casting end of the business who apparently now feel qualified to reach acting. New students must think that if they study with an agent or a casting person, they'll, get representation or an acting job. But a,young baseball player doesn't go to the guy who scouts new talent to learn technique, he goes to his coach. My coach is Ed Kovens.

Phyllis Seaman

One of the most exciting moments for me was while I was working on a scene from Awake And Sing by Clifford Odets. The exercises I had chosen to use were working well but then something else took over. I started to notice that I was having the characters thoughts and the scene proceeded to unfold with what seemed to be no effort at all.

Through all my years of knowing Ed, he has always made himself available to his students. If one has an upcoming audition, time is always set aside to work with that student individually. Ed creates an atmosphere where questions about the work or about an individual acting problem are always encouraged.

Marc Cervania

One of the most important things I have learned from him is the ability to improvise while thinking in a logical manner in terms of a character in a situation.

Of great value for me in working with Ed has been his ability as a mentor, not just a teacher, to explore the wealth of experiences one has to discover for new insights into characters and situations in order to break away from theatrical cliches. The progress I see in the other students in class is exciting. Also, Ed has helped me to build my personal self-confidence in the face of adversity. He simply makes students better actors.