In a long stage career that took him from Yale to Broadway, he was steeped in the author of “Waiting for Godot,” acting in its Broadway prem
I add my voice to those honoring Alvin Epstein, in particular, a point of information. The important part of the phrase noting that Epstein moved on to "study mime in Paris, where he met Marceau" is left out: he studied Corporeal Mime (abstract study of dynamics and form on which pantomime is based) with the master Etienne Decroux. Not only did that study provide him with the extraordinary physicality of his subsequent theatre work, Epstein is one of the few sources of scholarly writing on Decroux.
I was an undergraduate student in directing and acting at Antioch College in 1964 when, during a co-op job in Chicago, I saw Alvin Epstein perform the lead role in Pirandello's Henry IV (Enrico IV) translated by Eric Bentley. A small man, Epstein sat in a throne whose back extended up at least 6 feet; he then performed a gesture with his hands representing the beating of a heart. The pulsing hands, rising one beat at a time above his head, led him up from the throne to standing. I was awe-struck. Whatever he was doing, I wanted to be able to do it. I took every opportunity to see him perform. I also dug and found out he had studied in Paris with Decroux. I too, then included mime in my theatre studies and eventually spent a year and a half in Paris with Decroux. When, 30 years later, I wrote a Master's thesis on Decroux, Epstein was a major source of information; he was as fine a writer as he was an actor. We never met but he influenced the trajectory of my life. Thank you, Alvin Epstein.
[Deidre Sklar]
