Bennett Cooperman & Meryl Nietsch-Cooperman

What We Learned from Aesthetic Realism

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Al Jolson: True Pride and How We Can We Have It

First presented in a public seminar at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, New York City.

May 6, 2015 By Bennett Cooperman

Aesthetic Realism explains our subject tonight, “True Pride & How We Can Have It,” definitively and in a way that is immediately useful to people. I learned we’ll be proud if we’re going after what Eli Siegel has described as man’s deepest purpose, to like the world honestly. In his book, Self and World, Mr. […]

Filed Under: Actors & the Drama, Bennett Cooperman

Jimmy Cagney — or Does the Way We Fight Make Us Strong or Weak?

Discussing the life and work of the tough and tender Jimmy Cagney. First presented at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, NYC.

May 6, 2015 By Bennett Cooperman

Jimmy Cagney

Aesthetic Realism explains that every fight we have is based on either respect or contempt for the world. For example, when people fought the Nazis in World War II, they were fighting in behalf of respect—for justice. But most fights are based on the desire to have contempt, to be superior, and this desire causes […]

Filed Under: Actors & the Drama, Bennett Cooperman

Edmund Kean – How Can a Man Have Real Self Expression?

Edmun Kean’s acting and his life can help us answer that question. First presented at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, NYC.

May 6, 2015 By Bennett Cooperman

I learned from Aesthetic Realism that a man will feel truly expressed when he’s consciously going after his deepest desire, which is there from birth: honestly to like the world, to see meaning in what is not himself, and this very much includes other people. The thing that stifles true expression in us is also […]

Filed Under: Actors & the Drama, Bennett Cooperman

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Actors & the Drama

“Many persons are better acting than they are just talking, because in acting they take on an impersonal world. All the obstructions are not there. Many actors left to themselves are just bad company, but once they have to take over somebody else they are transformed. From rather unlikable caterpillars, they change to effective butterflies.”

— Eli Siegel, from his 1951 lecture “Aesthetic Realism as Beauty: Acting”

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