I started off with The Winter's Tale, which I had never much cared for. Greif's production made me realize that I hadn't cared for it because I had never seen a really good production of it – until now. It's largely been dismissed by the critics; why, I cannot fathom.

The challenge when doing the play is in how to make the character of Leontes not only credible but sympathetic. In the first half of the play, with his pathological suspicion of his wife's infidelity with his best friend, he comes off as Othello, but without Iago there to manipulate him. Ruben Santiago-Hudson does a credible job here, and almost manages to make this believable; but he shines thereafter, as he recognizes his foolishness and tries to expiate the guilt he feels for having caused the deaths of his queen and his young son. The other actors in the show are uniformly outstanding. My faves were Marianne Jean-Baptiste as a powerful, raging Paulina; Max Wright and Jesse Tyler Ferguson as the Bohemian shepherd and his dim son who find baby Perdita, left to die on the orders of her father Leontes, Linda Emond as an extremely touching Hermione, Heather Lind as Perdita and Hamish Linklater as Autolycus. Linklater is fast emerging as one of our finest actors, particularly in comedy, and I think Lind is a Future Star. I liked just about everything in Greif's production, from Clint Ramos' beautiful, rather whimsical costumes to Tom Kitt's charming music.

Don't believe what you're read about this production: it's really wonderful.

As is Sullivan's even more wonderful production of The Merchant of Venice. Al Pacino is the finest Shylock I have ever seen, and Lily Rabe the finest Portia. Sullivan brilliantly makes it crystal clear that the play takes place in a world of high stakes finance and speculation, giving it a startling contemporary relevance to our world in the here and now.

Pacino is simply astonishing in the difficult role of Shylock, making him an archetypal Little Guy screwed by The System. Nobody does rage better than Pacino; and nobody that I have ever seen in the roles breaks your heart more than he does. Truly, he is "The Jew which Shakespeare drew." Rabe is sweetly authoritative as Portia and once again Hamish Linklater amazes in the usually ho-hum role of Bassanio, whose need for money in order to have a shot with Portia sets the ball rolling. Linklater's is a three-dimensional, compelling creation of a somewhat callow young man who becomes a grown-up by play's end. Bill Heck is also compelling in the usually-forgettable role of Lorenzo, the gentile who steals Shylock's daughter Jessica and marries her right under her father's nose. Byron Jennings, who also appears in The Winter's Tale (as Camillo), is the best Antonio I have ever seen, and once again Heather Lind is impressive as Jessica.

There are so many small pleasures in this production that I can hardly list them all. Max Wright makes a delightfully dotty, semi deaf and semi-senile Prince of Arragon, and Nyambi Nyambi proceeds to top him as a goofily pompous Prince of Morocco. Gerry Bamman, a wonderful Antigonus in The Winter's Tale, is even more wonderful here as the Duke; and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, as Lancelot Gobbo, is as hilarious as he was in The Winter's Tale.

Both productions in the park this summer are Not To Be Missed. They continue through 1 August.

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Also Not To Be Missed is A.R. Gurney's The Grand Manner, at the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre in Lincoln Center. Gurney has based the play on an actual incident during his youth, when he travelled from his prep school in New Hampshire down to New York to see the legendary Katharine Cornell in Antony and Cleopatra. Armed with a letter from his grandmother, who knew Miss Cornell from Buffalo, he meets her, gets his souvenir program signed, and that's it. Well, that's what actually happens; but Gurney then proceeds to spin a "what if" scenario: what if he stayed longer and learned the truth about Miss Cornell and her husband, Guthrie McClintick? What if during this lengthy visit Miss Cornell came to a realization about the price of fame and success, about how she has gone from a great artist to a stately battleship going through the still waters in the "grand manner" which now, at the advent of Marlon Brando, seems obsolete.

Kate Burton is wonderful as Cornell; but even more wonderful are Boyd Gaines as Guthrie McClintick and Bobby Steggert as young Pete. Beautifully directed by Mark Lamos, this is Yet Another wonderful play by one of our finest playwrights, who should have won the Pulitzer Prize long ago.

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Potomac Theatre Project is in residence at Atlantic Stage 2 with three productions, also running in rotating rep. I caught two of them, a revival of David Rabe's A Question of Mercy and Snoo Wilson's Lovesong of the Electric Bear. Both were terrific.

A Question of Mercy, was first done in the early 1990s, when the AIDS epidemic was raging, as was Jack Kevorkian's ("Doctor Death") battle to legalize euthanasia. A desperate, distraught man comes to his former doctor to please with her to help his lover, who is in the final stages of dying of AIDS, to kill himself. Though the play is less immediate than it was originally, and seems (thankfully I guess) like a relic from a long-past time, Jim Petosa's production is mighty fine. Tim Spears is heartbreaking as Anthony, whose lover is dying, and Paula Langton is very compelling as Dr. Chapman. Alex Cranmer is absolutely harrowing as the dying Thomas.

This is a fine production or a more or less forgotten play, and well worth your attention.

As is Wilson's Lovesong of the Electric Bear, an absurdist take on the story of Alan Turing, who originally conceived the concept of the computer, whose genius led to the breaking of Germany's Enigma Code which contributed significantly to the defeat of the Nazis and who killed himself in the early 1950's when he was persecuted for being a homosexual.

Apparently Turing, something of a child-man, continued to sleep with his teddy bear long into adulthood. Wilson makes this bear a character, as the play's narrator and Turing's protector and sometime foil. It's a rather goofy concept, but it works. There have been other plays about Turing, Hugh Whitemore's Breaking the Code being the most well-known, but Wilson's is a worthy addition to the genre. It has been inventively directed by Cheryl Faraone and features terrific performances from Alex Draper as Turing and Tara Giordano as his teddy bear.

Both PTP productions are well-worth seeing.

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THE WINTER'S TALE and THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. Delacorte Theatre.
TICKETS: You can wait in line at the Delacorte or at the Public Theatre; or you can try Virtual Ticketing at www.shakespeareinthepark.org sort of an online lottery where you can apply for tickets on the day of the performance.

THE GRAND MANNER. Mitzi Newhouse Theatre, Lincoln Center.
TICKETS: www.telecharge.com 212-239-6200.

A QUESTION OF MERCY and LOVESONG OF THE ELECTRIC BEAR. Atlantic Stage 2, 330 W. 16^th St.
TICKETS: www.ticketcentral.com 212-279-4200.

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"Who is this guy?"

For over thirty years Lawrence Harbison was in charge of new play acquisition for Samuel French, Inc., during which time his work on behalf of playwrights resulted in the first publication of such subsequent luminaries as Jane Martin, Don Nigro, Tina Howe, Theresa Rebeck, José Rivera, William Mastrosimone, Charles Fuller, and Ken Ludwig, among many others; and the acquisition of musicals such as Smoke of the Mountain, A…My Name Is Alice, Little Shop of Horrors and Three Guys Naked from the Waist Down. He is a now a free-lance editor, primarily for Smith and Kraus, Inc., for whom he edits annual anthologies of best plays by new playwrights and women playwrights, best ten-minute plays and best monologues and scenes for men and for women. For many years he wrote a weekly column on his adventures in the theater for two Manhattan Newspapers, the Chelsea Clinton News and The Westsider. His new column, “On the Aisle with Larry,” is a weekly feature at www.smithandkraus.com.

He works with individual playwrights to help them develop their plays (see his website, www.playfixer.com). He has also served as literary manager or literary consultant for several theatres, such as Urban Stages and American Jewish Theatre. He is a member of both the Outer Critics Circle and the Drama Desk. He has served many times over the years as a judge and commentator for various national play contests and lectures regularly at colleges and universities. He holds a B.A. from Kenyon College and an M.A. from the University of Michigan.

He is currently working on a book, Masters of the Contemporary American Drama.

"It requires a certain largeness of spirit to give generous appreciation to large achievements. A society with a crabbed spirit and a cynical urge to discount and devalue will find that one day, when it needs to draw upon the reservoirs of excellence, the reservoirs have run dry."

-----George F. Will

So, you may be asking how this relates to your main interest, acting. Let's begin in this way...

E.E. Cummings defined for us what I call "the maze". He says that, in fact, we become trapped in this maze as we think, believe and know. He also says that the path towards escaping from the maze is by "being". And, that when you are "being" you are "nobody but yourself." What do you think he means by "being"? Please take some time to write about that in your journal.

The truth is that this observation about "being" by E.E. Cummings is one side of the coin called "the most fundamental foundation in the craft of acting." We are talking about the ability to simply be who you are - no more and no less. I am saying that without the ability and the courage to be the expression of your truthful point of view in every moment, you are merely an imitation of what has all ready been done. This is always the cliché of performing and it has nothing to do with the art of acting. Of course, this is one of the things I love so much about the Meisner Approach, from the very first steps of the work; it is bolstering your courage and your abilities to be fully who you are!

The other thing E.E. Cummings wisely advises us is that the effort to be "nobody-but-yourself" is the greatest challenge we face in life and keep facing throughout our whole lives. He is talking about pressure from a world which is doing it's best to make us "everybody else!" Here again, I want you to write about this. What does this mean to you, specifically?

Here are the simple equations:

• When You Are Everybody Else = No Acting Possible
• The Moment You Are Being = Acting Becomes Possible

To close our session today, earlier, I told you that:

"This observation about "being" by E.E. Cummings is one side of the coin called "the most fundamental foundation in the craft of acting."

You see, I called "being", or "the moment-by-moment expression of your truthful point of view" one side of the acting fundamentals coin. So, here's my question for you! What's the other side of the coin?

Please send me your emails with your answer to that question and any comments you have about today's session. I will post your comments and you will truly take our conversation to where we will be going next. I am depending on you! Also, the first three teen actors to email me with a response will win a copy of my new book Meisner for Teens: A Life of True Acting as soon as it is available from Smith & Kraus! Again, my email is trueacting@actorscraft.com and you can visit me on my website at www.meisnerteacher.com.