About Sandra Seacat
From the mid-1970s on, Sandra Seacat has been one of America's more sought-after and influential acting teachers/coaches. A method-based actor and teacher, closely associated with the Method's originator, her mentor Lee Strasberg, Seacat gradually became recognized as well for her groundbreaking work in the early eighties involving the application of Carl Gustav Jung's theories to acting technique and pedagogy, thus introducing the practice now known as dream work (also known as "The Way," much as Strasberg's Stanislavski-based system eventually came to be known as "The Method").Born on October 2, 1936, Sandra Diane Seacat (whose first name, despite the spelling, is pronounced somewhere between 'Sondra' and 'Saundra') was the first of three daughters born to Lois Marion Seacat (née Cronic) and Russell Henry Seacat of Greensburg, Kansas.After attending Northwestern University, Seacat made her way to New York, eventually being admitted to The Actors Studio, where she would become well versed in the method school of acting espoused by the Studio's director, Lee Strasberg. During the 1960s, Seacat began to get acting work in the city, appearing under her married name, Sandra Kaufman. In 1962, she earned plaudits from Village Voice critic Jerry Tallmer, making her New York stage debut in the American premiere of Leonid Andreyev's "Waltz of the Dogs," an Off-Off-Broadway production mounted by noted acting teacher - and Actors Studio member - Michael Howard.While the next two years would be taken up with the birth and early rearing of her daughter Greta B. Kaufman (eventually also known as Greta Seacat), she returned to action in 1964 on Broadway with a small role in the Actors Studio production of Anton Chekhov's "Three Sisters," starring Kim Stanley, Geraldine Page, and Shirley Knight (though neither she nor Knight would appear in the version eventually preserved on videotape).For the remainder of the decade, as she continued to hone her craft at the Studio, doing scene work with future stage co-stars Ben Piazza and Will Hare, as well as Robert Walden and Robert Viharo, each of whom would remain longtime friends, Seacat (aka Kaufman) quickly became one of Strasberg's prize pupils, and one of the Method's most articulate exponents. Thus, at just about the time her first marriage was coming to an end, a new career path beckoned, when, in 1969, the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute was born.By the early 1970s, Seacat was leading classes, not only at the Institute, but also at the City College of New York's Leonard Davis Center for the Performing Arts, as well as teaching privately. By 1980, she would also teach at John Strasberg's The Real Stage.In the meantime, though, both Seacat's acting career - which, from this point forward, along with all other facets of her career, would be conducted under her maiden name - and her matrimonial status (in conjunction with fellow actor Michael Ebert) showed renewed signs of life, as the couple appeared together in a 1969 production of Brendan Behan's 'The Hostage," followed by the New Orleans Repertory Theater's June 1970 revival of Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire," directed by June Havoc, featuring Ebert as Harold "Mitch" Mitchell and E. Katherine Kerr as Blanche DuBois, as well as Seacat and Ben Piazza, respectively, as Stella and Stanley Kowalski.Returning to New York, Seacat began to build her teaching practice. Among her early students were Treat Williams and Steve Railsback (the latter ...