Seven actors are seated in chairs on the small stage of the studio, stretching, yawning, making inarticulate sounds and barks. They are attempting to rid themselves of the tensions, emotional and physical, which have accumulated over the day. Watching them are another dozen actors who are quietly performing their own exercises. Ed Kovens walks among the seven on stage checking that heads are free of tension and limbs hang loose.

"Relaxation and concentration are opposite sides of the same coin," he says as he rubs an actors shoulder with his hand. "Relaxed, you can concentrate. Physical tension blocks emotion. Being in front of people about to be judged, that alone is enough to cause a certain amount of anxiety. This is an effort to wipe the slate clean."

One young actor let out a piercing wail and two others begin to answer him in loud grunts. Another actress begins to weep. "Something upset you today," Kovens asks. "Yeah," she replies and he hands her a tissue.

"You'll notice that the people who have been the longest in class actually need to make very little sound."

Ed Kovens is a solid compact character actor who you might cast as a gangster or a baseball manager, but at this moment he's in his favorite role as founder and teacher of The Professional Workshop. The Method-oriented techniques he teaches have evolved from his studies with Lee Strasberg and the Actors Studio and the Lee Strasberg Institute where he was a founding staff member. His students have included Sissy Spacek, Nancy Allen, Fred Travelina, Sean Young among others.

"Every actor has his own problems. My theory is to discover what is individual and imaginative about each and develop it," says Kovens. Kovens believes there are three components to acting: the carrying out of tasks, the relationship and history of the particular actors on stage, and the creation of sensory objects to ground an actor in reality. Kovens said that other teachers that studied with Strasberg have taken one or the other of these components and based their entire beliefs around them, but he believes in focusing equally on all. "There is often a misconception that the method technique is all emotional and sensory work." he said.

The actors on stage have now moved past the relaxation exercises and are experiencing a variety of stimuli; taste, sunshine, and whirlpool. "Three people sitting in the sun will have three different reactions. One feels warmth, another allergies .. it becomes highly personal. These are just exercises, not the end of anything. When you do the scene you shouldn't see the exercise, just the good work," continued Kovens.

They move from this nonverbal communication into their monologues, spoken in gibberish or sung as an aria.

"One of the primary things we are concerned with in this class is the breakdown of verbal patterns. These come because we know what's going to come next. You read the play, or you have been playing it for six months. How am I going to make these words sound like I'm saying them for the first time? We believe that the character in a situation responds to the situation with a certain emotion. The emotion in turn colors the word. You change the emotion, the meaning of the words change. Once they become more advanced I'll bounce them around from exercise to exercise with the same words and ideally it should come out differently each time because the thing that is affecting the words has been changed. The easy part are the exercises. The hard part is when you do scenes, picking which exercise will get us what we want," Kovens said.

A pretty blond actress stands on the stage alone as the class continues. Kovens is leading her through a monologue and while she speaks he will call out an adjustment by number and she switches accordingly. She has chosen what sensory exercise to use for each number. As she speaks, he says, "put in one and drop out three" and the actress turns from coy to sweet to spiteful. It is a mesmerizing exercise to watch.

The second half of the class is devoted to scene and monologue work. In one scene an actress darts about the stage frantically without focus. "You're working so fast," Kovens says. "You're working for end results instead of figuring out how you're going to get there."

Later in another scene a young actor breaks down crying on stage over losing his wife. Kovens prods the actor and finds he was using a painful situation from his own life for the action. When the actor reveals this to the class, Kovens says gently, "I don't needed to know the particulars. We use substitutions to experience things we haven't felt." He says to the rest of the class. "You say you broke up with a girl, substitute that."

Kovens works with singers and trains them as actors. There are several opera singers in the class, yet it is hard to distinguish them from the actors in exercise or scene work. The exception to this is when one is working on sensory exercise and suddenly Kovens will say, "Give us an aria!" The freedom from tension of the earlier relaxation exercises lets the singer achieve an emotional openness that is indicative of good acting.

"The training allows a singer to sing with real emotion. Callas did this naturally but most singers are afraid of this because their throats will tighten up. When trained as an actor they learn how to open up. Relaxation is the most important thing," Kovens said.

Ed Kovens believes that anyone can be taught to act. But, how well depends on talent. And talent, "Well that's imagination and logic and the ability to have the emotions come out. What you give the person at this time to get them to this end, well that's where the talent of the teacher comes in."