Peter Kass, 85, acting teacher, theater director
NEW YORK - Peter Kass, a theater actor and director whose influence as a teacher was felt in several generations of performers, died in Manhattan on Monday. He was 85 and lived in Brooklyn.
The cause was heart failure, said his son Robbie.
In the 1940s Mr. Kass was a protege of Clifford Odets, who asked him to direct the first incarnation of his show-business drama, "The Country Girl," at the Lakes Region Playhouse in New Hampshire.
But Mr. Kass's main notoriety was as a fervid and prolific preparer of actors, as a teacher at Boston University in the 1950s, at New York University in the 1960s and 1970s, and as a private instructor and in tandem with the vocal coach Kristin Linklater.
He was "a holy madman of the theater," Linklater said, "whose whole point was that there is no limit to what the actor can do."
As a classroom provocateur, he imbued hundreds of actors - including Olympia Dukakis, Faye Dunaway, and Val Kilmer - with the sense that they need to be psychologically astute, emotionally courageous, and self-examining.
