NYU Steinhardt | Music Adjunct Faculty
Music and Performing Arts Professions
(2020 – Present)
Lee Summers teaches Acting for Singers at the undergraduate and graduate levels at NYU Steinhardt, working with classical, musical theatre, and contemporary vocalists.
His actor training moves from the foundational work of Uta Hagen into an intensive application of the Meisner technique, centered on Meisner's essential principle: living truthfully under imaginary circumstances. Through a progressive sequence of exercises, students learn to trust their impulses, receive fully from the other actor, respond truthfully in the moment, and replace presentational habits with spontaneous, specific behavior.
Summers has also taught Music Scene Study and draws on his MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU Tisch to guide students in script and scene analysis, helping performers connect text, dramatic action, and musical storytelling.
His core philosophy is simple:
Great singing actors are not singers who act—they are actors who sing.
Private Acting Coaching
In Person · New York City · Zoom
Lee works one-on-one with actors, singers, and performing artists, with coaching grounded principally in the Meisner technique and its essential principle: living truthfully under imaginary circumstances.
In scene work, the training develops the actor's ability to receive impulses from a scene partner, be genuinely affected, and respond truthfully in the moment. In monologues, auditions, and self-tapes, that same principle extends to the unseen other and the imagined world—using imagination and specific circumstances to create a fully inhabited environment that informs thought, behavior, movement, and action.
Sessions are tailored to the individual artist and may include acting technique, audition and self-tape preparation, scene and monologue work, role development, and music scene study for singers. Lee meets each actor where they are, building on the tools they already possess while adding new ones to their actor's toolbox.
The goal is not to manufacture a performance, but to create circumstances specific enough—and a world alive enough—that the actor can live truthfully inside it.