Skills
The Stella Adler Studio of Acting Outreach Division teaches skills that are not always included in traditional education:

Ensemble work - Theater by necessity is a collaborative art form. Each actor is reliant on their fellow actors and must learn to become sensitive to each person in the group.

Self awareness - Students are constantly encouraged to examine their thoughts, reactions, and personal opinions and to know what lessons are meaningful or powerful to them and why. Each student is encouraged to express themselves in class feedback sessions, private letters to their instructor and journal entries. Actor training also requires student artists to know the full range of their physical, vocal and imaginative instruments.

The development of independent actors - Stella Adler, herself a fiercely independent theatre artist, understood that acting becomes vital, exciting, and alive when actors do their own thinking and bring a point of view or a sense of mission to their work. "Your talent is in your choice." Stella Adler repeated this ideal like a mantra. This conviction is reminder that actors must make choices, that those choices must be strong choices, and that the more self-realized the actor, the stronger, richer, and fuller the choice. It was also a reminder that "Your talent is in your choice," not in Stella Adler's choice or anyone else's. At the Studio, the aim is to develop actors who think for themselves, respect their own ideas and ideals, and use the theatre as a means to share those ideas and ideals. Such independent actors are fully resolved to train their minds, bodies, voices, and spirits to achieve that end.

The power of the imagination - Actors' imaginations are the most powerful source for them to draw on. To bring alive a mimetic narrative - a story that happens as it is told - an actor must be able to create not just a replication of the actual, but a transforming, living experience. To create such an experience, Adler Studio actors are asked to use their imagination to locate the fullest range of motivational force, rather than depending solely on observation and emotional memory.

The importance of action - Drama depends on doing, not feeling; feeling is a by-product of doing. The Adler Technique depends on actors connecting strongly to each other by way of actions, and creating dramatic events that take place between "I and thou," not between "me and myself." These actions include the subtle, creative, onstage choices to which actors commit.

Informed script interpretation - A text, once the author has surrendered it, is an object in itself with its own life, its own meaningful possibilities, and its own potential for impact. Another Stella Adler quote still used at the Studio is: "The play is not in the words, it's in you!" It is the actor's responsibility to respect the script and willingness to read deeply and with a fertile imagination. This respect involves an understanding of where the playwright is leading the character, including understanding the character's environment, and investigating the full setting of the play.

The cultivation of a rich humanity - The actor's instrument is the actor's own body and brain; but if the dramatic arts are to avoid shrinking to a self-referential, self-enclosed, detached, and isolated unit of a larger world, then the psyche upon which the actor calls must not be the actor's own, but the character's. Therefore, an actor needs to develop resources of information and experience that connect with the rest of the world - socially, culturally, historically, and politically - thereby enriching the actor's instrument that is required to perform.