The Duse is an International Centre of Cinema and Theatre, founded in New York in 1985 by Francesca de Sapio and Giuseppe Perruccio. In collaboration with the Actors Studio in New York, it obtained enthusiastic support from Elia Kazan, Al Pacino, Sidney Pollack, Norman Mailer, Arthur Penn, Nikita Michalkov and many others.

In 1987, moved by the need to rediscover and return to its origins, the Duse relocated it's permanent workshop for actors, writers and directors to Italy, first to Montecatini and then Rome. In its 36 years of existence in the United States and Italy, the Duse has been attended by 900 professional actors, directors and authors from all over the world. At the present time, the Duse has 25 members and more than 100 collaborators, most of whom are associates, researchers and guests. The techniques adopted are the fruit of more than 30 years elaboration on the work of Stanislavsky, Lee Strasberg, Vachtangov, Michael Checkov, Sandy Misner, the discoveries of A. Lowen in bioenergetics, the behaviorist Moshe Feldenkrais, and the Alexander technique. In a society where most information originates from film and television, even if sometimes they are unaware of the fact, the role of actors, directors and writers is of great responsibility.

The Duse feels the need to establish a method that makes the individuals conscious of this responsibility until they become free to communicate what they choose.Today the Duse finds fertile terrain in Europe and especially in Italy, thus symbolically returning to its origins: the country where Tommaso Salvini, Giovanni Grasso and Eleonora Duse were born - great actors whose work inspired Stanislavsky in his research more than a 100 years ago in Moscow.