The Acting Workshops are about a journey. It is what I call “soul work,” a voyage into the self, to bring out the full truth of your being. Personal growth and development – as a human being and as an artist – is a work in progress, and it lasts a lifetime.
Many people have a misperception about acting – that it is about pretending so well that people believe you. But acting is really about telling the truth with every fiber of your being. It is, as Sandy Meisner would say,” learning to live truthfully in imaginary circumstances.” It is a voyage into the unknown.
These courses are meant to give you a core experience of what real acting is. Students are encouraged to go on to further training, to take upper level classes, or do private coaching. A workshop is not a full-on conservatory experience, and it is not meant to be.
Lee Strasberg said: “The text is your enemy,” and by that he meant that acting is not about playing the text, but what is underneath and around it. And to understand and act a text requires emotional intelligence and research, technique, and courage; learning to do research so that you can bring what Uta Hagen calls “a cloak of authenticity” to your character.
And the character is not only a fictional construction. You can only be yourself. But when there is a point of combustion between yourself and the character, that is where the passion and the exhilaration come in.
Acting is the discovery of a multitude of selves each of us possesses within. Sometimes, you have dig deep and find something unexpected and unfamiliar that you’d rather not know about. Your job as an actor is to confront it, and bring it out. As one actor said, ‘You have to go to the edge of the edge of the edge…and come back and tell people what it was like.” It is an act of liberation and freeing the self- consciousness that obstructs our expressiveness. It is, as Stella Adler said, the “cultivation of your rich humanity.”
The enhanced awareness of the art of performance and the full meaning of who you are, and who your character is, is not for the timid of heart. It takes courage, endurance and persistence; it’s not for those who have little tolerance for criticism or rejection. You have to want to do it 150% or not at all.
The Acting Workshops provide a safe place where you learn to play with fullness, commitment, vitality, and integrity. You learn to observe more carefully, and to develop a special connection to your acting partner. It is like growing a new set of antennae that sensitizes your whole being.
My workshops grow out of my love of mentoring, and a devotion to teaching, and personal growth, the excitement of inspiration, and my great, great love of acting.