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Archive for August, 2016

Is Improv Acting Important?

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August 13, 2016 Acting Classes

Improv Acting For Kids & Teens

Life is improvised. We don’t know what we’re going to say next. We must listen and react. And since great acting is all about recreating real life, listening and reacting are key. Enter the honored skill of improv. “The first principle of improv is listening.”

What is improv? Simply put, it is acting without scripted lines The actor’s job is to build an entire scene, line by line, out of just a kernel of an idea. A solid base in improv is an invaluable tool for actors, especially young actors. It teaches them to trust their instincts, which builds a sense of confidence—a mandatory asset en route to becoming a working actor.

Understanding improv gives an actor the freedom to bring brilliant and unique choices to scripted scene-work. Improv keeps the scene fresh every time by freeing you up to make new choices in every moment.

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Acting Habits

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August 11, 2016 Acting Classes

Acting Habits

As adults, most of us can relate to the term “the force of habit” in some way. The more of our lives that we live, the easier it is to see that the things that we choose to “repeatedly do” often become quite ingrained. The daily choices that we make about how and what we eat, how much rest we get, how we think, communicate, work, play, move and react to the stimuli around us, all become a collection of our personal habits.

Science shows that we, like most creatures, live and die by habituated thinking…meaning we humans are truly creatures of habit. Our bodies and brains lock into a way of approaching something and due to our nature, nurture and personal experience we begin to repeat the familiar, because familiarity equates safety to our animal brains…there is comfort in routine.

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Alexander Technique For Kids

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August 11, 2016 Acting Classes

Alexander Technique For Young Actors

I have spent my weekends the past seven years working with the bright and precocious young performers at The Playground Los Angeles, Gary Spatz’s first-rate young actor’s conservatory here on Avenue of the Stars.

Gary has assembled a truly unique and dynamic staff of teachers to run a program that is the model for other acting schools for young people the worldover. It is an extreme privilege to be a part of it and more often than not, I learn more than I teach while working with my students and colleagues at the school.

My primary function as a teacher at The Playground is to teach the foundational acting technique that the conservatory offers in its curriculum for students from reading-age up to young adults. Working with students in this broad age-range affords me a fantastic view of the artistic and psychophysical developments as they occur in young performers as they grow up.

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Acting Classes & Performers

acting classes for kids at the playground
August 11, 2016 Acting Classes

Acting and Performers in 2016

I remember when I moved to Los Angeles from Montana to pursue an acting career in the fall of 1999 like it was yesterday. I was eighteen years old and experiencing a considerable amount of culture shock. By that next spring after some good luck and a moderate amount of hustle, I had landed myself a commercial agent in Hollywood.

On the day that I signed my two year contract with my new agency, I was told that I needed two very important tools to get my commercial career off to a go start. The first was a good head shot and the second was “a cell phone”.

At that time near the turn of the century mobile phones and devices were not yet ubiquitous. Those who were alive and old enough to remember know that it was yet another significant crossroads for modern life. In 1999 not everyone had a cell phone yet and even personal computers were still making their way into the mainstream.

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Acting Classes Improve English Skills

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August 5, 2016 Acting Classes

Acting Classes Can Help English As A Second Language/English Language Development

After almost a decade of being a Teaching Artist for Center Theater Group (CTG) and the SAG Foundation, as well as a senior teacher at Gary Spatz’s The Playground, it still brings a smile to my face and makes my heart pitter patter when I see kids who are working with English as a second language improve their speaking and communication skills.

How do they do it? Because a large part of teaching acting for stage or camera is all about articulation, enunciation and diction, it makes for a great “one-two-three combo” on the journey of learning how to communicate clearly and effectively! So, it hurt my heart when I met with a 5th grade teacher (who teaches the lowest level ELD students) about doing a theater/literacy residency with her class and she didn’t feel she could give up 2 hours a week and still fulfill her curriculum.

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