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Alexander Technique For Kids

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.

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.

Acting Classes Improve English Skills

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.

Alexander Technique For Actors

August 4, 2016 Acting Classes

How Does the Alexander Technique Benefit Actors?

“I can immediately tell the difference between actors who have studied the Alexander Technique, and those who haven’t.”-Sam Mendes, Academy Award-Winning Director (American Beauty)

I think about this question a lot. Besides being an actor, I teach on-camera and audition technique to kids and young adults at Gary Spatz’s “The Playground,” an acting school in Los Angeles. I saw that studying Alexander Technique really made a difference in my work and in the work of my students. But the one thing I couldn’t pinpoint when I began to study it and then teach it was how did it make that difference?

When I read my first Alexander Technique introductory statement, and even when I took my first lesson, there was not a very obvious connection between artistic improvement and the set of skills to which I was being introduced. Sure it felt great to allow my neck to free up—I immediately felt taller and lighter and a bit more calm.

Acting Classes For Kids: Creative Play

August 4, 2016 Acting Classes

Performing Arts, Education, and Young Children

We can all remember a time when we used to pretend. Whether it was imagining ourselves as different people, traveling to distant lands, or making our toys come to life, we all had experiences like this as children.

We all know kids love to play, but did you know that play is also the pathway that young children use to learn?

In an Americans for the Arts study, Young Children and the Arts: Making Creative Connections, child development specialists have found “play is the business of young children”. In other words, when children play, they aren’t just having fun but actively engaging and learning about the world around them.