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"It's a rigorous class, filled with readings and big ideas, but it's grounded in techniques that will set your guts on fire and get you to start really acting , instead of just faking it really well. There is something revolutionary in his technique and it will put you above all other actors in L.A."--JB Waterman

• What level of student is the course aimed at?
• Is the class targeted at stage actors or film actors?
• I don't need a technique. I have instincts.
• Is this technique in use in the profession?
• How much time per week should I plan to spend?
• Will I get to show my scene every week?
• Is the technique intellectual?
• Can I audit the class?
• Is method acting taught in this class?
• I've had a lot of prior training. Can I start with the Advanced class?
• How do I register for the class?
• How big is the class?

The course is aimed at the serious student of acting, advanced or beginner, who wants to reflect on his or her craft and scrutinize his or her notions of what acting is about. My class will help students of all levels to do this. The technique I teach is Stanislavsky-based, but the most important insights I offer are refinements or radical clarifications of Stanislavsky arrived at by my teachers at Yale. These insights have not yet been written about to speak of, and are not widely known. And they probably never will be that widely known, because you can't really learn them from a book. You need someone to make it live before your eyes. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we're talking about secret knowledge here, arcane lore that Gandalf or Yoda themselves would sell their old grandmothers for. And I am offering it to you now for an unbeatable low price. Just try some comparison shopping at some of the Big Theaters in town and you'll see what I mean. (As demand grows, though, the price will start to creep up...)

Unless you studied with one of my teachers or someone who studied with one of them, you probably haven't encountered these very powerful points of technique. These points can unleash tremendous power and facility in an actor, but they are challenging to come to terms with. With respect to these central points of the technique, the experienced actor and the novice will be more or less in the same boat. A few topics covered in the class may be somewhat familiar to the experienced student, but everyone will encounter several very provocative challenges to their notions of the craft of acting over the course of the ten weeks, guaranteed.

Beginners are welcome, as long as they are ready to dedicate serious time and energy to the class. It will probably feel like watching a landslide descend on you for a while, so brace yourself. But if you are hungry, adventurous, plucky, and ready to work, you will benefit. It is not a course for dabblers or dilettantes. Serious amateurs, though, are welcome. I am less concerned with the nature of your ambitions than with your dedication to growing as an actor.

The class is targeted at actors. I contend that acting is acting. Adjustments need to be made for various mediums and circumstances, but if you aren't clear about WHAT it is you are adjusting, then those adjustments and fifty cents would have bought you a cup of coffee 15 years ago. Ultimately, I think this distinction between film and theater acting is given way too much play. Just figure out how to act well. The rest will take care of itself.

Also, see a relevant entry from my blog here.

Congratulations. You have something in common with earthworms and hedgehogs. No, seriously, instincts are wonderful. They are the best thing an actor has. But are you SURE you are in touch with them? Are you REALLY sure? Are you sure sometimes, but not so sure at other times? Have you been in situations where your instincts were mysteriously silent? Well, then...

Technique is there to support and channel your instincts appropriately, and to give you a range of tools to reach for when that instinctual engine just won't turn over. It happens to the best of us.

And besides that, freedom lies on the other side of technique, a wise person once said. You may have great musical instincts, but if you're like most of us, you need to learn to play a few scales before you can bang out that Chopin Nocturne. It's just paying your dues. Didn't you watch the TV show Fame? Don't you remember in the opening sequence, when Ms. Grant says "You want fame? Well fame costs. And right here's where you start paying. In sweat...." I guess I'm dating myself. But anyway, like that. You know what I'm talking about. And it's not all strenuous exertion. You do have those light-bulb moments when stuff starts to add up. And when you get one of those after you've really worked for it, you'll know you have it forever.

Yes, by some of the best directors working today. Evan Yionoulis and Mark Brokaw attended Yale in the mid-eighties and created the technique from what they learned in classes with David Hammond and Earle Gister. Mark has directed many, many successful Off-Broadway and Broadway productions, including This is Our Youth (with Mark Ruffalo, before he was Mark Ruffalo), How I Learned to Drive (with Mary Louise Parker), As Bees in Honey Drown (with J. Smith-Cameron), and many, many others. Evan recently directed The Violet Hour on Broadway with Robert Sean Leonard, and is a longtime collaborator with Patricia Clarkson, who attended Yale in the same period as Mark and Evan and studied the same technique. Mark and Evan taught the technique for more than ten summers with the Yale Summer School Acting Program, and both went on to teach it at the Yale School of Drama.

Class meets for three hours a week. Students are expected to meet for 90 minutes a week with their scene partners. For the first 6 weeks, there are assigned readings that take up to an hour a week. In addition, all students should plan on spending around two hours a week studying the play they are working on, analyzing it, daydreaming about it in a productive way, and otherwise preparing to rehearse. So all told, around eight hours a week including class time. It lessens a bit half way through the course once the assigned readings end, but eight hours is the neighborhood you need to be in consistently to make the course a meaningful experience for you.

No. Everyone participates in exercises in the technique portion of the class (see about the class). But you present your scene only twice over the course of the cycle, in addition to Session 10, Friends and Family night. When you go up in class, I spend about an hour to an hour and a half working with you and your partner. This is anything but your typical scene-study-class-10-minutes-of-superficial-feedback-thanks-next type of arrangement. I work intensively with you and your partner to come a few steps closer to fulfilling the necessities of your scene.

A consequence of this is that you spend a large portion of the scene study portion of the class observing your fellow students' work with me on the scene. And this is as it should be. This is how all of my significant acting class experiences at Yale were, and I believe strongly that it is the best way to conduct such a class. Having a longer session when you go up means that there is depth to the feedback you are getting, and when you are observing, you can watch how engaging the principles taught in the class takes your colleagues one step closer to fullfilling the scene, and absorb it all in a more relaxed frame of mind than when you go up. Students constantly tell me: "You know, it's when I am watching that I really start to put things together." You are not in that deer-in-the-headlights kind of headspace, and as a result you are in a better position to connect the proverbial dots. Trust me: it works.

ALSO: It is usually possible to take on a second scene if you are interested. This means twice as much rehearsal and preparation time outside of class, but you will also be able to get up twice as many times over the course of the cycle.

The goal of the technique I teach is to produce viscerally compelling, lucid performances, NOT intellectual performances. On the way to the lucidity part, though, you are going to need some smarts. Smarts are an important tool for every serious actor, conventional wisdom notwithstanding. Streetsmarts work as well as booksmarts, but you will need to be able to think things through. You'll need to be able to figure out how someone gets from point A to point B by passing through point J and point ZZ on the way. And you're also going to need some serious thoughtfulness and introspection to get at the single hot, visceral need that drives the character at every moment, which is the cornerstone of the technique I teach. The goal is ultimately to puncture your intellectual understanding of the character and his or her world and get at something RAW, but we need to have something to puncture first. The only way out of your head is through your head. Shall we?

FREE SCRIPT ANALYSIS WORKSHOP: Thursday night, March 7.

RSVP here to obtain a slot.

Normally:

I'm afraid not. If you take the course, you'll find out that you have to abide by a fairly rigorous attendance policy: only one absence over the course of the ten weeks. This helps assure that the people in the class are present consistently, a key element in creating an environment where people feel safe to take risks and leap into the freedom we all know as children. Having people outside the class drop in periodically to scrutinize what we are doing does not contribute to this kind of atmosphere. BUT, you can have a coffee date with me, and I'll talk to you about the class at length. This should give you some sense of the class. I can provide you with the email addresses of students who can talk to you about how the class has served them. And finally, there's the payment structure: the class is on a pay-as-you-go basis, so there is nowhere near the kind of risk you find in most classes, where you have to pay in full before starting. If you have a good hunch about the class, then you don't lose much by giving it a try, even if you find it's not to your liking. You can always opt out. It doesn't tend to happen, though. People who are serious about acting, and have taken the trouble to make sure they have the bandwidth to take on something like this, and are ready to work, inevitably find the class to be an exciting and valuable challenge. Come give it a try.

Depends on what you mean by method. The word "method" is sometimes used to distinguish between ANY Stanislavsky-based work on the one hand, and older styles of acting which were only concerned with "external" concerns such as articulation, intonation, gesture, and alignment or posture on the other. In other words, "method" is sometimes used to mean any approach in which the inner life of the actor while acting is considered to be of paramount importance. In that sense, the approach taught in my class most emphatically is and should be seen as "method." However, "method" is also often used (the two usages make for a lot of confusion) to mean the type of work engendered by Lee Strasberg, based on some explorations he saw Stanislavsky conduct when he visited him in Russia. This work is known as "emotional memory" work, and the idea is that the actor, while rehearsing or performing, is attempting to relive a particular emotionally compelling event from his or her own past to generate behavior and feeling somehow appropriate to the moment being created by the writer. In this sense, my class is definitely NOT "method acting." In my class, acting is viewed as an attempt to enter and experience an imaginary or fictional world, and the emotional responses to that world are born out of the present moment, and out of the work the actor has done to invest this world and the people who populate it with importance for himself or herself. The actor's personal past is important as part of his or her PREPARATION process, but is not a part of the rehearsal or performance process. In my class, while in the rehearsal process or in performance, we want you firmly and solidly rooted in the here and now. What's past is prologue, as the man said.

No. The Advanced class is not a class for actors at a particular level of proficiency; it is a class that creates an opportunity for people who have spent some time acquainting themselves with the approach taught here at Mother of Invention to be able to work together. There's a lot of great training and experience out there to be had, but until you have gotten to know what THIS way of working is all about, you won't be a fit for the Advanced class.

Email me at actbetter@utteracting.com to arrange to meet for coffee. This is not an interview. If you meet me for coffee, and hear my explanation of the expectations and workings of the class, and you feel it's a fit for you, you will be welcome.

No larger than 12 students.