Teaching is my passion – right alongside directing. I have always been a creator and a teacher at my core and my need to continually learn, fuels me to be a better teacher every day. My teaching specialties are Acting, Audition Techniques, and Voice for the Actor.

My overall philosophy of teaching empowers my students to explore and discover. I pose questions that ask my students to become active investigators and use the tools that I give them as a starting point. As they they continue their learning and discovery process, I introduce more tools and concepts to them with the ultimate goal of training students to enter universities, graduate programs, and professional careers with a combination of valuable resources that were not only taught to them, but that were in many cases, self-discovered and practiced in the class ‘laboratories’ that I facilitated and evaluated.

A formal Philosophy of Teaching Statement that addresses the learning environment, varying learning styles, evaluation, participation, and respect of diversity and special needs is available upon request.

TEACHING ACTING & SCENE STUDY
While some might consider me a ‘jack of all trades’ when it comes to all of the theatre arts, I am actually a ‘jack of all trades and a master of one’- ACTING – or at least that is what my MFA degree declares. I draw my inspiration from my former acting teachers/coaches and my own experiences on stage and through research. For all levels of acting, I consider ‘good acting’ to be based primarily on the level of believability that the audience perceives from that actor in the given performance. This does not have to be about realism or naturalism – but it does have to be about an actor’s complete investment in their role and an unwavering commitment to allowing us to believe that whatever the world of the play is in which that character lives, it is real to them – and therefore, we care about what happens to them.

Acting is the one art form that uses humans as both its subject and its medium. Like any art form, it has many subjective qualities about it, yet many techniques and skills that can be assessed as a craft does. Some students of acting come to my class with a high level of innate talent and instinctual aptitude already, while others do not. What is important to me is to find the balance of talent and technique. There are techniques that need to be addressed and explored, even for the well-seasoned instinctual actor, so that when some strange moment on stage occurs when ‘talent’ does not come through to the actor when needed, technique is there for support.

The acting techniques that I teach have been learned through experience as a professional actor/director and have been handed down from my teachers who taught me the principles of Uta Hagen, Sanford Meisner, and Stella Adler, among others – all of whom based their teachings on the foundations laid before them by Constantin Stanislavki. Therefore, I believe the root of acting is the ‘passionate pursuit of an objective’ and the ability to ‘live truthfully under imaginary circumstances’. I base a lot of my teaching on the ‘what if’ logic of human behavior (what would I do if…) and apply that to character and situation. If I were to create a short checklist of what I think is important for actors in an academic setting acting class to know and/or experience, it would include:

   * Basic Acting Tools – The Creative Relaxed Self (body and mind)
   * Improvisational Trust, Playfulness, and Spontaneity
   * Human Observation and Awareness
   * Voice (Projection, Articulation, Freedom, and Range)
   * Physicality (Relaxed, Expressive, Full Range of Motion)
   * Geography of the Stage & Production Collaborators
   * Objectives/Obstacles/Actions
   * Play and Scene Analysis – units of action (beats/bits/chunks/units – whatever term you like)
   * Character Analysis and Creating a Character – who/what/when/where/why/for what reason
   * Acting Solo, Acting with a Partner, Acting in an Ensemble
   * Audition Techniques
   * Advanced Character Study and Higher Stakes, Risk Taking
   * Critical Thinking about Acting and Performance – being able to write about it

TEACHING VOICE, SPEECH, & MOVEMENT for the Stage
Voice – I am trained extensively in Linklater vocal technique and use it as a module in my acting classes when a dedicated voice class is not offered. Freeing the actor’s natural, uninhibited voice from deep within, frees the actor to be more spontaneous on stage and communicate with a wide range of vocal expression.

Speech – Edith Skinner is still considered a leading resource to ‘Speak with Distinction’ on stage. I modify her techniques slightly to adapt to contemporary regional actors and teach the IPA from a discovered approach rather than by rote, alongside Eric Meier’s lexicon for Accents & Dialects.

movement – I incorporate Mary Overlie’s original Viewpoints in some of my movement coursework and also use a Laban-based composition approach to awakening a wider scope of movement freedom in the actor.

OTHER COURSEWORK
I am comfortable and confident in teaching a variety of other practical and lecture-based classes that include: Advanced Scene Study, Styles for the Actor, Theatre Production, Directing, Audition Techniques, Improvisation, Devised Theatre, Playwriting, Theatre Appreciation, Stage Management, Shakespeare, and Musical Theatre.

Sample Syllabi available on request.