The Actors Craft 2: The Moving Target: Process and the Scene Partner
(Basic Meisner Intro, Rehearsal Lab, The Moving Target and Circumstances. Quality of contact, listening, rehearsing, negotiating circumstances from two POV’s.)
Dates: March 20th, 22nd, 27th, 29th, April 3rd and 5th. (Wednesday and Fridays)
Time: 6:00PM - 10:00PM
4 hours x 6 Sessions = 24 Hours of Class Time
Location: 863 Broadview Ave. 2nd Floor. Toronto, ON. M4K 2P9
Cost: $548 all-inclusive
To Sign-Up: email manager@performanceatelier.ca with
A recent photo / or an actor headshot
CV / or a Brief Bio / or a Creative Resume
We’ll get back to you ASAP and move forward from there.
With the habits of locating active choices, we now venture into the realm of the moving target – a scene partner! This course is the perfect precursor for the Scene Study Lab if you don’t yet have a practice, or if you want to dive deeper into the process of working with a partner. We will be doing variations of basic Meisner work as a portal into active listening, and behavior, while sustaining the same commitment to the circumstantial imaginations rooted in text and truth.
This work will be beneficial for both on-camera and stage actors as organic contact between scene partners will be the focus, as well as building awareness of scales. Good acting is good acting is good acting. When we introduce medium specific conventions, we tend not to have the space and time to address underlying phenomena in craft that dictate the results you’re going to get. We will have a follow up course that transfers these skills into both mediums, once this foundation is established.
Actors and Directors Intensive Cohort Summer 2023, Atelier Toronto
The Actor’s Craft-1: Anatomies of a Text, Embodied Circumstances, Investment, Attention and Channeling Passions
Embodying circumstances and doing truthfully (With monologue as a vehicle. Not a “stage acting class” at all though!)
with Eugene Ma
Founder of Performance Atelier & former faculty member at Columbia University’s Graduate Acting Program, Yale School of Drama, and Dome Studio, Beijing.
Dates: February 14th, 16th, 21st, 23rd, 28th, and March 1st
Time: 6:00PM - 10:00PM
4 hours x 6 Sessions = 24 Hours of Class Time
Location: 863 Broadview Ave. 2nd Floor. Toronto, ON. M4K 2P9
Cost: $548 all-inclusive
To Sign-Up: email manager@performanceatelier.ca with
A recent photo / or an actor headshot
CV / or a Brief Bio / or a Creative Resume
We’ll get back to you ASAP and move forward from there.
This course is designed for those who want to finally take the plunge and rigorously learn OR for the more seasoned who wish to refresh on the foundational elements of acting. The goal of this course is for an actor to be able to fully live through a sustained, imaginary journey and circumstances with a strong understanding of attention and target.
We work with a monologue to juggle with those elements and dive into flow, a basics of Stanislavsky’s system, and practical and visceral script analysis done in a way that fuels the actor from the actor’s POV. This class stresses an embodied approach to text analysis by being on our feet and finding triumphs in uncovering a text’s humanity through moment to moment circumstantial discoveries. We are very process and awareness driven in this foundational course, as we believe that the ultimate performance is a manifestation of your approach, and if we work on coaching the result and merely redirect, authenticity and spontaneity stemming from the circumstances may not happen as reliably. Foundation is what everything is built on. And we go deep into the roots of the foundations at the Atelier.
The Actor’s Craft-3: Rooting in Humanity via (& despite) the Lens
A.k.a. maintaining integrity and grounding in text with external requirements to hit for the camera
Presence and Impulses (We want to get to the next level with presence and transformation now that we know the rules to the game. We are back in to find ultimate freedom and satisfaction by breaking some of the circumstantial rules we learned, to get closer to our impulses and how we respond in more extreme scales and freedom. And hopefully to find, at the end, having unlocked habits we can’t address in a scene study class.)
with Eugene Ma
Founder of Performance Atelier & former faculty member at Columbia University’s Graduate Acting Program, Yale School of Drama, and Dome Studio, Beijing.
Dates: February 17th and 24th, March 2nd and 9th
Time: 1:00PM - 6:00PM
5 hours x 4 Sessions = 20 Hours of Class Time
Location: 863 Broadview Ave. 2nd Floor. Toronto, ON. M4K 2P9
Cost: $495 all-inclusive
To Sign-Up: email manager@performanceatelier.ca with
A recent photo / or an actor headshot
CV / or a Brief Bio / or a Creative Resume
We’ll get back to you ASAP and move forward from there.
In Craft 3, we work with actors who are already able to breakdown and digest a text, cause change in a scene within given circumstances, and are generally responsive to their partners. Establishing these essential and challenging bases will not be the focus of this module. We address the specific transference when we adjust scale and target from simple human contact that serves a story to the scale of a screen — especially for actors who are not yet able to rediscover the contact and pleasure when they rehearsed in a theatrical scale.
We begin this module looking at scene or monologue work previously done in an acting class or show, with a first pass similar to how we do a usual studio class. We then identify the essential elements that were impulsively thrilling and legible in storytelling, and find personalized strategies to meet the external awareness the lens demands.
We expect a working understanding of action analysis and visceral circumstance work in Craft 1; paired with an active contact and complicity with a partner in Craft 2. If those ideas do not seem familiar in idea, and more importantly in your body, you may want to revisit those classes. Craft 1 is secretly one of the more difficult and thorough class as we strip away a scene partner, and have the most time to dive deepest in detail as to conjuring and prioritizing textual clues into grounded stimuli that viscerally works for you.
THE ACTOR’S CRAFT 1-2-3-4-S
In the CRAFT series, we “ACT”! The actor in a craft class is always encountering written material: a text, a script, a physical score even; and a target: a scene partner, a camera or an imagined stimuli. The thing you came here to do!
Embodying circumstances and doing truthfully (With monologue as a vehicle. Not a “stage acting class” at all though!)
“Pre-Scene Study”: Working with a Partner (Quality of contact, listening, rehearsing, negotiating circumstances from two POV’s. )
Presence and Impulses (We want to get to the next level with presence and transformation now that we know the rules to the game. We are back in to find ultimate freedom and satisfaction by breaking some of the circumstantial rules we learned, to get closer to our impulses and how we respond in more extreme scales and freedom. And hopefully to find, at the end, having unlocked habits we can’t address in a scene study class.)
Scale and containers: Transferring humanity on Camera
S. Special topics in Craft will include classes with Eugene and/or guest instructors that dive into specific topics: Physical Comedy and Text, Melodrama across mediums, Transformations with Dialect, Intimacy Scene Study; Classes centered on specific aesthetics like Sit-Com, Suspense, period work and styles with dialect support…