Teaching

This last Saturday I conducted an acting workshop at BYU. It was pretty successful. I had approached Barta Heiner, the head of the acting program at BYU, about doing a workshop to cover some of the things I learned while doing the Stanislavsky Summer School. She agreed and set up a time and booked a rehearsal room for me. I initially wanted to conduct it for the Teaching Assistants in the program and then focus on the exercises that Misha taught us, hoping that they would take them and use them with their students. I decided to open it up a bit more and invite anyone from Classical Acting and Auditions who would like to attend as well. It turned out to be a good thing as only 3 TAs came, one classical acting student, and actually two other students who just heard about it. So we had six, myself, and Barta.

I was nervous preparing for the workshop. I had three hours to try and give them a taste of what I had learned in five weeks. I decided to do a couple of exercises and then broke things down into a few different sections: action, events, given circumstances, imagination, and observation. I spent some time on each one talking about its importance and running a few exercises to reinforce the concept. All in all it went really well. I was pleased with the participation of the students and with how things moved along. I certainly learned a lot from this experience. There are many things I will do differently next time I teach a similar workshop.

Speaking of doing another workshop I'm hoping to start doing after school workshops at local high schools. Perhaps once a week. I want to do this for a number of reason. I love teaching for one. I love coaching and assisting young artists in understanding themselves and their art better. While at BYU I was a teaching assistant for three different acting classes and I loved it. I also got to teach two workshops at the Playmill Theatre's Summer Camp when I worked there two summers ago. I learned so much by helping others refine their craft and deepen their art. I realize that I have a gift for this and I really enjoy doing it (for example, I'm loving directing "Uncle Vanya" right now).

So, I got to thinking, why not make money doing this? I could hire myself out as a coach for young actors in the area. I particularly want to reach out to high school actors and help them out. I've created an ad on CraigsList, but haven't done much advertising yet because I'm still not sure where I'm going to be able to do this. I do have a friend who has a studio in the area and so I'm going to talk to him about possibly using his space to meet with clients/students. I'm in the beginning phase of this endeavor, but I really hope it goes somewhere. Wish me luck!