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My Approach

Long Form Improv

Private Coaching

​Testimonials

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MY APPROACH

 

Over the years I've trained in and explored many different acting techniques and approaches. Each has given me valuable tools. Rather than commit exclusively to a single method, I've found myself returning to whatever best serves the actor, the story, and the moment.

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For me, techniques aren't destinations. They're tools. The goal is always the same: helping an actor live truthfully inside an imagined world.

 

Since I began this journey many years ago, I've found myself returning to the same handful of principles.

 

Acting, at its best, isn't about trying to express emotion or manufacture interesting behavior. It's about becoming deeply involved in an imagined world until truthful behavior begins to emerge on its own.

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Experience comes before expression.

 

One of my specialties is helping actors turn abstract ideas into lived experience. Together we explore objectives, relationships, character, shifts in intention, and the many layers of performance until they become something you can actually inhabit rather than simply understand.

 

An idea must become something a human being can actually live.

 

A script gives us information, but information alone doesn't create life. Together we discover tangible experiences that ground you in the reality of a scene—what you're noticing, responding to, needing, fearing, hoping for. The words become connected to a living world.

 

I don't teach actors how to perform a scene. I help them discover how to live inside one.

 

When you're genuinely involved in what you're seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and doing, your attention naturally shifts away from presentation and toward experience. That's where truthful behavior begins.

 

My job isn't to give actors emotions. It's to help them discover worlds worth responding to.

 

When actors become deeply involved in the reality of a scene, and fully invested in what matters most to their character, emotion doesn't need to be chased or manufactured. It grows naturally from that involvement. Emotion isn't something the actor adds to the scene. It's something the scene does to the actor.

 

Those ideas have shaped every class I've taught and every coaching session I've led over the past three decades.

 

Perhaps the clearest expression of them is a class I've taught for many years called Long Form Improvisation.

 

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LONG FORM IMPROVISATION

 

The structure is simple.

 

After a guided meditation for relaxation and creativity, a warm-up, and a few exercises for outward focus, we create improvisations grounded in realism that unfold over twenty to sixty minutes. Occasionally, when the work is particularly rich, we'll let an improvisation continue much longer.

 

The length of the improvisations isn't what makes the class unique.

 

It's where we place our attention.

 

Each actor chooses one layer of performance to explore throughout the improvisation.

 

This approach grew out of my work with the remarkable teacher Nola Chilton, who encouraged us to commit deeply to the elements of performance rooted in authentic human behavior. Over the years I've adapted the approach, but the core layers remain:

 

Intention. Relaxation. Breathing. Listening. Sense of Place. Stillness. Relationship. Character.

 

In much of our work, there's very little time to settle in—to breathe, let go, listen deeply, and discover a richer relationship with the world and the people around us.

 

Long Form Improvisation gives us that time.

 

Imagine spending forty-five minutes simply listening.

 

Not waiting to speak.

 

Not trying to be interesting.

 

Not searching for the next moment.

 

Just listening.

 

The dialogue continues.

 

The story continues.

 

Life continues.

 

But for that actor...listening becomes the work.

 

Look closely at the photograph above.

 

Every actor is sitting in the same movie theater.

 

Watching the same film.

 

Sharing the same imaginary circumstances.

 

Yet each is experiencing that world through a different lens.

 

One actor has committed completely to listening.

 

Another is exploring breathing.

 

Another is discovering a deeper sense of place.

 

Another is allowing relaxation to become tangible.

 

The remarkable thing is that, although each actor is concentrating on just one layer, the others begin to deepen almost automatically.

 

Presence grows.

 

Relationships become more specific.

 

The world becomes more inhabitable.

 

The goal isn't to create a polished performance. It's to discover what happens when attention remains fully committed to one aspect of truthful human behavior.

 

Again and again, we discover that this kind of sustained outward focus deepens presence, opens us to genuine experience, and creates performances that feel lived rather than performed.

 

One of the most rewarding discoveries is that, once you've found that state of openness, you don't have to recreate it every time.

 

The work becomes part of you.

 

Quietly supporting the performance while your attention remains free to experience the life unfolding around you.

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PRIVATE COACHING

 

Every actor arrives with different goals, different strengths, and different challenges.

 

Some are preparing for an important audition.

 

Some want to deepen their craft.

 

Others simply want to reconnect with the joy of the work.

 

Private coaching allows us to meet wherever you are and build from there.

 

Depending on your needs, our work may include:

• Audition Preparation

• Scene Study

• Character Development

• Observation & Sensory Work

• Script Analysis

• Improvisation

• Relaxation & Guided Meditation

• Creative Choice-Making

• Self-Tape Preparation

• Monologue Coaching

 

Sessions are available individually or as discounted coaching packages. I also offer private workshops and small-group classes.

 

Please feel free to reach out for current rates or to talk about what you're hoping to explore.