Method
Our program revolves around a method designed from Stanislavsky, Meisner and David Mamet. It is a method now taught at The Atlantic Theater Company in NY, NY among others.
The technique we teach revolves around playing an action rather than recalling an emotion. The actor should create a need in the scene and then use different tactics to attain that need. They would base their success solely on the behavior of the other person in the scene.
An in-depth description of the technique may be found in The Practical Handbook for the Actor and David Mamet's True and False. But for our purposes we will only be giving a brief summary.
Our classes are specifically designed to train the actor to identify and eventually habitualize those things which will prepare him/her to participate fully in any scene, finding a way to live truthfully under imaginary circumstances. We are not concerned with the manufacturing of emotion or the manipulation of the scene for a desired effect. We concern ourselves solely with that which is practically applicable to the job of the actor. By giving oneself something physically doable that he/she has a personal investment in for every scene, the actor will always have something more important to focus on than the success or failure of his/her own performance. Our credo is simple: Be interested, not interesting.
There are two main focuses in the studio—Action and Moment. The Action is the physical, repeatable process of pursuing a specific goal, what we call the Need. This is also referred to as Objective, Intention, Motivation, etc. Moment is what is actually happening in the scene you are playing at any given moment. It is the goal of this class to train the actor to prepare so that he/she may improvise onstage while sticking to the given circumstances.