Driving Miss Daisy photo (c) 2008 by Tina M. Harris"I go back to the (Actor's) Studio every chance I get. You never stop learning and you never stop needing to learn. And you can't learn in front of a camera. To grow, you need the stage." Robert De Niro on Inside the Actor's Studio
I don’t know Robert De Niro, but I do know a lot of actors like him. Excellent professional actors who have never stopped needing or desiring the opportunity to practice and study their craft. Perhaps, more than anything else, this is why these actors have built successful careers.
I have been lucky to have had several great experiences working with many of the terrific community actors here in Central Oregon and have nothing but respect and admiration for what they do. And they do what they do more for true love of theatre than for anything else. The community theatre is the backbone of theatre in America. It builds the audiences, keeps alive the great canon of theatrical literature and contributes to the training of theatre professionals to be. Chris and I believe ITW has an opportunity to add real value to the community theatre scene by providing access not only to our experience, but to the experience of other professionals in town and those that we bring in to work on our productions.
When I talk or work with the actors here in town, I am left with the impression that they all want to become better, more focused actors. Indeed, I am blessed to have developed a core of people who have been mainstays in the workshops I have offered. But that group is small and has not grown much since the very first workshop 2 years ago. And I wonder about that. I believe that you can never stop growing as a theatre artist, but I’m not sure others feel the same. ITW recently offered 4 workshops led by some very excellent professionals with much to give both in talent and experience, but we were forced to cancel them all for lack of enrollment. There are also other classes being offered by Film Oregon Alliance, COCC and elsewhere, but our understanding is that these others are most often populated by people who have not been prominent players in the community theatre world.
So we’d like to ask you -- what prevents you from taking a class? Please help us out by taking a moment to fill out the adjoining survey. Innovation Theatre Works is here to serve this community and we can best do that by applying our own expertise where it will do the most good.
Brad
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4 comments:
I am a firm believer in education. I know, from personal experience, that taking a class in whatever field one wishes to excel in is, in many cases, beneficial. I have acted in local productions, and while I am not averse to taking classes from ITW or any other organization that offers them, I have found that, at least in my case, I always gain an education while garnering experience from the directors and fellow actors with whom I work in a production. Please understand that I do not feel this means I would not benefit from classes such as those offered by ITW. I do, however, feel that the experiences associated with putting on and/or being in a production have helped me to grow not only in my experience, but in my skill as an actor as well. I look forward to being able to afford the time to be in a production in addition to being able to afford the time and expense of taking outside classes such as yours, but for now, my other commitments allow me to choose only one. As a result, I have decided to continue honing my skills both on and off stage through the production rather than the classroom process. Perhaps others have made this same choice for similar reasons.
Thanks for that thoughtful response. My guess is that yours is a fairly common situation, we all only have so many hours in the day. If you ever find yourself not in a show and itchy to do some work, I hope you'll consider taking one of our workshops. The experience is quite different from being in a show and allows actors the opportunity to learn in an unpressurized and highly forgiving setting. Quite honestly the best work I've seen here has been in my workshops from people stretching themselves beyond their comfort zones. And it then shows up quite startlingly on stage, as I was witness to during the recent "All My Sons".
So Mr. Hills, what did you think of "All My Sons"?
All My sons was one of the better productions I've seen here. It had some of the usual problems associated with CTC shows that give directors fits (primarily an overbearing set that, while pretty to look at, severely restricts playing area and places an unnatural emphasis on the least used playing areas, in this case the porch and screen door). Juliah Rae did a terrific job, again, one of the best I've seen here. She handled the inherent challenges of the play very well as well as the added challenges that come from working in the CTC environment. There was also some of the best acting I've seen here. Ricky Minder and Nick Saraceno leading the way followed hard upon by Ron McCracken(the VERY BEST work I've seen from Ron) and Caleb. From there the acting quality dropped way off. Mostly displaying the usual beginner acting problems of waiting for it to be your turn to talk rather than actually listening to what is going on and responding. It was an interesting experience to watch the show because you could actually see the difference in acting quality from scene to scene. The big confrontation scene with Rickey, Nick and Caleb absolutely crackled beacuse they were so in tune with each other and actually listening to the scene unfold. Truly the first scene from the community theatre world that I can say soared.
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