The New Actors Workshop
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The New Actors Workshop
The New Actors Workshop was a two-year acting conservatory in New York City founded by Master Teachers Mike Nichols, George Morrison and Paul Sills in 1988. The school offered a unique, dual-track curriculum combining Stanislavski-based technique with Viola Spolin Theater Games. The workshop stopped accepting students in 2010. The founders Sills, Morrison, and Nichols enjoyed a long association dating back to the 1950s at the University of Chicago. Their experience convinced them that there was a unique value for the actor in the double challenge of performance improvisation and Stanislavski-based training, and they founded The Workshop specifically to offer this powerful experience to a new generation of actors. Performances There were different types of performances throughout the year in which students participated. Friday Night Improv Students of the workshop played Spolin theatre games for an audience. These shows were free and open to the public. Scene Nights At ...
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Acting School
A drama school, stage school or theatre school is an undergraduate and/or graduate school or department at a college or university; or a free-standing institution (such as the Drama section at the Juilliard School); which specializes in the pre-professional training in drama and ''theatre'' arts, such as acting, design and technical theatre, arts administration, and related subjects. If the drama school is part of a degree-granting institution, undergraduates typically take an Associate degree, Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Fine Arts, or, occasionally, Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Design. Graduate students may take a Master of Arts, Master of Science, Master of Fine Arts, Doctor of Arts, Doctor of Fine Arts, or Doctor of Philosophy degree. Entry and application process Entry to drama school is usually through a competitive audition process. Some schools make this a two-stage process. Places on an acting course are limited (usually well below 100) so those who fare best ...
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George Morrison (director, Acting Teacher)
George Morrison (1928 – June 28, 2014) was one of the leading teachers of acting in the United States. Early life, education and military service Morrison was born in Evanston, Illinois. He attended the public schools there and started acting in the pioneering children’s theater headed by Winifred Ward. By age 13 he was playing Tom Sawyer in an elaborate production with the adult roles being played by Northwestern University students. On graduation from high school he spent three summers in a Pennsylvania on-week stock company directed by Alvina Krause, where he played parts ranging from Ernest in ''The Importance of Being Earnest'' to Shylock in ''The Merchant of Venice''. He served two years in the United States Army, and graduated with a Ph.B. from the University of Chicago. It was here that he began a lifelong friendship with Mike Nichols and Paul Sills. He also attended the Yale Drama School as a director and came to New York City in 1953 where he studied in Le ...
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Mike Nichols
Mike Nichols (born Michael Igor Peschkowsky; November 6, 1931 – November 19, 2014) was an American film and theater director, producer, actor, and comedian. He was noted for his ability to work across a range of genres and for his aptitude for getting the best out of actors regardless of their experience. He is one of 17 people to have won all four of the major American entertainment awards: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony (EGOT). His other honors included three BAFTA Awards, the Lincoln Center Gala Tribute in 1999, the National Medal of Arts in 2001, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2003 and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2010. His films received a total of 42 Academy Award nominations, and 7 wins. Nichols began his career in the 1950s with the comedy improvisational troupe The Compass Players, predecessor of The Second City, in Chicago. He then teamed up with his improv partner, Elaine May, to form the comedy duo Nichols and May. Their live improv act was a hit on Broadwa ...
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Paul Sills
Paul Sills (born Paul Silverberg; November 18, 1927 – June 2, 2008) was an American director and improvisation teacher, and the original director of Chicago's The Second City. Life and career Sills was born Paul Silverberg in Chicago, Illinois, to a family who believed in the teachings of modern-day Judaism. His mother was teacher and writer Viola Spolin, who authored the first book on improvisation techniques, ''Improvisation for the Theater''. Spolin in turn was the student of play therapy theorist Neva Boyd. In 1948, Sills enrolled in the University of Chicago, where he established himself as a director, co-founding Playwright's Theater Club. There, with fellow actors Edward Asner, Byrne Piven and Zohra Lampert, they blended Spolin's improvisational techniques with established theater training. In 1955, Sills and David Shepherd founded the Compass Players, the first improvisational theater in the United States, where he directed Shelley Berman, Mike Nichols and Elaine Ma ...
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Acting Conservatory
Acting is an activity in which a story is told by means of its enactment by an actor or actress who adopts a character—in theatre, television, film, radio, or any other medium that makes use of the mimetic mode. Acting involves a broad range of skills, including a well-developed imagination, emotional facility, physical expressivity, vocal projection, clarity of speech, and the ability to interpret drama. Acting also demands an ability to employ dialects, accents, improvisation, observation and emulation, mime, and stage combat. Many actors train at length in specialist programs or colleges to develop these skills. The vast majority of professional actors have undergone extensive training. Actors and actresses will often have many instructors and teachers for a full range of training involving singing, scene-work, audition techniques, and acting for camera. Most early sources in the West that examine the art of acting ( grc-gre, ὑπόκρισις, ''hypokrisis'') di ...
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New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the List of United States cities by population density, most densely populated major city in the United States, and is more than twice as populous as second-place Los Angeles. New York City lies at the southern tip of New York (state), New York State, and constitutes the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban area, urban landmass. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world's most populous Megacity, megacities, and over 58 million people live within of the city. New York City is a global city, global Culture of New ...
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Konstantin Stanislavski
Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski ( Alekseyev; russian: Константин Сергеевич Станиславский, p=kənstɐnʲˈtʲin sʲɪrˈgʲejɪvʲɪtɕ stənʲɪˈslafskʲɪj; 7 August 1938) was a seminal Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Soviet Russian theatre practitioner. He was widely recognized as an outstanding character actor and the many List of productions directed by Konstantin Stanislavski, productions that he directed garnered him a reputation as one of the leading theatre directors of his generation. His principal fame and influence, however, rests on Stanislavski's system, his "system" of actor training, preparation, and rehearsal technique. Stanislavski (his stage name) performed and directed as an Amateur theatre, amateur until the age of 33, when he co-founded the world-famous Moscow Art Theatre (MAT) company with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, following a legendary 18-hour discussion. Its influential tours of Europe (1906) and ...
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Viola Spolin
Viola Spolin (November 7, 1906 — November 22, 1994) was an American theatre academic, educator and acting coach. She is considered an important innovator in 20th century American theater for creating directorial techniques to help actors to be focused in the present moment and to find choices improvisationally, as if in real life. These acting exercises she later called Theater Games and formed the first body of work that enabled other directors and actors to create improvisational theater. Her book ''Improvisation for the Theater'', which published these techniques, includes her philosophy and her teaching and coaching methods, and is considered the "bible of improvisational theater". Spolin's contributions were seminal to the improvisational theater movement in the U.S. She is considered to be the mother of Improvisational theater. Her work has influenced American theater, television and film by providing new tools and techniques that are now used by actors, directors and writ ...
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University Of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the best universities in the world and it is among the most selective in the United States. The university is composed of an undergraduate college and five graduate research divisions, which contain all of the university's graduate programs and interdisciplinary committees. Chicago has eight professional schools: the Law School, the Booth School of Business, the Pritzker School of Medicine, the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, the Harris School of Public Policy, the Divinity School, the Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies, and the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering. The university has additional campuses and centers in London, Paris, Beijing, Delhi, and Hong Kong, as well as in downtown ...
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Diane Paulus
Diane Marie Paulus (born 1966) is an American theater and opera director who is currently the Terrie and Bradley Bloom Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University.Colleen Walsh"Paulus reaches beyond boards" ''Harvard Gazette'', April 23, 2009 Paulus was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for her revivals of ''Hair'' and '' The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess'', and won the award in 2013 for her revival of ''Pippin''. She received the 2009 Harvard College Women's Leadership Award and the Columbia University IAL Diamond Award. She was selected for the 2014 ''Time'' 100, ''Time'' magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world; as one of ''Variety'' "Trailblazing Women in Entertainment for 2014"; ''Boston'' magazine's "50 Thought Leaders of 2014"; and ''Boston'' magazine's 2018 and 2020 "100 Most Influential People in Boston". Early life and education Paulus was born in New York City in 1966, the daughter of ...
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Hair (musical)
''Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical'' is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by Gerome Ragni and James Rado and music by Galt MacDermot. The work reflects the creators' observations of the hippie counterculture and sexual revolution of the late 1960s, and several of its songs became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement. The musical's profanity, its depiction of the use of illegal drugs, its treatment of sexuality, its irreverence for the American flag, and its nude scene caused much comment and controversy. The work broke new ground in musical theatre by defining the genre of "rock musical", using a racially integrated cast, and inviting the audience onstage for a " Be-In" finale.Pacheco, Patrick (June 17, 2001)."Peace, Love and Freedom Party" ''Los Angeles Times'', p. 1. Retrieved on June 10, 2008 ''Hair'' tells the story of the "tribe", a group of politically active, long-haired hippies of the " Age of Aquarius" living a bohemian life in New York C ...
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Ricki Noel Lander
Ricki Noel Lander (born December 14, 1979) is an American actress, model, designer, and entrepreneur. Early life and education Lander grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah. As a child, she was active in dance, musical theater, and acting. When she was 15, she moved to Los Angeles, California, and trained with the Los Angeles Classical Ballet and later toured Japan as a dancer. She graduated '' cum laude'' while attending on Academic and Artistic scholarships from Florida International University in Miami with a Bachelor of Arts in Dance and a Bachelor of Science in Mass Communications. She later studied at Mike Nichols' New Actor's Workshop in New York City and at Uta Hagen’s HB Studio also in New York City. Career Television and film She has appeared in the television shows ''CSI: Crime Scene Investigation'', ''Ugly Betty'', ''Dirt'', ''The Class'' and '' Prison Break''. In 2011, she played a goblin disguised as a fairy in the fourth season opener of the HBO series ''True Bloo ...
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