SeattleActingSchool.com

Seattle Acting School - The Program

The Seattle Acting School program is highly successful. Our members work professionally in theater, film and voice-over.

There are only two things taught at The Seattle Acting School: one simple acting exercise and an approach to script analysis. Students teach themselves to act, through correct practice. Progress is made through practice. Those who practice with the greatest frequency, make the fastest progress.

The Seattle Acting School program is progressive. Like barre work for the dancer or scales for the musician, students master the fundamentals through disciplined practice. Learning to act, like learning to write, is a process of self-discovery, developing imagination, and practice in expressing oneself clearly.

The Seattle Acting School Program is best for suited for serious students who aspire to work as professionals.

The program works this way:

1. BEGINNING
   (7 to 10 months)
   
   The Beginning work starts by establishing a connection between the actors and allowing them to discover what being connected can do for them emotionally. They do that by really listening to, and putting all their attention on, the other actor. To that connection they add some difficult activity, which they must really do, for a meaningful imaginary reason, to discover what that can do for them emotionally. Along this process of discovery a regimen of practice is established that leads to habit building. By building a foundation of habits in being connected, really doing something, working emotionally, responsively, and without preconceptions, these beginners are on an approach toward having a real experience, under imaginary circumstances, every time they act.
   
   
2. INTERMEDIATE
   (12 to 14 months)
   
   The Intermediate work begins by adding Emotional Preparation to the routine established in the Beginning work. Adding a playwright's text, and Emotional Preparation, while maintaining the integrity of the Beginning work, makes the Intermediate level the most difficult of this approach. Scene work is begun by introducing a specific rehearsal process that allows the actor to discover a personal, emotional understanding of any given situation. By practicing this process with a dozen or more scenes the actor builds practical skills toward auditioning and problem solving. This rehearsal process evolves into our unique improvisational approach to creating scenes, one-acts, full-length plays, monologues, one-person shows, shorts, and feature-length movies.
   
   
3. ADVANCED
   (On-going)
   
   Now that the actor can function spontaneously and instinctually, and knows how to bring clarity and meaning to a scene, we can deal with interpretation. The Advanced work begins by learning a specific process for extracting the acting from the text. The actor learns how to bring his or her personal, artistic interpretation to every job, to the extent that every acting assignment, every film, play or audition, is a fully realized effort. Characterizations, accents, impediments and all the details of working out a part and a scene are formalized. The Advanced work includes scene nights, plays, and our own television and film projects. For the working actor ours is an ideal situation. The studio becomes the place where you can work out whatever problem a script or Director presents you. Having a home base to return to between professional assignments is an enormous benefit for the working actor. Securing paid, professional acting jobs is a requirement of continued Advanced study.

A more detailed look:

The Seattle Acting School program works the same way for every student. First, you watch a class and see if it interests you. If what you see is stimulating and makes you want to get up there and begin, you probably have a talent for acting. Talented people are immediately drawn to this way of working.

The Seattle Acting School program is not for everyone. Many, watch a class, see that it takes real effort and commitment, and are immediately disenfranchised. They especially don't like that people are having real emotional responses instead of faking, forcing, or indicating. They don't like that this way of working is instinctual and not planned out in advance.

After watching a class at Seattle Acting School, and speaking with the teacher, most people start with the next scheduled class. It stands to reason that the first class would be the absolute, bedrock fundamental of acting. The thing the actor must do in every acting exercise and job from t! hat day forward. That fundamental is, listening. That's what you learn to do in the first class at Seattle Acting School.

By putting all your attention on your fellow actor and really listening to what they say, and how they say it, your real responses just pop right out of you. There are some who try to make up clever things to say, others will attempt to manipulate or indicate some reaction, but it's easy to get back on track just by listening to, and putting all your attention on the other person. With all your attention on the other person you cannot be self conscious.

The first few subsequent classes at Seattle Acting School add simple things to listening. Responding truthfully is usually the second class. I say, "usually," because some people fail to practice between classes. That holds up progress.

The approach at Seattle Acting School demands a serious work ethic because acting demands a serious work ethic. You will not have learned to be an actor if you have not been trained to have a serious work ethic. That is a large part of this training. Failure to practice, with fellow classmates, between every class, makes clear that the student is not serious and must take classes elsewhere.

If all goes according to schedule, by the third class at Seattle Acting School we can introduce a personal point of view. Now, you're practicing listening, responding truthfully, and taking things personally when you act. You're building the foundation at this point. With these things as your fundamental way of working you have something truthful and human to build your acting on. That's what all the great actors do. They may have different names for what they do but for the purposes of your training this is how we talk about acting.

In the next class at Seattle Acting School we lay the groundwork for 90% of every acting challenge. To the listening, taking personally and responding truthfully we add noticing the behavior of the other person. You must become an expert at this. This is the thing that keeps all your acting spontaneous and inspired. This is the thing that allows for your freedom when you act. Keeping all your attention on the other person is the thing that keeps your acting going "moment to unanticipated moment." You may have heard that phrase before, this approach allows you to practice doing that until it's second nature to your acting.

At Seattle Acting School we practice everything from the first four lessons for a few classes, exclusively, until those fundamentals are rock solid. Now, slowly, we begin to add difficulties to those fundamentals. First, you'll practice the fundamentals while you're doing something. Whatever you're doing it has to be truthful, that means you're really doing it. Acting means "doing." By being truthful about what you're doing, by really doing the thing, you're again doing what all great actors do. You'll practice all that for several weeks until you've got the hang of it.

From now on, in every practice, in every class, you're expected to bring something to do. Since, in nearly every scene ever written, you're either doing something or trying to get something, we add coming to get something from another person.

Now, the Seattle Acting School approach begins to take on the structure of a scene and a real acting exercise. Someone is doing something while someone else is trying to get something from them. Both are listening, taking personally the behavior of, and what's being said by, the other person and responding freely to that behavior and verbiage in every new moment. We practice all those things until there is a kind of "muscle memory" to the exercise. With practice, all of those things become automatic when you act.

Finally, we add meaning to the exercise. Because the actor has to have a powerful imagination this begins to develop your imagination and allow for you to invent meaningfully around imaginary circumstances. Again, this is fundamental to every acting assignment you will ever encounter so it's in every exercise at Seattle Acting School. You will always be working in imaginary circumstances when you act and you will always have to have a personal reason you are doing whatever the author has written for you to do. So, we practice that, in an exercise, like dancers, musicians, or bodybuilders, until you're having a real experience under imaginary circumstances every time you get up to work. You're already doing what all great actors do.

The class is very supportive toward your struggles with this, having done it all themselves, but no one seems to ever have answers for any of your questions. This approach cannot be explained intellectually. This is a completely organic approach dependent upon your talent, imagination and work ethic. Trying to figure out the training at Seattle Acting School is as much a waste of time as it is a waste of energy. Practice with others from your class will do more toward your understanding than analyzing ever will.

The period of time we practice this exercise is completely dependent upon the individual. Everyone progresses at their own pace. Although, as mentioned earlier, the more you practice the faster you progress. You learn to act in your practice sessions. Classes are to make sure you're practicing correctly and to add new things as you become proficient with the last addition.

After seven to ten months, depending on the individual, we can begin to add text to the exercise. Your first two or three scenes round out your first year, as well as, the beginning level of this approach. The intermediate level of this work is the hardest.

The intermediate level of the approach at Seattle Acting School begins with the addition of another element fundamental to the professional actor: emotional preparation. Emotional preparation exists to answer the acting problem of (fancy word) pre circumstancess. Just like it sounds,pre circumstancess are the events which have taken place before the actor walks on stage, unseen by the audience, but specific, imaginary and meaningful. This tool allows that the actor will never show up on stage to be in a scene but has always just come from some specific imaginary circumstance into a specific imaginary circumstance.

Hopefully, you will never in life have to meet the emotional demands of a scene written for an actor to live out. If, in the scene, you are asked to confront your mother about poisoning your father after having just been reprimanded by his ghost, you have to enter in a specific state of emotional life. You can't just generally show up to say lines when it's your turn. Emotional preparation gives you a healthy technique by which you can be truthful to the circumstances and the humanity of the event.

Since the exercise we employ at Seattle Acting School is an exercise for the actor, emotional preparation demands that you strengthen your imagination. These are your personal imaginary circumstances. At no point are you to dredge up some horrible memory from your past, nor are you ever asked to reveal something personal to the class, this approach will not make you neurotic or be a testing ground for amateur psychology. We work, as the actor works, in imaginary circumstances. Meaningful, most definitely, but imaginary and specific.

After months of practice with the basic exercise, written text, and emotional preparation the Seattle Acting School exercise begins to make the year-long evolution into our unique improvisation. Once this improvisation has been applied to a dozen or more scenes it begins to make sense on a personal level. That is, you understand it, you couldn't explain it but you understand it. It's second nature to you now. What started as a set of rules became a set of habits, those habits became your technique, a technical way of solving specific acting problems. You practiced that technique until it became second nature, your way of working when you act. You have trained for two and a half years. You could quit now.

The advanced work at Seattle Acting School is emotionally demanding. It begins though with a deliberate and necessary shift in the way we approach the text. We will always use the improvisation that came out of the intermediate work but we are now working toward clarifying the moments of the text and clarifying the human experience of the story.

By spending as much time reading the script as the author spent writing it you learn a lot. But, if your audition is in two hours and you want to go in prepared you can call someone from class, get together, clarify the moments of the text together, do an improvisation toward the scene, and in an hour you will have done some real work that prepares you fully for your audition. Your work and your confidence will reflect that. You'll be working the way a real professional works. After two years of this the advanced work at Seattle Acting School answers the needs of the professional actor.

This is not all we do in the Advanced work at Seattle Acting School. It's required to have several advanced projects on going. Plays and independent film projects are created and produced by our advanced group via the most exclusive acting company in Seattle, Bare Knuckles Acting. It is our position that unless a school can produce, from it's own numbers, professional level productions for the public it's not worth much.

The practical experience gained from these efforts gives our students the confidence and acumen to handle any audition or acting assignment. Toward giving these projects some real content we begin to create short, one person plays via the fantasy exercises and full length, full cast, projects which come out of our improvisations toward Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology. For the benefit of our students we have built a working theater where we present our plays for the general public.

The entire process at Seattle Acting School takes about six years to complete. Once this is learned, to this degree, you will not lose it and you will only become stronger with each new acting assignment. This approach trains you to be a whole actor, working with the freedom of an artist, the technical accomplishment of a classical pianist and the literary understanding of the dramaturge.

Many people see that "six years" commitment as daunting. Six years is nothing in the lifetime of the actor. Acting has a twenty year apprenticeship. You're not required to study with us for six years. There is no commitment made to the school at all; no contract, nothing to sign. You study with us as long as it profits you. After the first two years the fundamentals are in place and you could quit knowing that your instincts, talent and training have been integrated.

The absolute bedrock of the approach at Seattle Acting School is the principle that "Art expresses human experience." Everything we do goes toward that principle. Understanding that phrase is your six year mission.