The reasons I teach are twofold: one, out of gratitude to my two great teachers, Uta Hagen and Sanford Meisner, and two, out of my observation that many actors are suffering from a confusion about what it is they are really meant to be doing.

The main emphasis of this class is to define clearly what the actor’s job really is.

Often actors confuse what they are doing with what the character is doing, enmeshing themselves in a tangle of belief and tiring themselves out with the attempt to engender the appropriate feelings for the scene. Belief that you are the character is impossible to have or to sustain – you don’t know Ophelia, and you didn’t go to high-school with her. Feelings are transient, fleeting as a breeze, and cannot be relied upon as a solid ground to work from.

What we do is not the same as what we appear to do. In truth, we perform illusions, much like magicians. What the audience sees the magician doing is not what the magician is actually doing. We don’t need to believe we are the character any more than a magician needs to believe he is really pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

Sanford Meisner designed a simple and elegant system to help actors distinguish the words of the playwright from what the actor is doing in the scene. We have to delve into not so much what is being said, but why. Failure to do this enslaves us to the text – we feel obligated to narrate or give meaning to the words - to be happy on the happy lines and sad on the sad ones. Acting this way (I am this character and I so want to tell you how I feel about this) pushes an audience right out of the theater. The actor who is clear about his action and what that action means to him is in the driver’s seat, and can use words like collage material, to serve the purpose of what he wants to accomplish. We can play an action no matter what we are given to say. And when we are pitted into any action, we will always, inevitably, feel.

The final emphasis of this class is to show actors the high road – that acting is at heart a spiritual profession. When we act we give. We put our attention on another person first, and take the eye off ourselves. All drama is based on love. Otherwise everyone would just leave the stage.

Drama appears to be the realm of conflict. In fact, the opposite is true. Our only weapons are generosity and authenticity. As actors we are always creating order and balance, opening and expanding our awareness of what’s possible, increasing our strength and capacity to let life unfold.