This scene study class is designed for students who have participated in one of Berkeley Rep’s previous Taste of Meisner or Meisner Technique: Repetition workshops, or actors who have previous experience with the Meisner technique. The seven weeks will build on Meisner’s foundational “repetition exercise” and start applying the same skills of attunement to text work with the concept of “conversational reality.”
Students will be assigned scenes and will gradually “grow a performance” in an organic, process-oriented way. Week by week, we will introduce tools of emotional preparation, objectives, actions, and particularizations as students carve out more meaning and specificity in their scenes.
Students should have some acting experience paired with a desire to deepen their listening skills, vulnerability, spontaneity, imagination, and sense of truth when performing in a scene. This course requires consistent attendance and significant work outside of class, including weekly rehearsals with scene partners and additional solo homework. Students will be asked to show up as the most authentic versions of themselves, with an openness to feedback and a willingness to look at the social habits and defenses that may be getting in the way of honest human connection.
Prerequisite: A short, informal interview is required to determine rightness of fit for this course. Interviews and registrations must be completed one week prior to the start of class. Selected students will receive a direct registration link.
Instructor: Carolyn McCandlish has taught at NYU Tisch, the Terry Knickerbocker Studio, Acting Studio Chicago, and The Actors’ Center D.C. She trained with Terry Knickerbocker as an actor then as a teaching apprentice in a two-year Meisner conservatory program. Some of Carolyn’s favorite credits are The Spoon River Project (Green-Wood Cemetery), Crimes of the Heart (Fable Farm), Stomp and Shout (Babel Theatre Project), Donnie Darko (American Repertory Theater), and the interactive 24-hour film Whispers in the Dark (Lincoln Center). She was a founding member of art.party.theater.company and the interactive improv ensemble Playing With Reality. BA from Harvard, MSW from NYU.
- Thu 6:30–9:30pm
4/9, 4/16, 4/23, 4/30, 5/7, 5/14, 5/21
$400