Mother of Invention Acting School, Los Angeles:
Yale MFA director Andrew Utter offers reasonably-priced acting classes in Hollywood / Los Angeles and San Francisco based on his training at the Yale School of Drama with Evan Yionoulis and Earl Gister. The course is aimed at the serious student of acting, advanced or beginner, who wants to reflect on his or her craft and scrutinize his or her notions of what acting is about. His class will help students of all levels to do this. The technique he teaches is Stanislavsky-based, but the most important insights he offers are refinements or radical clarifications of Stanislavsky arrived at by his teachers at Yale. These insights have not yet been written about to speak of, and are not widely known. You need someone to make it live before your eyes. A few topics covered in the class may be somewhat familiar to the experienced student, but everyone will encounter several very provocative challenges to their notions of the craft of acting over the course of the ten weeks, guaranteed.
Email: Contact us here ( or request a callback )
Location:
The classes take place at The Complex, Hollywood in 6476 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles and Mama Calizo's Voice Factory in 1519 Mission St, San Francisco.
Course in Essentials:
The purpose of the course is to make available to you the acting technique I learned at the Yale School of Drama. acting class group The technique is presented through exercises, discussion, and scene work. The exercises are carefully-crafted, purposeful, exciting explorations that are designed to give you an experiential grasp of the elements of the technique taught in the class. Discussions elaborate on the principles presented in the exercises. Also, the technique portion of the class includes a weekly 
body work component, designed to help the actor build awareness of habitual physical tensions and the ability to let those tensions go.
The goal of the scene work is to help you, the students, see how the tools and principles of the technique function within the context of practical work. Andrew in action in classYou work on one scene for the duration of the course. When you go up in class with your scene, I spend an hour or more with you and your partner to help you identify and fulfill the next aspect of the scene that confronts you. You'll rehearse with your partner every week outside of class, and each week you'll have provocative new tools that you encountered in the last class to try out in your rehearsals. At the end of ten weeks, you will have come a long way towards making a character come alive and illuminating his or her experience. You will present the scenes at Session 10, "Friends and Family Night", an informal open house where a supportive group of well-wishers gather to show an interest in the work you have been doing. You will leave the course confident in the knowledge
that you know how to approach work on a role. The rest is up to you!
Advanced Workshop:
Students who have participated in two ten-week cycles of the course are eligible to join the Advanced Workshop, which is offered in addition to the Monday night class periodically according to demand. Andrew in action in class In the Advanced Workshop, first and foremost, we continue to develop our facility with the skills and principles presented in the Monday Night class. Students are admitted to the Advanced class not because they have necessarily reached a level of skill in their acting but because they have achieved some comprehension of the approach taught in the Monday Night class. In addition to working to hone skills as described above, typically in scenes from Chekhov, in the Advanced class we look at the problem of verbally dense material and vers
e drama, and students work on Shakespeare monologues.
The Advanced Workshop affords highly dedicated students of acting who share a way of working the opportunity to work together and be challenged by rich, demanding dramatic works.
The Company:
In the future, students who have completed the Advanced class twice will be eligible (by invitation) to participate in 10-week cycles in which students work together with me on a single play. There will be an informal presentation at the end, with the possibility of presenting a full productions for particularly promising projects. All participants (including myself) will pay only for space rental-- there will be no tuition for participation in the Company. One can join a company cycle for 10 weeks at a time, with no further committment required.
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