Stage Director, Master Teacher
There is much talk at the Met these days about the importance of recruiting “singing actors” instead of “park and bark” performers. Vivien Schweitzer, New York Times: September 24, 2009
My master classes are designed to develop techiques in people who intend to make their living from a career in the Performing Arts. I believe in aiding a performer not just to be accidentally or sporadically creative, but to be Successfully Creative: structuring independence by developing skills that allow artists no longer to need constant supervision and direction. My particular focus is to explore performance techniques from a unified physical, dramatic, and vocal standpoint. This is a true marriage of Voice, Acting, and Movement Techniques, creating speech or singing as a consequence of movement, movement that is nourished by vocal techniques, and creating the “Behavioral Life” of a character in action.
Acting is a whole area that’s been underemphasized in voice training…Their stage Guru? Chuck Hudson [whose] classes have also given [the singers] a safe place in which to make mistakes, learn through them, and to be comfortable… on stage. Holly Johnson, Seattle Opera’s Young Artist Program in Sforzando Magazine
…The American theatre abounds in skillful movement teachers, fight choreographers, specialists in mime and modern dance and classical commedia, as it does in stage directors full of novel interpretive ideas. But not one in a hundred possesses, as does Hudson, the ability to infuse movement with intelligence, to make ideas flesh. Roger Downey, Seattle Weekly
What does the performer do with the body on stage when s/he is not dancing, fighting, or doing acrobatics? “What do I do with my hands?” and “How should I stand?” are signals that the performer is not comfortable with his/her body; How and why a person moves the way they do is linked with finding ways to create action and overcome obstacles on stage. Drawing on traditional and contemporary European schools of thought, these master classes will dynamics, rhythm, and the use of three-dimensional movements, aiding in the union of the words, music, and the performer’s entire self.
The world of Opera in changing: Producers and Directors constantly insist on singers having the same level of control over their acting abilities as a speaking actor does, or as the musician has over their musical instrument—yet rarely does anyone provide singers with the tools they need to meet these demands and to be successful in this field.
Each master class will be divided as follows: Psychophysical warm-up, study of a particular technique, utilization of this technique in an improvisation or scene work, group discussion and the critical process. A variety of my own technique documents will be designed and generated to meet specific needs.
See a list of available master classes.