For professional performers who desire to return to, or maintain an ongoing relationship with a dynamic and fertile state of learning. The goal: to use the specifics of language, action, subtext, circumstance, and relationships in order to connect with the work at the deepest most personal level. You are encouraged to push boundaries with the aim of building ever more complex characters and situations, allowing and exploring what is powerfully, unexpectedly revealed. Expected rehearsal time outside of class: 6+ hours / week

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• Prerequisite: Open to Acting Level Studio Practice (Level 4). New to HB? Submit online for level placement.

You apply advanced lessons in technique and text analysis to the preparation, rehearsal, and presentation of scenes from a range of contemporary and classic plays. The work may incorporate Modern (19th/early 20th century) and Classical texts, as well as heightened, non-linear, experimental and Contemporary material. Scenes are presented in class for critique, then reworked to explore and apply feedback. Extensive research, preparation, and rehearsal are expected outside of class. Skills: understanding and realizing the event of the scene; layering conscious and unconscious behavior; applying technique as a tool to solve challenges outside your comfort zone; transformation of self. Through extensive examination, research, and experiment, you discover and rediscover the level of action and commitment needed to fulfill the form and idea of the play. Expected rehearsal time outside of class: 3-6 hours / week

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• Prerequisite: Open to students placed at Acting Level 3 and up. New to HB? Submit online for level placement.

Training in voice work begins with the cultivation of deep physical awareness. Specific attention will be given to how the body—bones, muscles, breath, and nervous system – relates to healthy vocal production and vocal freedom. Examine how it feels to stand on your feet. Learn about how you live in your body, how you relate to your head and neck and shoulders. Discover how this affects your use of voice and influences healthy vocal spontaneity and expressiveness. Develop curiosity about these sensations and the circumstances and habits that affect them. Work through specific exercises to develop a Level 1 vocal and creative warm up sequence that will become your ongoing practice. Through your warm up become used to the process of checking in: recognizing and allowing the physical/emotional moment you are in and the circumstances that attend it, experiencing the moment, and working from it. Develop a relationship with the habitual patterns that influence how you engage with yourself–your skeletal and muscular structures, autonomic nervous system, your breath and your voice. Develop spontaneity, learning what it feels like to give in to a physical experience. With curiosity, explore and experience rigidity in the body through the release of tension, breathing, and spontaneous truthful sound. Learn the basic anatomy that supports breathing, sound making, and articulation in speech. Throughout Level 1 you are asked to discover your own process and be with others in theirs, so together the group develops a sense of what it means to be heard, seen and understood. This class employs the destructuring and restructuring processes of Fitzmaurice Voicework® devised by Catherine Fitzmaurice. Be advised that this Level requires time to master, and most actors will need a two- or three- term investment at Level 1 to develop awareness and become confident in these practices. All else in voice and speech work will build on this foundation.

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• Registration Prerequisite: Open to all.

The Fundamentals of an HB acting technique: Here, you develop the ability to respond truthfully, dynamically, and vividly with fellow actors and the ability to access sensory elements. You tap into the power of imagination and the reservoir of memory. You gain a working understanding of the terms: previous circumstances, destination, inner and outer objects, intentions, obstacles, and conflicts. You develop an awareness of the power, function, and dynamics of “place”, and learn to be in a state of discovery, which leads to actions. You develop tools of research and observation and you get comfortable improvising. You begin to measure yourself against professional standards and develop habits of discipline and a strong work ethic. Do understand that these practices take time to master. It takes about a year (20-30 weeks) at this level to really own the skills addressed. Further scene study or performance work will then take root in this fertile ground. 

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• Required reading: A Challenge for the Actor by Uta Hagen.
• Recommended viewing: Uta Hagen's Acting Class documentary. 
• Prerequisite: Open to all.

Held online via Zoom: Continuing film actors with some film experience will work at an advanced level. This is an opportunity for beginning film actors to start  learning the steps needed to prepare to work on a professional film set, and for the working actor with film experience to stretch, renew and risk. We will practice everything you need to own after the director calls, “Action!” Let’s integrate your imagination, voice, body, and acting techniques to allow your most truthful work to be seen by the intimate eye of the camera lens. Let’s find freedom, joy, and presence in the technical world of film. We will practice the art of bringing-it-all- together. We will incorporate self-filming as an integral component of this course. Actors will experience creating work through the practice of filming themselves, in class and at home. Expected rehearsal time outside of class: 3+ hours/week.

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• New Students must: schedule a Zoom meeting with Lisa Pelikan prior to your first day of class. Email her at lpelikan@hbstudio.org.
• Prerequisite: Open to Acting Level 2 and up. New to HB? Submit online for level placement. 

An introduction to the process of preparing and rehearsing a scripted text. Using Uta Hagen’s six steps as a guide, you will work to find authentic inner connection to the character’s details and circumstances and to choose truthful, effective and lively actions. A commitment to rehearse with partners outside of class is required.

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• Prerequisite: Open to all.

The essential forces and circumstances that underlie human behavior – and character behavior – are the same, but the way this behavior manifests itself can differ widely form medium to medium, or from one kind of material to the other. How is television and film writing different from theater writing? How are the storytelling mechanics different in live and camera performances? And how do these differences inform what we must do as actors to tell those stories? This class is dedicated to helping the working actor carry over their strengths and talents in theater into camera work. How do we maximize on our theater training when tackling television and film work? And how do we build new skills that the medium requires? And how can we help ourselves get rid of patterns that stand in the way of truthful acting in general? Taught in a hands-on environment, the class involves scene work, camera work, script analysis, and guided peer to peer discussions.

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• Registration Prerequisite: Open to all actors who have prior actor training or experience.

The Alexander Technique is a gentle method through which you gradually learn to free yourself from unconscious physical habits that limit your ease, versatility, and freedom. This course will inquire into and enhance your “body map” – your conception of your body, as a whole and in specific areas. As you learn to release the downward pressure of your head to your spine, become clearer about your joints and how they work, and understand the unity of your body/mind and how it functions as a whole, you will gain access to an ever-increasing sensory awareness. Bringing conscious thought and awareness to daily life will allow you to change the habitual behavior that creates unneeded tension. Posture and self-use become conscious and volitional, not habitual and rigid. This translates to a greater possibility of fully embodying characters whose physical life is different from your own while maintaining healthy use of your body. Natural free use of the breath is addressed as a result of freeing the whole self, supporting your voice work.

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• Prerequisite: Open to All