Whether for an audition or a role that you have already landed, the ability to deliver a captivating Shakespearean monologue is essential to performing the Bard's work. In this five week workshop, through monologues and soliloquies from Shakespeare’s plays, you'll learn how to liberate the poetry and feeling in yourself by using the essentials of classic drama -- rhythm, structure, passion, and ideas. We will mine the text for the specific sensorial and emotionally charged details that can stimulate lively, immediate, and grounded acting choices. As you rehearse your monologues in front of others, we will focus on the crucial process of building and revealing character. Combining the artificed rigor of verse with an unparalleled naturalism, Shakespeare urges us and teaches us how to become the complete actor.

• Learn more about the instructor.
• For the first day: Come prepared with a Shakespeare monologue of your choosing.
• Prerequisite: Open to all.

An intensive course of study for both the pre- professional and professional actor, meeting 2 days a week over 6 weeks. This powerful work relaxes the actor into the truth of themselves and removes impediments to an actor's effective use of their instrument. It explores improvisational exercises and scene work to improve concentration and responsiveness culminating in a scripted scene. The Meisner 6 week Intensive has launched the careers of artists such as Robert DuVall, Jack Nicholson, Diane Keaton, Jeff Goldblum, Sam Rockwell, and Anthony Hopkins.

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• Prerequisite: Open to Acting Level 2 and up. New to HB? Submit online for level placement.

Explore the powerful world of two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage through scene work drawn from SWEAT and CLYDE'S. Led by actor Reza Salazar, who performed in both original productions, this class gives actors firsthand insight into Nottage’s richly textured language, complex characters, and social urgency. The work emphasizes authenticity, emotional truth, and deeply grounded contemporary performance.

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• Prerequisite: Open to all. 

Over the course of this five-session workshop, Voice Over Director Theresa Buchheister will run you through a gauntlet of voiceover auditions, from cartoons to audiobooks to audio dramas to video games to commercials! So, even if you cannot attend all 5 weeks, you will get a workout! This workshop is open to those with VO experience looking to sharpen their audition skills, as well as to performers who are new to VO looking for an introduction to the craft. Theresa Buchheister has directed hundreds of audiobooks, cartoons and video games, including Cartoon Network’s Pokémon XYZ, Nickelodeon’s The Winx Club, and David Byrne’s audiobook How Music Works. As a performer, they have narrated countless audiobooks and textbooks, and voiced cartoon characters on Pokémon, The Winx Club, Milly, and many more.

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• Registration Prerequisite: Open to all.

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.
• Offered in two 5-week parts. Sign up for either part individually, or both for a full 10 week experience! 

This course applies the skills developed in Acting 1 and 2 to musical performance—to the presentation and articulation of a song, as it arises from the scene and from the life of the character. You will work to balance correct vocal technique and sound production with the effort to bring truth and specificity, both to the song and to the role. Class material addressed may include solo performance, duet, or group scenes and is appropriate for both the professional and aspiring singing actor in whatever genre you may choose to focus your efforts (musical theatre, opera, concert/cabaret). Accompanist provided. Come prepared with a song (memorized and with sheet music properly prepared and in a binder for use by the accompanist).

• Learn more about the instructor.
• Recommended reading: A Challenge for the Actor by Uta Hagen.
• Prerequisite: Open to Singing Level 2 and up. New to HB? Submit online for level placement.
• Offered in two 5-week parts. Sign up for either part individually, or both for a full 10 week experience! 

Vincent Pastore (THE SOPRANOS, CHICAGO, BULLETS OVER BROADWAY) will work with actors in this 5-week online (via Zoom) workshop to develop acting techniques and habits of preparation that will help you bring your acting skills to the demands of the business. You will learn to be organized and ready, to make strong and truthful choices, discovering the confidence and authority to stake your unique claim. When you audition or interview for a role, you may have just a few brief moments to show who you are and what you can do. You must have effective monologues prepared, be ready and able to improvise, be able to take a script apart and make it your own. It’s up to you to convince the people at the table that you will solve their casting problem. Once you have the role, you must be able to bring the character on the page to life, walking and talking. Mr. Pastore will work with you to develop your skills so that no matter the circumstances, you are able to claim your place in the room and make the role your own.

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• For the first day of class: Please prepare a 3-minute contemporary monologue to present
• Prerequisite: Open to all

Jessica Hecht leads this special 2-session scene and script analysis workshop. This workshop is 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. Note, this is not a performance oriented class, but rather a process oriented one.

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• Prerequisite: Application required. Applications are Now Closed