Weapons training for actors. Learn how to sword fight for stage and screen. Practice safety protocols for working with prop guns on set. Expand your special skills as an actor training with the Sordelet, Inc. team, who bring decades of experience and expertise in the field of safely creating extraordinary fight scenes with weapons.

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• Registration Prerequisite: Some stage combat experience recommended but not required.

The extremely practical acting exercises found in Uta Hagen’s world-famous books, Respect for Acting and A Challenge for the Actor, probe the depths and heights of human behavior. They offer the actor a structure for lifelong practice exploring the dynamic interaction between sensory/emotional experience and the creative imagination. Uta Hagen’s approach to acting works. She challenges the actor to develop skills continually. She offers avenues of creativity that, with an open imagination and expanding sense of self, are unlimited. Her ongoing process of self-observation and self-discovery fortifies your ability to respond truthfully, dynamically, and vividly with fellow actors, releasing unpremeditated truthful behavior in performance. Over time, you find yourself creatively alive and present in the process. Taught by Kelly Wolf, who trained directly with Uta Hagen. Held at HB Studio, the birthplace of the Hagen exercises.

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• Required Reading: A Challenge for the Actor by Uta Hagen.
• Prerequisite: Open to all. 

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. 

Voice Over director Theresa Buchheister has directed and sound-engineered 100s of audiobooks, including How Music Works with Andrew Garman, The Perks of Being a Wallflower with Noah Galvin, Leaving the Sea with Brian Hutchison, Lydia Davis Collected Stories with a variety of actors, Wild Boys with Luis Moreno, and many, many more. Theresa has narrated (under their name and a pseudonym) over 50 books, including erotica, young adult and educational texts. Over the course of this workshop, Theresa will introduce you to the basic skills and valuable practices of audiobook voiceover performance. First, we will start at the very beginning: genre differences, preparation questions, common terms, valuable warm-ups and tricks, differentiation from other areas of voice acting, what your voice is best suited to, focus and clarity, and more. Next, we will put these into practice: subtle shifts in vocal characterization, flow and breath, dialogue pacing, tonal qualities within genres. You will be sent away with homework – selecting books that are a good fit for your voice – and you will have the opportunity to perform an in-class, expanded audition. We will start and stop, make adjustments, and get a clean take of your pieces.

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• Registration Prerequisite: Open to all.

Communication and Presentation Skills are required at various professional levels, as well as in everyday situations. Executives, educators, team leaders and managers, can all benefit from sharpening communication skills. A great message can get lost if the delivery is less than impactful. Whether the goal is to persuade, inspire, inform, tell a story, or offer a toast at a wedding, this course will offer tools to help you speak with confidence and clarity, and make an impact. You’ll learn about the importance of delivery, how to refine your message, learn strategies for working with visual aids such as PowerPoint, and how to engage your audience – whether on Zoom, in the conference room or on a stage. Lead by Theresa McElwee, a voice and speech coach who works with actors, broadcasters, news anchors, and corporate clients.

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• Registration Prerequisite: Open to all.

This 5-week intensive introduces teens (ages 14-17) to physical acting, expressive movement, and silent storytelling. Each class builds skills in body awareness, character creation, and nonverbal communication — boosting confidence, focus and creative freedom in young actors. This class will include building skills in movement basics, silent expression, stage awareness, and body awareness. You will learn to move safely and clearly on stage and explore stage directions, entrances and exits. You will learn the art of communicating without words using gesture, emotion and visual expression. You will develop clear emotional expression, and practice readable gestures and facial expressions. We will practice building characters from the outside in, exploring how posture and rhythm create character. We will also practice the skills of finding occupation while waiting, silent storytelling, structuring a silent scene, and working within an ensemble.

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• Registration Prerequisite: Open to all teens aged 14-17 years old.