The Completely Ridiculous Curriculum

At the CRC we are constantly expanding our team of teaching artists as we continue to grow and diversify our curriculum. We are committed to hiring working professionals in the field, and in doing so our curriculum continues to shift in order to meet the needs of both students and teachers.

The Gray Area

with Reese Antoinette

Before we take on the lives of our characters, I invite you to take on your own life. And instead of being caught on the ends of America's divide, I invite you to dive into the middle. The gray area, the path to understanding the complexities of our identities which will inform both the art and the artist. Who are you? This class will use The Black Arts Movement and modern works in TV, Film and Theater to explore how image, language, body, and class may affect our identity.

The Game of the Self Tape Audition

with Sebastian Arboleda

Have you ever built a fort? How did you know how to make it? Did you have a book of instructions, a map, an instructor? Did you have any idea what you were doing? And was it fun?? What if the construction of a self-tape could be just as fun as building a castle from an unknown magical world? What if we handed over the keys to the child in all of us - that little person who can’t see over the wheel, has no idea what’s on the road ahead, but is excited to venture into the unknown. To drive. In this class we will work together to deconstruct and demystify the self-tape audition. Each student will have the opportunity to find their own process and approach, all in order to lead with hope and make bold choices meant to leave a lasting impression.

How to Begin: The Art of Embodied Text Work

with Josiah Bania

How we initially approach text can have an outsized impact on our auditions, rehearsal processes, and performances. Over the course of the class students will learn practical tools for how to approach text holistically, inviting the text into the body starting day one of rehearsal. We'll deconstruct the often academic approach to text analysis, and learn how to approach our work in a way that's both more efficient, and healthier for ourselves and others.

Character and Energetics

with Ato Blankson-Wood

In this class we will focus in on the physical and energetic body of each actor as a means of exploring and building character. Through the practice of mindful meditation, exploration of the 7 chakra centers, and use of the physical forms of the Grotowski technique, students will be given the means to make unexpected and innovative choices when building character and in collaborative spaces.

Devising Tools

with Emmanuelle Delpech

What does it mean to devise theatre? It means the performer becomes an actor-creator who writes on its feet with an ensemble through improvisation!
Improvisation is a muscle that needs work. How do we improvise together and are able to both be a writer and an actor? What rules help us understand how to begin? How to move a moment forward and then into the next? How do we continue to find the motor of each moment? What role rhythm plays in creating theater? What does it mean to listen and react to the other bodies on stage? This class will initiate you to the pleasure of creating work with an ensemble, write on your feet, work in groups and create new theater that will allow new voices to be heard. Through different exercises we will observe and discover and then use a few tools that will help you become a better theater maker.

The Body in Dialogue: A New Approach to Shakespeare

with Joby Earle

Thinking and feeling are not limited to the small space between our ears - our experiences express themselves throughout our whole body. This class will help actors embody intellectual ideas by heightening awareness of the chakra system. Each session will begin with a psychophysical warm up, followed by individual monologue work. Students will work on a speech from the Shakespeare canon to fold in their new awareness and understanding of where these words, ideas, wants and desires may be living inside themselves, and what centers they are hoping to affect in their partner.

Alexander Technique for the Actor

with Tracy Einstein

In this class we will start by settling and organizing the body. Then, in pursuit of our inherent support through alignment, we will look to let go of unnecessary tension, thus opening ourselves to greater flexibility, vulnerability, spontaneity and PLAY.

Improv

with Ralf Jean-Pierre

Discover an approach to improv comedy that will fill your pants with giddiness and your heart with wonder! Eliminate that pesky, stinky pressure to be a genius, and instead find freedom in your magnificent dumbness! Unlock a playfulness and collaboration so honest, so personal, so beautifully stupid, that it inspires cascades of real, snorting, quivering, gut-busting, belly laughs! You will make people laugh til they snort! And you will tell them, “I heard you snort!”

Russian Études

with Annelise Lawson

Études are a rehearsal tool developed from Stanislavski’s final experiments. This course seeks to foster a dynamic interaction between actor and text. Through a series of exploratory improvisations called études, actors unpack and personalize the given circumstances — following their own impulses to achieve profound and thrillingly original interpretations. The course focuses on how to activate “bookwork” through imagination, awareness, and sense of spontaneous play. The method gives students practical tools to pull even the most intimidating texts off their pedestals and make them their own. Students will gain confidence in the legitimacy of their own impulses, having followed their interpretations of text and character to the furthest possible point.

Sourcing Self

with Chalia La Tour

A 4 class intensive on honoring the wealth that is the actor’s unique lived experience as a foundation for empathetic exchange and a basis for infinite imagination. Through monologue exploration participants will gain tools in personalization, explore the concept of experiential text analysis, and strengthen their ability to use their own humanity to give life to text. The goal is to empower the actor to embrace the fullness of their lived experience paired with their imagination as their greatest asset.

The Fun of Failure

with Gabriel Levey

Through games, original song writing, improvisation and a couple of fundamental clown exercises, Completely Ridiculous students will strengthen their ability to listen; to play without shame; to be generous with others and themselves; to be courageous and vulnerable enough to fail, fail again and then fail better. We're also going to have fun, like a lot of fun, maybe too much and then a little more. And laughter, lots and lots of laughter - all in pursuit of unfettered joy, radical acceptance and Empathic Vulnerability: the willingness to fully see an other and be fully seen by an other, all while staying open to the possibility of being changed.

Acting as Play

with Gabriel Levey

A Clown-based Scene Study class?? You got that right bucko!!
Harness your beautiful little idiot's relentless pursuit of fun in order to take big risks before feeling “ready”; put logic aside to make way for a highly imaginative physical appetite/objective; embrace the precarious pleasure of not needing to know what’s coming next; find fun in whatever given circumstances the character has no choice but to endure; and always lead with hope, regardless of the inevitable disasters laid out in the text. Picking up where the Fun of Failure left off, in this class students will continue to explore their capacity for Empathic Vulnerability - this time with text.

Wellness Practice

with Annie Piper

A qigong and yoga based movement practice that helps each individual to unpack habituated patterns of tension. Cathartic, compassionate and immediate, this practice will put you into a flow state, down-regulate your nervous system, quiet your mind and open your heart.

Embodying Circumstances

with Devin Shacket

In this non-traditional scene study class, students will have the opportunity to dive fully into a practical and immediately applicable script analysis technique. Largely innovated by Academy Award winning actress, Olympia Dukakis, during her 50+ years both teaching and acting, the 5-step process we will work with in this class teaches actors to viscerally engage with the thoughts on the page. Punctuation marks become keys to character, and each phrase becomes an opportunity for a new physical and emotional experience. ‘Where does the text take you?’ will be our baseline question, and the foundation on which all other work in class stands.

The Actor as Generator

with Arturo Luis Soria

A shot of espresso for the actor-writer, this class is geared to those looking to shake up their creative processes. Over the course of six weeks, students will learn new approaches to writing ensemble and solo material, gain tools for developing original characters, and generate new material for future performance. Through the exploration of movement, improv, writing, solo performance, and more, this course is intended to push actor-writers out of their comfort zones. No need to come with an idea of what you wish to create, just bring an open mind, playful attitude and movement pants.

Theater as Encounter: Towards an Anti Racist Theater

with Storm Thomas

How can we begin to create a theater that is, at the very minimum, an encounter that does not harbor white supremacist tactics? This course will attempt to move toward answering that very question. We will use musical theater history as the basis for our exploration and students will be asked to consider how theater has been an agent of oppression. Through personal reflecting, writing and group discussion students will be practicing and defining their own path toward an anti-racist theater process.

A Very Special Writing Class

with Claire Titelman

A Very Special Writing Class (or Claire’s Writing Cult), is a playful and challenging class with weekly exercises and writing prompts — that run the gamut from surreal to straightforward, very deep to very dumb — will encourage you to get out of your head, delve into your unconscious, and develop your authentic voice, leading to vulnerable, funny, fierce, strange, and surprising work. Each week, we’ll subvert elements of memoir, theater, fiction, and other genres to help inspire creativity, with a curriculum that’s designed for artists of all kinds: writers, comedians, performers, filmmakers, visual artists, and non-artists interested in exploring creative expression. Dropouts, shut-ins and people picked last in gym class are welcome!*

*Jocks, geniuses and the well-adjusted also welcome. This is an inclusive class.

Monologues from BIMPOC Playwrights

with Zenzi Williams

In this class, you will learn about the BIMPOC playwrights who have paved the way, as well as those who are currently making their mark in our community. We will explore this work with a sense of play, and openness and most importantly gratitude. You will leave this course with monologues for your repertoire, techniques in pursuing your objective as well as tips on self-taping in order to prepare you for the future of our industry.

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