THERE’S ONLY LOVE: The End of Acting with MICHAEL PATRICK THORNTON

Before the final bows, before the preview and rehearsal processes and getting the job in the first place, there’s a step we often overlook: the opportunity to quietly and firmly articulate for ourselves why are we even going out there in the first place.

Why? And for whom? In the blur of a career largely out of our control, where is our art?

In this class, students will work on a scene and monologue, identifying and utilizing the powerful and maddeningly obvious hiding-in-plain-sight synchronicity in both their personal present-day reason for showing up and in the “character’s”.

We will discuss humbling ways of viewing your audience. We will illuminate how to gently use your great love of your loved ones, especially the departed, as your fuel and fabric; ghosts and memories as your scene partners pulling the very best You out of “you.” We’re reminded over and over that all we can really do is prep for the first entrance so that subsequent scenes will feel to us—as they do for our character—a journey of hard-hitting emotional surprise.

Here’s a hint about our first entrances: almost always, they have everything to do with love.