Who is TheatreWorks? I could go into a long explanation and bore you to tears about who we are and how we got started… I could give you the blow by blow of the creation and evolution of the original organization from New York, tell you how it has grown, what it's doing and where it's going… I could mention the fact that it was created by the Schaap family in 1966 and go on to say how Barbara Schaap, the school's founder, was trained at Julliard and at the American Theatre Wing…

I could give you just the facts and tell you that over the years the school has trained hundreds of actors, thousands actually… done hundreds of productions with a repertory house as a non profit organization funded solely by the public. I could go on to list productions that have been on regional, off and off off Broadway stages as well as on radio and television. In addition, I could list the actors that have gone on to do commerials, television, theatre and film.

I could go on to say how from the mid seventies to the mid eighties I was the managing director of the theatre company as well as the associate director of the school. Would you stop reading if I told you that in collaboration with the artistic director, we created a program which became accredited by the New York State board of education… I could also add that as a result of this accreditation, the school and myself were sought after by different school systems in New York to bring our program to their curriculum.

So, aren't you glad I didn't bore you with all those details!!! Instead… I'll simply say that in the early nineties, after moving to Montreal for personal reasons, the desire to teach inspired me to create Theatre Workshop Productions Montreal, which eventually became TheatreWorks.

So who are we? We're an organization dedicated to offering workshops and training to the professional actor. Our goal is to teach the art of acting and to prepare the actor for a flourishing career in the entertainment business.

Ever since the first written approach to acting was put down on paper by Constantine Stanislavski, written techniques and approaches to acting have sprung up all over the world. The creators of these techniques taught them in a school format that they claimed as their own. But in all honesty, and to give credit where credit is due, all contemporary acting techniques owe their thanks to Constantine Stanislavski for creating the foundation of the contemporary acting approach.

From Europe to Asia, and in the America's, you will find a multitude of techniques on how to act. However, with the introduction of the camera and how it has evolved acting from the silent movies to today, the critical eye of the audience keeps being refined.

It is because of this refined eye and because the increased level of intelligence and expectations on the part of the audience, that the professional actor must constantly strive to create a true moment of life.

That is where TheatreWorks comes in! What we teach is nothing new. We didn't create it. We're not the only ones to say it or teach it… However, what we've done is put together all the teachings and knowledge we've accumulated, simplified it, broken it down into common sense and made it accessible to anyone with the passion to act.

Acting is simple. Acting is life. If you can be in your life while it happens, then you can, with the right skills, create a character and live in their life while it happens to them. So acting is a layering of learned skills applied from life to create life. Let me elaborate.

We wake up in the morning and we go about living our day. We behave one way with our mate, another with our parents, our friends. Our siblings have a way of bringing us all the way back to childhood. And of course, at work, we have a different face all together. We're already acting and we haven't done anything, except life.

But so many people go into this field and are always looking for something to "act". They get very intellectual about what it is to be in the character's life. They use all kinds of sense memory to try to remember what things feel and look like. They try desperately to recall an emotion, they strain and struggle to say a line just the right way; Just the right way; Just the right way; Just the right way;

They work so hard that they take all the fun out of acting. They intellectualize it. So only one with a master's or a Ph.D. in philosophy can truly understand the text(!)… And why? After all, if we're doing a theatre piece, they call it a play… If we get into a movie, what we'll be working on is a screenplay… When we're given a role in either of these venues, we are told that they want us to play this part. Even in rehearsals, when the director explains what they want us to do, they usually say: "O.K., lets play with that…" So if everything about this is play, why is everyone getting so serious?

But I digress. Lets truly understand what the definition of an actor is. Webster's Dictionary says, in definition 2A: "One who represents a character in a dramatic production"; in definition 2B: "A theatrical performer"; and in definition 2C: "One that behaves as if acting a part."

All superficial answers… Obviously not written by an actor! A very wise person once said: "Acting is an insufficient word for what we do. Therefore, "actor" is an inaccurate title for who we are."

A CHARACTER'S LIFE IS INTERACTING. Everything in our life is interacting. We interact with the foods we eat and drink, the chairs we sit in and the furniture we use, the clothes we wear and the air we breathe… Basically, everything our five senses sense. If this is how we live in our life then shouldn't the character interact to create life?

"So acting is really interacting and an actor is really an interactor." You see, acting is not rocket science: it's really basic common sense. Just as in life, all we need to do is stay in open response to all stimuli, and our character's responses will be natural.

All my workshops are based on and developed to elaborate that philosophy. You are invited to read the workshops descriptions section for more details.