The Art of Acting in Real Life
(12 weeks, three hours a week)
The class is aimed at significantly improving the participant’s communication skills in a whole range of real life situations. It focuses on the enormous powers people have in their possession to present themselves, deal with obstacles and gain respect and admiration in any type of community. Through simple and enjoyable exercises the students learn how to emphasize their strengths, deflect the focus from their weaknesses and turn their imperfections into a natural part of their personal charm.
A Little More on Our Approach
Humans perform all the time – whether we admit it or not. The reflex for performance is deeply embedded in every one of us. The amazing speed with which kids learn about life is in part due to their playfulness, which keeps their minds open to new challenges. Isn’t it funny that even as the most vulnerable members of humanity, they often seem the best equipped against stress and depression? Kids live half of their time in alternative worlds, switching to favorite characters like we change hats. It not only boosts their creativity; it saves them from the often excessive burden of responsibilities we pile on them, and takes away the sometimes overwhelming feeling of the monotony of life.
We can’t reverse time. However, we can rejuvenate our outlook on life, and restore the sense of freedom through which we could both brilliantly display our knowledge and skills, and in a hostile situation preserve our inner integrity and even thrive from the challenge. If we could only know how to direct our innate performing reflex and adopt the “masks” which would both promote and protect us…
The Art of Acting in Real Life is a class for people of all ages who desire to enhance their presentation and communication skills within an unlimited range of real life situations, and strengthen their inner peace and harmony as a deterrence to the destructive influences of the outer world. Its basic premise is the most true-to-life approach: the natural laws of human behavior.
The class is not entangled in some obscure techniques serving as drapery in front of the challenges life serves us with. On the contrary: we are confident that like the mythological Antaeus, who regained his strength by staying in contact with the ground, every person would get stronger by facing the obstacles of life and challenging the seemingly insurmountable. That may be too hard and even impossible to achieve, unless the effort is a fact of art. Making art can be an enjoyable, refreshing, self-rewarding experience, especially if this art is acting.
The Art of Acting in Real Life gets people closely (and practically!) familiar with the art and science of acting by examining the relation between our psychological well-being and our simple everyday actions. Our behavior can serve both as a pedestal to our strengths and a remedy to our insecurities. In order to explain how to manage the portion of ourselves we mean to reveal, and how to protect our vulnerable sides, this class deconstructs human behavior in plain segments, such as attention, memory, imagination, etc., and works to elucidate the functional mechanism of these elements. The exercises which accompany this part of the process resemble the games we play for fun. The second stage gradually reassembles those segments into more complete modules, the most advanced of which suggest exercising behavior in complex circumstances, becoming involved in complicated communication levels with others, and ultimately achieving the challenging state of total improvisation within a vaguely designed preliminary situation.
The class hides another strong point regarding the importance of learning acting in real life. It lies in the overwhelming feeling of self-satisfaction that stirs in every student at the end of a physically draining and emotionally fulfilling three-hour session. Creating alternative worlds never loses its appeal, regardless of age, does it?