Acting Master Class
at American Conservatory Theatre:
Within the Choice Lies the Talent

“Thurman E. Scott is the inheritor of the Stanislavski legacy and of my legacy. His work advances acting technique for the next generation.”

– Stella Adler, March 20, 1990, New York City

The Actors Theatre Workshop: Special One-Day Master Class at ACT

Master teacher of acting Thurman E. Scott, the Artistic Director, Executive Producer, and Founder of the award-winning Actors Theatre Workshop in New York City has been invited to lecture and teach a series of classes in his powerful original creative process technique at leading Bay-area institutions, including The California Institute of Integral Studies and the American Conservatory Theatre in March, 2018.

After many years of training with his mentors from the Group Theatre, his studies in Europe and Russia, and his professional work as an award-winning actor and director, Mr. Scott expanded on his mentors’ legacy by developing new techniques to liberate actors’ talents, express the ideas and fulfill the demands of the play. As a teacher, Mr. Scott creates a secure environment that allows students to relax, make effective and powerful choices, express new ideas, and fulfill their creative potential.

Acting is a process in which the actor must always revisit the basics: where are you coming from, what are you doing, and where are you going? In this one-day intensive, Mr. Scott will work with students on scenes and monologues with an emphasis on finding the action of the material through script analysis, and making powerful and illuminating choices. In acting we say, “Within the choice lies the talent.” This means that our talent is revealed through making the best of the many choices that are available to us at that particular time of our development.

Actors’ choices can evoke life and reveal universal truths that indelibly live in the audience’s minds and consciousnesses for many centuries to come. Learning how to make powerful, life-affirming choices, on the stage and in daily life, is the sacred responsibility of the committed theatre artist. By making the best choice available, theatre artists dramatize the crucial importance of the issues we are confronting as a society, help us feel empathy for complex human behavior, and allow us all to feel connected to the larger, universal community.

This special Master Class: “Within the Choice Lies the Talent” is for you:

• If you are an actor who wishes to deepen your understanding of theatre’s role as a powerful agent for social change.
• If you are an actor who wishes to examine and express your essence as an individual and a creative person whose powerful ideas can do great service in our communities and the whole world.
• If you are a beginning actor who wishes to build confidence and security by learning practical, doable steps of acting.
• If you are an intermediate or advanced actor who wishes to deepen your own unique, individual approach to your creative process.

If you have any questions, please email us here.