What you'll learn

The stage is for risky moments, actors doing things the audience my not dare to do. This course is about making such choices emboldening actors to turn up the temperature on risk, themes and relationships. This course through practical exercises aims to bring pressing questions about people and our times to the stage. With numerous exercises examining the skills and means players have to get piquant or pressing topics out in the open and examined. It will look at how to play informed characters that champion philosophies or feelings perhaps even the opposite of your own. It will look to define technique that can put controversial or troubling content on stage while handling it sensitively and poignantly with consequences.

About the teacher

"Andrew Hefler is a performer, director, trainer working in theatre, music, film and television for nearly thirty years. He was first introduced to Improvisational theatre at the age of 10 in grade school in Los Angeles. Since then he has worked with theatre groups in the US, Canada, Europe and since 1994 in his homebase of Budapest. He was a member of the experimental impro trio Scalabouche and later he founded Grund Theatre in 2008 developing a company and training methods for actors and shows for performance.

He has written and produced TV for Comedy Central and AMC. He is an actor at the National Theatre of Hungary and has taught improvisation and acting at various Universities. In his spare time, he writes songs and sings in his band."