Intro to Movement
Introduction to Movement gives you the foundational tools to set you on the path to creative success in acting. As a class, we explore mindset, breath support, movement vocabulary, and release techniques to keep you open and available for a rich emotional life in all your acting. Learn how to open your actor’s channel by recognizing blocks and holding patterns that manifest physically, emotionally, and mentally. We introduce energy anatomy and explore how to release and transform previously blocked energy into your acting performance. In each class, your artist’s muscle is strengthened as you collaborate with your classmates in improvised motion and sound explorations in creative contact with the group.
SARA FAY GEORGE
Sara Fay George, an experienced acting, movement, and energy work educator, has a diverse background in disciplines like Shakespeare, Ballet, and Energy Anatomy. Trained at the William Esper Acting Studio, she co-founded the box collective and developed the Holistic Method. Sara focuses on embodied learning, personal growth, and helping students unlock their full potential.
Intro to Alexander Technique
If you’ve been curious about The Alexander Technique, this course is for you! This six week exploration is a playground for actors. Forget industry standards! Forget getting it “right”! Forget “being on”.
Throughout the course we will dive into the pillars that are foundational to the work, explore HOW they relate to your craft, learn how you can cohesively dance with your breath, examine and begin to untangle mental and physical habits that hinder your creativity and freedom, investigate how thought affects action, revel in the power of a pause, learn how ALL OF THIS deepens your relationship to self, others, your environment, and, of course, your CHARACTER WORK.
TYLER STINZIANI
Tyler, m.AmSAT, is a somatic educator and mindfulness coach certified by AmSAT in The Alexander Technique. They completed their 1600 hour training at The Riverside Initiative for the Alexander Technique in New York. As a queer, non-binary person, they are deeply dedicated to cultivating spaces that are brave enough for you to play within. They are passionate about helping all of their students find ease in their daily lives and exploring with them to uncover their most authentic selves.
Mask & Character
A mask is a catalyst for transformation, a two way channel that connects us to an inner life and outer world unlike our own. Surrendering to the mask’s life force frees the actor from habitual patterns, encourages bold physicality, and releases a diverse range of characters that live within. In this course we’ll explore The Face, Portrait Characters, Character Masks, Emotion Masks, Bouffonand Red Nose, and Commedia Dell’Arte.
Richard Stockton Rand
Rich has acted on and off Broadway and in regional theatres in the United States and throughout Europe and Canada. He has written and toured five one-person shows and received an Indiana Arts Commission-National Endowment for the Arts Artist Fellowship for solo performance. His monologues and short stories have been published in Baseball Monologues and More Monologues for Men by Men, Hopewell Journal: New Work by Indiana’s Best Writers, Sycamore Review, and Slipstream.
Intro to Voice
Introduction to Voice introduces you to the basic concepts of the Linklater voice methodology. The psychophysical approach is discussed and then put into action. The literal reality of your voice being YOU is introduced and explored. You will learn how the voice works and what might keep it from working optimally, reflecting upon how your personal history and emotional blocks may be inhibiting your voice. We will start to practice Breath Awareness, investigating how the breath can lead us deeper in our body, to greater presence and resonance, and open the doors to emotional availability. We will work on alignment and relaxation, to find greater freedom of the breath and more resonance. We will be constantly interrogating the intersection of these concepts and practices with each individual’s acting work.
Midori Nakamura
As an actor, Midori has worked in film, TV, on Broadway and Off-Broadway. Midori was made a Designated Linklater Teacher in 2019. In addition to the Maggie Flanigan Studio, she teaches voice for the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University, The Linklater Center in New York, and NYU Tisch at The Lee Strasberg Theater & Film Institute. Midori also coaches private clients in both acting and voice.
Intro to Fitzmaurice Voicework®
Fitzmaurice Voicework® combines adaptations of classical voice training techniques with modifications of yoga, shiatsu, bioenergetics, energy work, and many other disciplines . This integration serves to harmonize the voluntary and involuntary aspects of the nervous system, and the voice. Each class, we’ll go through a voice and body warm-up. Then each week, we’ll focus on additional core areas of training such as vocal support, vocal resonance, embodying text, presence in performance, and more.
Erika Ackerman
Erika is a Somatic therapist, teacher, actor, singer and certified as an Associate Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework® with over 3 decades of experience with artists. Erika trained in voice and movement at the age of 12 at Shakespeare and Company and began assistant teaching at 18. Erika’s early teachers included: Kristin Linklater, Tina Packer, and Karen Beaumont. Erika studied with the City Company in Suzuki Method, Anteas Theatre Company with Dakin Matthews in Shakespeare Text, and in Fitzmaurice Voicework®, working closely with mentor teachers Catherine Fitzmaurice, Saul Kotzubei, and Michael Morgan.
Intro to Playwriting
Introduction to Playwriting is designed to give writers the ability to try out different forms and styles of playwriting while exploring a variety of voices from contemporary playwrights in a supportive and exploratory space. Each week, students will be asked to bring in pages based on prompts that allow writers to begin writing scenes from both their own experiences and from worlds they’re creating. The class will culminate in the sharing of in-process, short plays.
Jeana Scotti
Jeana has an MFA in Playwriting from Rutgers Mason Gross and a BA in Theater and Performance. She has taught theater at Purchase College and Rutgers University. Her plays have been showcased in multiple venues. As an educator, she centers students’ interpretations and emphasizes diverse voices in shaping the future of theater.
CHARLIE SANDLAN
Charlie’s unique relationship with Maggie Flanigan began over twenty-five years ago. He received his MFA in acting from Rutgers University, Mason Gross School Of The Arts where Maggie and Bill Esper trained him in the Meisner Technique. Over the past 30 years Charlie has also studied and collaborated with many artists including Ben Kingsley, Fiona Shaw, Mark Wing-Davey, and Ellen Stewart.
STUDENT TESTIMONIALS
“Studying at Maggie Flanigan re-injects the ambition that real acting truly involves, because the quality of work demanded cannot be falsified. What’s demanded of you is presence, and an honest aspiration to free yourself.”
Soli Partovi
“I attended the MFS summer intensive because I wanted to be a better actor. In every class, my limits were pushed. The level of commitment that is expected from you is nothing short of 100%. Charlie has a complete domain of the craft.”
Gibran García
“Maggie Flanigan Studio is a transformational experience! You walk into this training intensive as one person and walk out an improved one. If you are willing to take yourself seriously as an artist this is a good place to do that.”
