Last Sunday, April 27, my students at the American Acting Centre had their big showcase. It was very exciting! They performed 8 scenes, 4 monologues, and 2 improvised plays. I am so proud of them.
Students came from (in alphabetical order): America, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Italy, Israel, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, and Uganda. One flew in from Italy just to be in this course! Another had just moved here and wasn’t sure if he made the right decision, but after our class, said it was definitely the right choice.
The course involved working both with scripts and with improv, both on video and on stage. Students chose scenes and monologues from their favourite movies and acted them out. We also improvised plays most weeks.
Early in our training, I invited students to create a character. They walked around as that character in various moods, then wrote answers to a series of questions. They were invited to write a monologue as their character, and improvise scenes with other characters. They even improvised a murder mystery, with their characters as the suspects.
The video above is my introduction to the show. There is now a link of the complete show here. (Begin at 3:25)
The first scene is a comedic piece about a couple that tries veganism, and how much they love it. (At least, I think that’s what the message was.) Deborah R. Kemper and Raphael Chetrit perform Schribble, with a few modifications.
Nadia Chivilgina wrote the next scene herself (with some assistance from AI.) She plays a confidence coach, calling up William Mudali from the audience.
Dyuti Bandyopadhyay and Sandy Kasavi played a scene based on the Louisa May Alcott 1860s novel Little Women.
Next for a bit of meta-theatre, This Murder Was Staged is a murder mystery comedy play about a murder mystery play gone awry. The director and assistant are played by Trisha Izraelson and Amalia Khongsai, respectively.
The next scene is a dark comedy, and I stress, it is very dark. If you don’t like humour about death, this isn’t for you. It’s very British, based on a scene that Rowan Atkinson performed. In his role as the school headmaster is Paz Greemland. Diana Margolin plays a shocked parent. W
Andy M. Rock and Ilia Levin played a scene from The Shawshank Redemption. Andy plays Andy, a banker in prison who wants to help a guard with his financial situation. Warning: adult content.
Another dark comedy is Christopher Durang’s Baby With the Bathwater. Trisha Izraelson plays a boy named Daisy.
As described above, the actors created their own characters, and some of them were deep and memorable. Ilia Levin created a Russian gangster named Anatoliy who migrated to California and works as a foreman in a warehouse. He wrote a monologue where his character shares his life story. It’s incredible.
For more dark comedy with adult content, the next short scene is from the 2012 movie Silver Linings Playbook. Sandy Kasavi plays a widow who is upset at Lior Kahn’s character.
Nadia Chivilgina wrote another scene, again with the help of AI. She plays a Russian woman on an Israeli beach who is approached by an Israeli man, played by Ilia.
Andy Rock may not look like Kramer, but he has his own take on the character’s break-up (and subsequent regret) from Seinfeld.
In our final monologue, Paz Greemland plays the titular Romeo looking up at Juliet on her balcony, from Romeo and Juliet.
We ended the evening with two short improvised plays. In the first RomCom, Paz plays Leroy, a carpenter in need of a haircut, while Dyuti plays a hairstylist named Jules.
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