Acting Classes
Support Your Acting Practice
An acting class should feel useful to you whether you dream of being onstage or you simply want to explore yourself in a new way. A sustainable acting practice might feel analogous to something like a yoga practice--you come back to it again and again not to learn a finite set of lessons, but because the process feels healthy and brings you into a deeper experience of your human life.
And also...you come back because it's fun. So come play some games, try on a new character, use your voice, step back and reflect, and then get out of your head and back into your body. Some work (and play!) is simply best done within the container of a supportive community; this is what we strive to cultivate in each Well Played Creative acting class.
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About the Instructor
Sarah Donnell has been teaching acting classes for a decade, and she's been a practicing theatre artist most of her life: first as a performer, then as a dabbling techie, then as a playbuilder and director, later as a producer, and then as a professional facilitator of interactive theatre workshops and performances.
After being nourished by children's theatre through adolescence, she earned a B.A. in Dramatic Art from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and went on to perform in, develop, and produce plays in New York City. While she loved being a part of a theatre scene bursting with so much talent and creativity, she was discouraged that so much of this theatre only ever reached other theatre people. She soul searched her way back home to North Carolina, where she started teaching adult education in a local community college. This experience led her to a position at UNC's Interactive Theatre Carolina–a theatre troupe that blended scripted and improvisational theatre to open up conversations about health and social justice issues in the community.
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She spent 3 and a half years co-leading ITC–designing workshops, writing scripts, directing plays, facilitating large group conversations, and training and managing a company of student performers that met weekly. In related work, she partnered with UCLA's visiting Sex Ed Squad to train near-peer educators in interactive theatre techniques, and she continues to work with Theater Delta, a private company, as a scriptwriter and facilitator.
A desire to travel and be immersed in another culture led her to spend 2 years teaching in Madrid, where she was able to tap into the local theatre scene to continue her study of improv, clown, and storytelling while spending a lot of time thinking about the many ways humans communicate. Upon returning to the States, she relocated to Atlanta where she taught adult acting and devising classes at the renowned Alliance Theatre.
In May 2021, Sarah completed a Master of Arts in Social Change degree with a joint certificate in Interfaith Chaplaincy from the Graduate Theological Union's Starr King School for the Ministry–the country's most progressive theological seminary. She promises she won't shove the spiritual angles of theatre down your throat...but it is one of her favorite things to talk about if you're into that!