Summer Acting Program - Maggie Flanigan Studio 02

Summer Acting Program - Maggie Flanigan Studio 02 Q: What did you think it meant to train as an actor before you started taking classes at Maggie Flanigan Studio? A: OK. We're starting big. Before I thought Acting was showing, I felt that even after undergrad training, Acting would be easy and that it would be you sing pretty because I started a musical theater, you sing pretty. You show the people what they want to see, and then there it is, but in reality, after digging deeper into the work, it's so much more exciting than that. It's so much more than that. Acting as an art form, it's not just a means to sing or a means to do a show. It's a proper art form. Q: You started at the studio with a six-week summer intensive, correct? A: I did, yes. It was exciting. It was scary to start a new journey like always. I started it on blind faith based on a couple of reviews. I got one from a day job where I was done with auditioning. I was in a total rut, and I worked 10 hours a day as a receptionist at a medical office. All the patients were actors and artists, and so they would come in, they would sit in the lobby, they would be talking to their agents on the phone. They would be talking to each other, and all I did was listen because I think deep down subconsciously, I missed listening, and so I sat there, and I listened to them. An alumnus of Maggie Flanigan Studio came in, and she was talking a bit of the technique, and I thought, wow, I don't know anything. Then I met someone else who worked at the studio a week later, and it was fate. I was like, "OKOK, I need to jump into the summer intensive," and that's how it happened. Q: What did you learn about yourself in the summer intensive and throughout these two years that has changed you?. A: So much. It's cliché, but I'm a different person. I grew up in the Midwest where we're taught to be like, "Everything's OKOK. Yes, everything's good. Yes, everything's fine," and we put on this like façade and they said moving to New York would get rid of that, it never did for me. It never did. I moved through life with that façade, and it always worked for me. Then when I started with Charlie and Maggie Flanigan in the summer intensive, he knew exactly what that was, and he knew exactly how to teach me to get out of that rut because that's really what it is. It's a façade; it's a rut; it's a narrative you used to get through life that isn't useful. I learned how to have a point of view, an objective point of view about the world around me. I learned how to listen because we all say we can listen. We all say, "Yes, I'm listening to you. Yes, OKOK. Yes, I'm listening," but really, what you're doing is you're thinking of what you're going to say next, or your focus is on yourself. He taught me how to put the focus on someone else. You might think you know how to do that, but you don't know how to do that until you train. Maggie Flanigan Studio 153 W 27th St #803 New York, New York 10001 (917) 789-1599 www.maggieflaniganstudio.com/new-york-ny www.google.com/maps?cid=17904951966372592922 twitter.com/MeisnerActing www.facebook.com/MeisnerActing/ meisneracting10001.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/index.html maggieflaniganstudio.business.site/ www.pearltrees.com/maggieflaniganstudio https://flic.kr/p/2kXQo81