Presenter Profile
Samuel Wood
Guest Artist, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Education Team
Samuel Wood received his MFA from the National Theatre Conservatory. After graduation, he lived in South Carolina where he was co-chair for the Charleston County School of the Arts’ Theatre Department. Additionally, he was a faculty member for Trident Technical College’s Speech Department. While in Charleston, Mr. Wood directed and taught for The Charleston Stage Company. He also was privileged to be both a director and an actor in productions for the Spoleto Festival USA. For the last twelve years he has worked in the world of Applied Theatre using theatre as the vehicle to address social injustice and health equity across the state of Colorado for Kaiser Permanente.
Samuel's Workshops
Stage Combat: The Principles Behind Stunning Fight Choreography
Beginning, Intermediate, Advanced / Acting, , , , , / Regular
Limited to the first 30 actors to arrive. The skills learned in this interactive workshop will help you create compelling theatrical hand to hand fights that are perfect for enhancing staged violence in Shakespeare and other period plays as well as the increasing number of contemporary plays that explore social issues through the lenses of altercations, physicality, and threat. This stage combat workshop is for actors of all experience levels requiring active listening, focus, and a sense of commitment to safety and procedure. Only the first 30 students in the room will actively participate in the workshop. Remaining students can gain much by watching work that explores safe, effective ways to stage conflict and combat theatrically.
Stella Adler: Imagination, Given Circumstance and Actions
Beginning, Intermediate, Advanced / Acting, , , , , / Regular
A leading force in the training of American actors, Stella Adler - who famously split from the Stanislavski-based teaching methods of her Group Theatre colleague, Lee Strasberg - focused her training of actors based on her personal work with Stanislavski. Adler’s powerful gift to American theatre training was and is her insistence on not playing emotion but discovering an emotional response within the text (circumstance and action) and givens of character (gesture and voice). Considering that many actors who have shaped what you have come to understand as powerful acting - Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Candice Bergen, Benicio Del Toro, Salma Hayek, Warren Beatty, Teri Garr, and Harvey Keitel – studied with Adler, this workshop explores the very activities and inquiry points associated with their process that, now, can become part of yours. Instructor, Sam Wood, brings his unique and in-demand skills as professional acting coach and director to activate your engagement with the Adler Technique.