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Bring your art into your musical theater acting.
Refresh your acting skills in musicals. Unlock yourself from perceived expectations when performing iconic roles and enliven them with your very personal and specific interpretations. Heidi brings her unique experience as a coach and former casting director to this NYC acting class.
Bring to class an iconic musical theater role that you have dreamed of tackling or reinventing for yourself.
You will be coached into a fresh and dynamic interpretation of a scene and song belonging to an iconic character from a musical of your choice. New or classic musicals are welcome!
Dare to reinvent and reignite those tired roles that we have seen again and again on stage and in countless auditions. Become an inspired storyteller that creatives want to collaborate with and hire.
Musical theater performers who are:
ACTING COACH: Heidi’s career has spanned over 25 years and includes time as the lead Casting Director at Telsey+CO for the Broadway musical RENT, as well as for 70+ projects in theater, film, television, commercial, and voiceover. She’s coached countless actors into roles for Film, TV, and Theater. Most recently, she coached and prepped Halle Bailey for her audition and screen test for Disney’s upcoming The Little Mermaid. Heidi’s active filmmaker career informs her director’s eye and influences her aesthetic for working with actors.
For full acting coach bio, click here. For filmmaker portfolio, click here.
Listen up!
I spent over a decade working as a casting director and resident director on Broadway musicals: RENT, THE ADDAMS FAMILY, AIDA, HAIRSPRAY, THE COLOR PURPLE, Baz Luhrmann’s production of LA BOHEME, and casting for countless workshops of new musicals. However, the oddity is that I have never considered myself a musical theater creature. In fact, I found that I was often working against the grain when casting Broadway musicals because I was not already deeply embedded in the world of musicals. It was all fresh to me!
While casting musicals, I was always seeking performers who created nuanced auditions to impress directors with their own innovative analysis of roles. This is what I coached actors towards. Really, I was coaxing an actor’s individuality to pop in the audition room. That is unequivocally the factor that I saw would book the role.
I will never forget the actor who sang his own soulful rendition of “Amazing Grace” in an open call for RENT in Atlanta. A cappella. This actor brought me to tears. And then, in his callback, he wooed the director and music director to cast him in his first ever musical—a lead on a national tour. Simply, by bringing his same soulfulness from “Amazing Grace” into the songs from the show he gave the team confidence that he could evolve the role and hold his own as a lead.
Can you bring your unique self into your work?
Can you bring your personality and soulfulness to an iconic role that has been done a million times already by millions of singers?
You can.
You just need to give yourself permission to be you. Permission to act your heart out by connecting to the circumstances and the words of the material.
Since I have always straddled the worlds of theater, musicals, film, and TV, I am not shackled by iconic musical theater performances in my mind. In fact, you will likely know much more about the role than I do! I want you to guide ME into the role, with coaching by me that will shape your passionate work.
How do I coach on musicals? I approach each scene and song with the same investigatory curiosity that I approach any film or television role!
You CAN approach each musical as if it has never been done before.
You CAN approach each role like it’s yours to create.
Experience my approach to acting and apply it to musicals to revitalize the material.
Join me in a 1-Day NYC acting class to explore your version of an iconic role.
xHeidi
(P.S. If you are curious, you can read more about My Journey.)
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Class gave me such a bundle of ideas to work a scene ands song. I love that I now have a list of options to help me think of the scene in a new way and get out of my routine. It was so helpful in getting out of your head when prepping for a scene/song. It gave very easy and clear tools to prep on your own.
I will use the tools to push myself out of my comfort zone (Defaults), with the goal in mind of exploring ways to make the theme more active. I don’t think I will ever read a script the same again, and in moving forward, I wont settle for what I think is the right way. I’ve already described the masterclass to my partner as an intense experience that taught me so much in such a short period of time. With the initial goal of exploring how to connect acting to the music and understanding the distinction between acting and singing, the masterclass felt like a profound journey of shedding layers of defaults to access vulnerability and truth. I am not a professional in musical theater, but I have learned an incredible amount in such a short time. As an educator on spring break, I embarked on a ‘journey’ that this masterclass certainly provided for me. Initially, I was nervous as a non-professional, wondering if I would have to pull a ‘Joey from Friends at the dance audition.’ However, I felt empowered by the tools you presented, and I learned so much!
Heidi, I first met you about 27 years ago at a Rent audition, and I learned a great deal from you then through the feedback and callback process. It’s incredible to see how our paths have come full circle, and I continue to learn from you now. Thank you for providing such an AMAZING and enriching experience!
Full disclosure — please note that we do not guarantee that actors in our online or in-person NYC acting classes will be hired for any project that we might direct, produce, or cast. We teach and coach because we enjoy supporting and nurturing actors as you develop your personal process for auditioning, working and creating your own work.