Student Profile: SAMSON SYHARATH

This spring, PAC will feature blog profiles of our second-year conservatory students. These students will be graduating in May 2013 and launching their professional acting careers. Here, they share with us their origins, goals, and insights into acting and life as a student at Portland Actors Conservatory.

Samson Syharath
Photo: Owen Carey

Meet SAMSON SYHARATH

PAC: What is your educational background, and where is your hometown?

Samson: I went to Mansfield High School, and then graduated from the University of Arkansas Fort Smith, Fort Smith, Arkansas.

PAC: When did you know you wanted to be an actor and how did you get started acting?

Samson: In college, I took a theatre class and my professor encouraged me to audition for the original play he had created. The rehearsal process brought me closer to the people in my ensemble, closer than I had ever gotten to anyone in my life. After the performance, at the very first curtain call, I felt an energy from both the ensemble and the audience. After the show, strangers would come up to me and tell me how the production had really touched them and changed the way they see things. Acting showed me that I have the power to communicate and really reach out to people.

PAC: How would you describe what you are learning here at PAC?

Samson: I have learned how my body and voice are instruments and how to use my instrument. I’ve learned techniques to get my voice, mind, and body connected and in tune with each other, and most importantly, how to put all the techniques I’ve learned to practice.

Samson (center front) in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.
Photo: Gary Norman

PAC: What interests or excites you most about acting?

Samson: I would love to be able to reach out to people and change someone’s life. I love making people smile and laugh. I even love making people cry. Being able to feel and connect to human emotions is a joy for me and I would like to share that.

PAC: What scares or challenges you most about acting, and how do you deal with that?

Samson: Trying to connect to a character that I don’t “like” or that I disagree with is a challenge. But I have to realize that the character is that way for a reason. I have to find a perspective that works for me and find out why this character is the way he is.

PAC: What has been your most memorable experience at PAC so far?

Samson: In an acting class, I was so in the moment, so in character, that my actions and voice were so out of character for “Nice Samson” that it scared me. It surprised my scene partner and the entire class. The idea that I could have such power and that I never used it until then was a revelation for me.

Samson (second from left) in A Bright Room Called Day.
Photo: Gary Norman

PAC: What are your plans after graduating from PAC? What do you want to be doing 10 years from now?

Samson: I plan on sticking around Portland for a while and act around town. I hope to get my master's, and teach. As I mentioned, I love reaching out to people and teachers are some of the most underappreciated, yet influential people.

PAC: If you could go back in time to your first day at PAC, what advice would you give your past self?

Samson: Stop worrying. If you do all your work, all that’s left to do is play.

Samson (right) will be onstage in subUrbia in April 2013.
Photo: Owen Carey

Student Profile: JARED BAKER

This spring, PAC will be featuring blog profiles of our second-year conservatory students. These students will be graduating in May 2013 and launching their professional acting careers. Here, they share with us their origins, goals, and insights into acting and life as a student at Portland Actors Conservatory.

Jared Baker
Photo: Owen Carey

Meet JARED BAKER

PAC: What is your educational background, and where is your hometown?

Jared: I went to Riverdale High School and then the University of Wisconsin-Platteville for my B.A. in Theater, and my hometown is Muscoda, WI.

PAC: When did you know you wanted to be an actor and how did you get started acting?

Jared: I didn't start to think of myself being an actor for a living until I was in my third Theater course at UWP and realized that this is what I could and want to do for the rest of my life. I first started acting in a "College for Kids" theater class and ended up getting cast as the mother in the play.

PAC: How would you describe what you are learning here at PAC?

Jared Baker (seated) in A Bright Room Called Day.
Photo: Gary Norman

Jared: At PAC we are learning many different techniques and styles that can be used for acting, but most of all we are learning about ourselves in these classes and what we can do to become better actors.

PAC: What interests or excites you most about acting?

Jared: What I love about acting is when I find out or figure out one of the secrets of the character and then I get to apply it to the lines or action that I have on stage. It's one of those moments where I am able to start creating what the character is thinking or why they are behaving the way they are.

PAC: What scares or challenges you most about acting, and how do you deal with that?

Jared: What challenges me the most in acting is any text in verse because it is what I have had the least experience and work with.  However, after a whole semester of work with it and a lot of guidelines of how to approach the text I feel much more confident in performing verse, but I will always work twice as hard on it just to be comfortable with it.

PAC: What has been your most memorable experience at PAC so far?

Jared: My most memorable experience at PAC would have to be when we did the Auditions at the end of the first year.  It was the enjoyment of being able to show off all the hard work that we had been doing that semester and using all the tools we learned over the year.

Jared (second from left) will appear in subUrbia this April.
Photo: Owen Carey.

PAC: What are your plans after graduating from PAC? What do you want to be doing 10 years from now?

Jared: After I graduate from PAC I will be moving back to the Midwest and will be trying to establish myself in Chicago. In 10 years I hope to be busy acting in the theaters in Chicago and possibly doing some teaching.

PAC: If you could go back in time to your first day at PAC, what advice would you give your past self?

Jared: If I could tell myself something on Day 1 at PAC it would be: There is no right answer and just let it rip.

Student Profile: LEXI DESCHENE

This spring, PAC will be featuring blog profiles of our second-year conservatory students. These students will be graduating in May 2013 and launching their professional acting careers. Here, they share with us their origins, goals, and insights into acting and life as a student at Portland Actors Conservatory.

Lexi Deschene
Photo: Owen Carey

Meet LEXI DESCHENE

PAC: What is your educational background and where is your hometown?

Lexi: I graduated from Pinkerton Academy in my hometown of Derry, New Hampshire, in 2009. I knew I wanted a college experience that would completely immerse me in theatre, but I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for until I saw a notice for PAC interviews being held in Boston.

PAC: When did you know you wanted to be an actor and how did you get started acting?

Lexi: I don't come from a particularly creative family, and I'm certainly the only performer, but I think they realized I wanted to be an actor before I even knew what that meant. I do have an aunt that is very boisterous and theatrical, and whenever she'd babysit me, I'd bounce around singing to her Leslie Gore albums and the soundtracks of my animated movies. Eventually, I decided that I was Belle. And Pocahontas. And Esmeralda. I was basically on board with any brunette Disney could throw at me. I was too young to recognize that as the early stages of "acting," but my parents decided it would be a good idea to steer me in the direction of theatre, and my first show was "Cinderella" at the age of eight; not a brunette, but still in the Disney neighborhood. Eventually my aunt began managing a theatre that housed national tours, and she would get me front-row tickets to every single show that came through, even the ones I was probably a little young for. I'm sure my parents were thrilled with my obsession with Rizzo in "Grease" halfway through elementary school. Even so, nobody ever tried to keep me away from theatre, and by the time I was old enough to realize that a career in this field would take serious effort, I was too in love with it to give it a second thought.

PAC: How would you describe what you are learning here at PAC?

Catherine Ross and Lexi Deschene in A Bright Room Called Day
Photo: Gary Norman

Lexi: There are hundreds of different keys you can use to unlock the door to a character. Each teacher at PAC is dedicated to providing you with as many keys as possible, each focusing on the ones they believe to be most helpful, and you're given room to find exactly which ones fit your particular lock.

PAC: What interests or excites you most about acting?

Lexi: Actors have the special ability to sample as many lives as we can during our time on earth. I live out situations I would never find myself in offstage, and I'm introduced to hidden, undeveloped aspects of my own self when I surrender to the thoughts and emotions of characters I play. Even the roles I believe to be the furthest away from who I am are able to touch a spark of truth inside of me that I may never have acknowledged otherwise, and I have a richer life experience because of it.

PAC: What scares or challenges you most about acting, and how do you deal with that?

Lexi: There are shields we develop as we move through the world that defend us from emotional vulnerability; it's both a blessing and a curse to learn that the most vital part of a truthful performance is accessibility to the "negative" emotions we try to save ourselves from. Making the choice to lower my shields is always scary and challenging, but the outcome is never disappointing. The only way to affect an audience is to allow yourself to be affected.

PAC: What has been your most memorable experience at PAC so far?

Lexi: Watching last year's graduating class perform their final show was really special to me; it shifted my frame of mind from "look at everything they learned" to "look at everything I'm learning," and inspired me to refocus and aspire to the level of performance I saw them reach, both as individuals and as an ensemble. 

PAC: What are your plans after graduating from PAC? What do you want to be doing 10 years from now?

Lexi: After completing the program at PAC, I'd like to go home and earn a BFA from Emerson College in Boston, where I hope to build a career as an actor.

PAC: If you could go back in time to your first day at PAC, what advice would you give your past self?

LEXI: Give yourself time to find your key. Some things will speak to you and some things won't, but just like your characters, there's a spark of truth in all of it.

Lexi Deschene (Center) in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Photo: Gary Norman

Creating Authentic Behavior

Artistic Director Beth Harper discusses her approach to teaching Acting One in the first year of the conservatory's two-year professional training program.

How does one go about creating authentic behavior? Stanislavski believed that truth in acting is not the same as simply recreating everyday life. Truthful acting on stage must be compelling to an audience and, as such, is rarely the mundane behavior common in everyday life. The power, the urgency and the heightened "stakes" of a fictional character's circumstances must be realized, leading the actor to a compelling characterization. 

Beth Harper and Grace Mikolavich

Stanislavski was clear to point out that an actor's job is not to believe that he is, in fact, actually Hamlet. The actor, rather, must immerse himself in the imaginary circumstances he has created through his research, work on objectives, and employment of emotional and sense memory to create the "truth" of Hamlet for himself in the performance.

I believe that an actor must know him or herself. The truth is, an actor will never ever become another person. That is an impossibility. Often I hear actors say that they got lost in their character. What does that mean? For if you are lost...where are you? If I am acting with you, I need you in the room with me, I need you to need me. It is my hope that we get found in our characters and have the presence of mind to stay open to all the possibilities that are right in front of us. It will ultimately be the living, breathing actor taking on and making her own the behavior of another person. Where does one begin? I think we start with what we know best...ourselves.

Through the exploration of the NEED scene (a moment of high stakes in the own artist's life) actors soon discover that they organically experience the concepts of need, obstacle and tactic, and can more readily be available to apply it to “character.” However, character is just an idea unless you can apply it to moment-to-moment life. What does the character do or how do they behave in an imaginary set of circumstances?

By engaging their impulses, intelligence and imagination, the actor explores the specific physical and emotional life of a character. The artist must master the ability to be present in the moment and play their active actions to, for and with their fellow player, while simultaneously respecting the given circumstances of the world that they are playing in.

Thus, the basic building blocks of the acting process are:

Beth Harper directs Holy Ghosts at PAC, 2012

• the vocabulary and execution of objective, obstacle and tactic;
• flexibility, imagination and sensory awareness;
• being present in their own skin;
• surrendering to a set of imaginary circumstances;
• the ability to receive and adjust to another person's behavior;
• and the skill set to execute a comprehensive beat analysis and most importantly be able to to translate their beat work into active and honest action and moment to moment life.

 
These are the skills an actor needs to create authentic behavior.

URTA NYC Auditions - If I Can Make it There...

Executive Director Philip Cuomo is in New York City for the University/Resident Theatre Association (URTA) auditions. Here are his thoughts from the first day:

Sitting in the lobby of the Times Square Hilton Hotel, I am surrounded by excited student actors, many of whom participated in the screening audition yesterday. They performed two contrasting monologues for two auditors. Later in the evening they were notified if they were accepted to participate in the final auditions.

The majority of them heard "No."

For most of those students this was their first major rejection. Many of them are used to the positive feedback they received in their undergraduate programs. They spent weeks choosing monologues and working with teachers to develop those pieces. They spent much of their student budgets traveling to New York City: paying for transportation, hotels and food. And now they are told they won’t make it to the final audition.

But it’s not over yet. They are lucky because three years ago URTA began an open call, in which the students not accepted for the final audition may participate.

Though instead of performing two contrasting monologues in a comfortable five minutes, they have 60 seconds to perform whatever material they desire. Forget the work done with their teachers back at school, forget the 2-minute comic monologue that kills, or the 2-minute dramatic monologue that they know would bring people to tears if they had one more chance to perform it. They march in one after the other in a brisk 110-120 seconds of steady introductions, identification of material and edited performance.

The open call is a difficult environment for aspiring and seasoned actors alike. The student actors wait in a large conference room, the nervous energy thick like smoke, and then they march into another large conference room, with terrible acoustics and auditors facing them from rows of folding chairs.

But these students are lucky – they have another chance. In the years before the open call, students not participating in the finals were sent home, not seen by any schools. I know the effects of this type of rejection, because I failed to be accepted into the final auditions three years in a row.

Yet I was successful making a life in the theatre. Like the successful young actors participating in this year’s open call, I hustled. I determinedly found the training and experience I needed and I persevered.

I am grateful to represent Portland Actors Conservatory at the URTA auditions in New York this winter. I have the chance to see many talented young actors express themselves. I will talk to several of them and educate them a bit about our conservatory program, and most importantly remind them they were seen by a successful theatre artist who recognized something specific in them.

I will be looking for the actor who states their name with confidence and charm, who commits fully to the circumstances of their text, who speaks their dialogue with conviction and simple clarity, who makes active choice, allowing energy to flow freely through their instrument and resonate among the rows of folding chairs. I am certain that today out of the hundred plus young actors that I will see, several of them will go on to have even more successful a life in the theatre than I am enjoying. I am glad to be a part of their journey.

Acting and Experimentation by Shelly Lipkin, director of A Bright Room Called Day on the PAC Stage Nov. 30 – Dec 16

I started out as a stage actor, and wanted nothing more than to hit the boards and stun the audience with my brilliance. The first full-length play I was cast in became a series of lucky experiments for me. Although the end result turned out well (as far as my memory serves me), I had no previous acting classes to support my work, and therefore the term "experiment" became my mode of learning. It's true that actors experiment with their work, but without a proper foundation in how to approach that experimentation, performing in a play can become more like shooting in the dark.

I would have to say that it has taken me the past 40 plus years to develop the paradoxical mix of of raw talent, critical analysis, absolute physical and mental control and complete emotional abandon that is the craft of acting, and it is what I try to impart as an acting instructor.

A Bright Room Called Day

Photo: Owen Carey

The Advance Acting I course I am currently teaching at Portland Actors Conservatory is designed to fully incorporate the lessons and skills of the students’ first year course work. Our process of rehearsing and performing a full-length play puts into practice the entire scope of an actor's core skills. The first production of this year, Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day, is a contemporary and realistic play, and therefore demands a naturalistic performance.

As director I stress the importance of making specific and active choices that will lead the actor to a more fully realised and multi-dimensional character. A full exploration of the character's backstory, given circumstances, objectives, obstacles and tactics steer the actor toward those goals.  Understanding the character's "why" will logically raise the emotional stakes in any given scene and heighten the conflict in the story - and telling the story is everyone's goal in play production.

Story can sometimes elude an actor who is involved in the minutiae of their character's development and specific scenework.  However, where and how a character fits into the overall storyline and theme of a play help the actor make choices that drive the action of the story. A director becomes the objective guide to that process, and an actor must understand the importance of the collaborative process during rehearsal. Therefore, each actor will develop a "beat analysis" which become a road map for the character’s emotional life and how that fits into the overall scope of the play.

Each actor will create a journal to help them understand how the creative process affected them, how they dealt with it, what worked and what didn't. The journal becomes a mirror for them to see how they work. 

The actual run of a play can be just as daunting as the rehearsal process. Sustaining a performance and growing within the restraints of the director’s and playwright's visions are important ingredients in the creative process. The actor must learn how to approach each night's performance as a clean slate, remembering the structure, while simultaneously staying free enough to react spontaneously to the "given circumstances" of that particular evening’s performance.

Although I later trained at a conservatory and worked in repertory theatre in dozens of plays, it is when I became a film actor I began to see that acting required a focus on truth and honesty, and that my best work came from reacting, rather than generating a "performance." It turned my head in the right direction and turned me into a better actor.  This simple truth is what I try to instill in all my students. It does not mean an actor ignores the other ingredients that make for an interesting, and sometimes brilliant performance.  Character development, back-story, script analysis, moment before, motivation, intention, active choices and need are all important ingredients in the creating a living, multi-dimensional character.  However, the one underlying bonding force that keeps an actor focused and in-the-moment, is, as I like to call it, the luxury of reacting as if it were the first time.

About Shelly Lipkin:
Shelly is an actor, director, playwright and acting instructor. He studied acting at College of Marin, United States International University - School of Performing Arts and holds a BA in Humanities from Linfield College. He performed with Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Santa Fe Repertory Theatre, PCPA in Santa Maria, and other theatres across the country. He spent 20 years in Los Angeles as a television and film actor, acting in sitcoms, films, episodic television, and commercials. During that time he helped found the West Coast Ensemble Theatre and won a Best Director Award for an original play Valentines and Killer Chili.  In 1998 he moved to Portland where he continues to act and teach. Recent film/TV credits include Extraordinary Measures,  Music Within, TNT's Leverage, Grimm, Portlandia, and the Sundance Award winning film Mean Creek. Shelly was Co-Artistic Director of Cygnet Productions from 2000 to 2003 where  he co-authored, produced and starred in Vitriol & Violets – Tales From The Algonquin Round Table which won the 2004 Oregon Book Award for Drama.  At Artists Repertory Theatre he performed in Blue/Orange, Gross Indecencies and The Clean House. Some of his favorite roles include Malvolio in Twelfth Night with Tygres Heart Shakespeare Company, and Ted in Collapse for Third Rail Repertory, which garnered him a Drammy Award. For Profile Theatre he performed in The Price, Sisters Rosensweig, and Thief River.

As a playwright, he received a RACC Grant, a Literary Arts Fellowship, and an Oregon Arts Commission Fellowship to develop his second play, Sylver Beaches, which recently had a staged reading in Paris, (yes, France), and was nominated for an Oregon Book Award. It is currently in development as a screenplay.  In the past he has taught at University of California, Berkeley, Cal Arts, Clark College, Marylhurst University, The Stella Adler Academy, Northwest Children's Theatre, Lakewood Theatre, and Young Musicians & Artists Camp. Currently he teaches acting, directing and screenwriting at The Art Institute of Portland, Portland Actors Conservatory, and privately.

2012-2013 Season a Reflection of the Times

PAC’s 2012-2013 season reflects the politically charged climate of this election year, and considers the power of the individual to effect change, in their own lives and in the world.

A Bright Room Called Day opens Nov 30
Photo credit: Owen Carey

Kicking off the season is a powerful drama from the author of Angels in America. Set in 1930’s Berlin, Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day will resonate with modern audiences as it explores themes of political action and inaction and the dilemmas inherent in recognizing and taking a stand against injustice and evil. Directed by PAC faculty member Shelly Lipkin, Bright Room opens November 30.

We are fortunate to have Third Rail Repertory Theatre's Artistic Director Scott Yarbrough on board to direct the second show of the season: Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. This acclaimed absurdist play, featuring physical comedy and Stoppard's sharp and witty use of language, is both a fun romp and an existential journey. Opens Feb. 8.

The final show, Eric Bogosian’s subUrbia, is directed by PAC Producing Artistic Director Beth Harper and centers on a group 20-somethings desperately seek meaning and direction in a mini-mall parking lot. subUrbia reflects the angst, inertia, and ultimately the anger felt by modern youth in suburban America. Opens Apr. 12.

Together the three shows will raise questions for our audience about looking beyond the limited view of our immediate circumstances to find a larger purpose and path in the world.

Resident creative team Tim Stapleton (scenic design), Jeff Forbes (lighting design), Chris Mikolavich (sound design) and Jessica Bobillot (costume design) will bring creative insight, cohesion and unification to the overall production values of the season.

Included in each subscription are tickets to the annual Graduate Showcase, where graduating Second Year students present scenes and monologues representing the culmination of their study at the Conservatory. The Showcase runs May 15-18, 2013.

Subscription prices for the 2012-13 Season of Plays range from $20-$80, and are available online at www.actorsconservatory.com or by calling (503) 274-1717.