New York City

with John Markland

may 19th - May 23rd

If you act, write or direct, you’ll go through New York… more than once. This will be a journey
through the heart of the city, using its distinctive neighborhoods, diverse inhabitants, and rich
history as the foundation for authentic character development. Throughout the workshop, actors
function as emotional detectives, observing and embodying the subtlest human behaviors to
create an authentic character drawn from New York's vibrant streets. Beginning with intensive
culture immersion, actors will choose one specific neighborhood pulling from physical
expressions, vocal patterns, and emotional rhythms that define each area's unique personality.

The scenes are from New York playwrights whose work resonates the distinct flavors of people
in each borough —Arthur Miller for working class Red Hook people, Neil Simon for characters
drawn from Brooklyn's golden era, or John Patrick Shanley for characters living the underbelly
of the Bronx, or Stephen Adly Guirgis for characters hustling in Hell's Kitchen. Through careful
text analysis and rhythmic exploration, actors will emulate these authentic voices, using the
playwright's distinct tonalities/cadences and the recognizable walks and gestures that are all part
of it.

Each actor will do a private interview, providing background, habitual behaviors and
mannerisms of their local color and neighborhood influences, before entering improvised social
scenarios to cross-pollinate worlds and eras of New Yorkers represented in each play.
Throughout this process, participants engage in group discussions about how their characters
create the complex social fabric of New York —its cultural intersections, economic disparities,
historical legacies, and vibrant communities and how it has influenced yourself.

Actors will have a comprehensive behavioral approach to character building that combines
detective-like observation, physical embodiment, emotional exploration, and textual
integration—tools that transform them from performers into authentic storytellers capable of
bringing New York's diverse humanity to life. This methodology empowers actors to create
characters who, like New York itself, feel simultaneously larger than life and intimately familiar,
capturing the city's paradoxical nature as a place where millions of individual stories somehow
create a unified, unmistakable identity that continues to inspire the world's great dramatic works.