Auditing an Acting Class at Playhouse West

All potential students must first audit a class. Membership is granted on the basis of an interview with Robert Carnegie, Founding Director, or Tony Savant, Artistic Director.  The interviews are brief and take place immediately after the audit.  Membership is on a month-to-month basis, and the monthly fee is due on the first class of each month.  Classes which may be audited are at our Studio 1 location at 4250 Lankershim Boulevard, North Hollywood (1 block south of Whipple, 4 blocks north of Universal Studios).  The office phone number is (818) 881-6520, but you do not have to call to make an appointment; just show up and sign in on a first come-first serve basis. There is almost always room.

There are four classes which may be audited:

Tuesdays & Thursdays at 12 noon
Tuesdays & Fridays at 7 p.m.

All questions about the school will be answered in person when you audit one of these classes, but here’s some info about the class you’re auditing. You will be auditing a Level I class.  Playhouse West has been training actors, directors, and writers in Los Angeles for thirty years. Our students have gone on to achieve success at all levels of the Industry, from Academy Award nominations to Golden Globe winners, from film producers to the creation of television shows, from starring in motion pictures and television to Emmy Awards for acting and writing, to starring on Broadway.

Our classes are three hours in length and students who attend Playhouse West come twice a week and work every class. Classes are ongoing and can be entered into at any time during the month.

Our program has been developed over years of working with the finest teachers of acting in this country’s history, including Sanford Meisner, who taught here for years.  But, while we have worked with them, we are not imitators.  We have our own artistic vision and have developed an intense approach to the training of an actor which includes year-round attendance and ongoing classes. This process permits the actor to progress from exercises, to scenes, to productions, to films.   At Playhouse West instruction is given on an individual basis and each student moves at their own true learning pace.

In addition to the class work, Playhouse West students are visited and given seminars by special guests like Academy Award winning director Sydney Pollack, Academy Award winning director and actor Mel Gibson, Academy Award winning actors Martin Landau and Rod Steiger, Julie Harris, Tony Curtis, Eli Wallach, James Caan, plus top-level writers, agents, managers, casting directors and others. These guest seminars may occur at the school, or at our annual Film Festival.

The students you will see have either just started their training or may have been working with us for several months.  The exercises and scenes you will observe have at their root two clear guidelines: (1) acting is more instinctive than intellectual, and (2) it is vital for the actor to connect with his working partner. These basic principles are emphasized and trained into the actor in various ways. As the actor moves through the program there is progressively more scene work, accompanied by advanced exercises, culminating in “Scene Nights”, and participation in the award-winning Playhouse West theatrical productions and/or work in the many film projects that use our acting company.

After you have observed a class it can be very inspiring to attend one of our productions.  The actors in our plays are all currently training at Playhouse West and represent classes from all levels.  Please take a flyer with our monthly schedule and call the reservation number, or go to our website, to reserve a seat(s) for the play or plays of your choice.  You are eligible to see any of our productions for free.  When you call or go online for reservations simply state that you are an auditor, and confirm it at the box office when you arrive for the show.