Middle Acting

What is Middle acting? Ages 10-14, these classes, designed for middle school to beginning high school-aged kids, cover beginner-intermediate acting classes as well as our acting performance class.

Why This Program? Whether this is their first introduction to acting or they've done it before, these programs strive to give kids a secure, confident, and joyful relationship with acting.

Why is it helpful: Acting is invaluable for fostering a variety of life skills, including self-confidence, persistence, teamwork, and creativity. We learn to work together, how to give and take, and how to share our ideas in front of others. We also experience the joy of seeing these creative ideas come to life.

What will we do? We always begin classes with a warm-up to get us used to the space and each other. We learn performance vocabulary, play focus and team building games, and learn how to access and portray our emotions through exploratory games, scenes, and character study. We also work on using our physicality to embody our characters.

Highlights: Fun, in-depth, exploratory, and creative.

I love teaching this age group because they have a willingness to jump into imaginative worlds, but are also developing their own sense of self and autonomy, and they are often equal parts sarcastic realists and imaginative.

Curriculum, Objectives, and Outcomes:

In every class:

What is acting? And how to perform in front of people, even though we may feel shy and self-conscious.
The joy of performance as ‘play’.
Vocab: The stage, theatre, and film vocab: eg, ‘upstage’, ‘downstage', ‘stage left’, 'a set’,‘pickup’, ‘blocking’, ‘close up’, ‘stage directions’, a ‘stage manager’, ‘DP,’ ‘ADR’, etc.
Understanding of the elements of a script and character development outside of the scene, eg, where were they before the scene? What would their favorite food be?
Internal vs external character thoughts: What do they really think of what is happening in the scene, and is what the character outwardly shows the same as what they are thinking in their head? ,
Confidence in embodying a character in front of our peers and an audience.
Physicality as a character, and making it different from our own.
Finding joy in the “curiosity, not ambition” of acting, and knowing part of theatre is making mistakes and being bold in our choices, even if we end up being redirected by a director.
Ability to gently evaluate and critique peers and oneself, to foster critical thinking, an artistic eye, and ever-developing artists and performers.
Ability to collaborate and create scenes together, where they listen to and value each other’s input.
Confidence in their own creativity, imagination, and ability to work with others collaboratively.

Specific to the Performance class:

What is a ‘cold read’, and how do we approach doing one?
Learning Lines: A How-To Guide.
How to create a performance in a limited time.
Memorization in a condensed time period.

Specific to the General Acting classes:

Intro to Animal Studies, a method of using the ways animals move to inform our character's physicality.
How to prepare for an audition, and what an audition might look like.
Learn what a monologue vs a scene is, and how to approach each.

Classes

✨Fall Classes:✨

Intro to Acting:

An acting overview, work on scenes, monologues, and cold reads. Do mock auditions, and learn how to use our bodies to add physicallity to a character.

WEDNESDAYS, @ Thousand Oaks Old Meadows Center.
- - TIME: 4:00-4:55 pm | AGES: 10-14 | LENGTH: 6 weeks | DATE: November 5 - December 17, 2025. | PRICE: $192
FRIDAY @ Ventura, Date and time TBA.

✨Winter Classes: ✨

Acting Performance:

Acting through performance: Work together to develop a short performance. We learn how to physically embody characters, create the world around them, and work together to put on a mini performance".

WEDNESDAY @ Thousand Oaks Old Meadows Center
- - TIME: 3:00-4:15 pm | AGES: 10-14 | LENGTH: 8 weeks | DATE: January 14 - March 5, 2026 | PRICE: $200

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