Private lessons, coaching, & workshops for singers & actors in the Pioneer Valley
The studio’s production of Polly Pen & Peggy Harmon’s Goblin Market is coming up on August 9th & 10th! To support this production, please check out our Indiegogo campaign!
Performances: Saturday, August 9th at 2:00 PM & 7:00 PM and Sunday, August 10th at 2:00 PM & 7:00 PM at PVPA (Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter Public School), 15 Mulligan Dr, South Hadley, MA 01075
Venue seats 50. Email melinda@acttoostudio.com to reserve general admission seats, or click to purchase VIP seating.
With our summer Opera Workshop rapidly approaching, teens have been gathering at the studio in small groups to work on learning their music.
Some days have been sillier than others.
In all cases, we’ve been having fun. Looking forward to August!
Students, parents, and friends, we’re very excited to introduce you to the studio’s first production, Goblin Market (music by Polly Pen, book by Polly Pen & Peggy Harmon, adapted from the poem by Christina Rossetti), coming to audiences in the Pioneer Valley this summer! We hope this will be the first of many productions to come.
Goblin Market – First Look from Act Too Studio on Vimeo.
Click here to watch on YouTube.
We need rehearsal and performance space, and you can help by spreading the word! If you or anyone you know has an idea that might help us, we’d be extremely grateful. Rehearsals begin July 21st, with performances over the weekend of August 8th.
We’ll be posting new video footage and updated information throughout the production process. Stay tuned to this blog for regular updates, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, or YouTube to keep up on all the news!
As our students and their parents will already be aware, I’ve finally joined the studio full time, beginning on January 1st. Besides now being available to students six days a week, this also means that I’m dedicated to attending as many student performances as possible within that schedule.
How fortunate it was for me, then, that the first performance to crop up this month was Amherst Leisure Services Community Theater’s Les Miserables, featuring a large number of our students in both featured and ensemble roles.
Congratulations to our students: Milena Gravante-Gunnells (Young Cosette), Carina Gravante-Gunnells (Gavroche), Jack Mulvaney (Marius), Sage Wilson (Combeferre), Laura Borash (Factory Girl), Emmet Anderson, Stephen Atkinson, Eliza Carson, Chloe Castro-Santos, Stephanie Craven, Brandon Dallmann, Anna Plummer, and Meagan Raker!
So great was my pride in these students’ performances, I thought my heart would burst from my chest. Thanks to all for making my inaugural full-time month in the studio so enjoyable!
One of the things that comes up often in conversations with, say, businesspeople, is the question of whether one is a “big picture” person or “detail-oriented.” And while I think it’s true that some people tend towards one or the other, I think the real trick for most of us is just knowing which kind of thinking is important when. In most areas, I am what is considered to be a “big picture” thinker. I tend to approach plans and problems with a view towards larger strategy. But as an artist—especially an interpretive artist—all the truth is in the detail. And this goes double as a teacher of young artists.
One thing I wish I’d ever learned to do as a young student is to fully appreciate the value of both my strengths and my weaknesses as a performing artist. In fact, it’s quite clear to me now that I gave neither category its proper due. Like a character out of a George R. R. Martin novel, I viewed my greatest strength (singing) as a sort of birthright that required constant defense against interlopers (including my own, well-intentioned mother), and my weaknesses (acting, dance) as sources of deep, deep shame. As a result, I improved at none of them—at least not at any kind of useful pace—and it was only after my first (and only) college audition that I began to admit that perhaps I’d been doing myself a disservice.
[Read more…] about Nurturing your strengths, owning your weaknesses