L.A. Acting Coach Kimberly Jentzen
Kimberly is coming to Florida!!!
February 8-10, 2008. Read on to learn about Kimberly’s training and teaching style….
Cold Reading Weekend Intensive Itinerary:
Friday Evening Session - 7:00 p.m. - 11 p.m. (included in the weekend price or take just the Friday nite!)
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Part 1: Lecture: Approaching the work, the audition & the cold reading. The anatomy of fear. How to release fear to enable confidence and freedom in the reading and performance. The anatomy of becoming an actor and strengthening the actor’s focus. Being an artist in a business.
Part 2: Emotion - Jentzen’s Emotional Content Exercise - expanding your emotional range. Discovering how to determine the emotional choices of the reading and effectively learn how to “play the love”.
Saturday Afternoon Session – 12:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. (with regular breaks - you may bring snacks)
Actors have a choice to bring a monologue to work or Kimberly will give you a scene to work with a partner.
Part 3: “Going Deeper.” Jentzen’s “Power Tools” are taught and utilized. Extensive individual attention. Zeroing in on breaking down material accurately, accessing depth and subtext. Zeroing in on technique and preparation for the dynamics that get jobs and support the development of the actor. The guidelines for Improvisation.
Saturday Evening Session 5:30 - 11 pm (with regular breaks - you may bring snacks)
Part 4: Lecture & Exercises: Focus, concentration and Intention: How to effectively play an Objective Learning how to discover and execute interesting choices, with limited time.
Part 5: Learning how to generate “high voltage” energy. Generating confidence in the ability to radiate. Learn how to incorporate the tools that give you an edge in every reading and performance. Improve your batting average in getting work. Saturday night session ends at approximately 11 p.m.
Sunday Afternoon Session 12 p.m. - 4 p.m. (with regular breaks - you may bring snacks)
Part 6: Cold Reading Coaching. Warm-up audition exercise taught for the actor’s preparation and focus. Cold reading and much individual coaching. Strong emphasis on being a self-reliant actor with the ability to stand on your own in a reading no matter what is going on in the room. Audition technique. The ability to give.
Part 7: Learn the parameters of each genre: Film vs. Television vs. Stage. Film Drama, Episodic, Period Drama, Classic Tragedy and Soap.
Sunday Evening Session 5:30 - 11 pm (with regular breaks - you may bring snacks)
Part 8: Comedy and the basic guidelines for Sitcom, Film Comedy, Stage Comedy, Sketch Comedy, Farce and Romantic Comedy.
Part 9: More cold reading technique, individual coaching and attention. Opening the door for beauty, strength and courage in the work. Learning how to take risks and live into your depth.
Part 10: Industry discussion and Q & A. The anatomy of the industry. Practical information on how to handle rejection and blocks. Insights on how to set yourself up for success as well as create and sustain opportunities. Closing Weekend Intensive final thoughts. Sunday night session ends at approximately 11 p.m.
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Los Angeles 2007- Backstage Magazine Reader’s Choice: Favorite Acting Teacher/Coach: Kimberly Jentzen!!!
You have spoken. Our Readers’ Choice survey revealed your favorites in L.A., from acting teachers to commercial CDs, from stage directors to rehearsal space, from makeup artists to beauty supply stores, from litho houses to open mikes.
Favorite Acting Teacher/Coach: Kimberly Jentzen
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Kimberly Jentzen first started coaching actors in a stairwell at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. At the time, she was enrolled in a musical theatre program for singers, dancers, and actors. “I was an actor who could sing and dance,” she recalls. “I love musical theatre. My singer friends would pull me aside — I was doing April in Company — and say, ‘How do you do that? How do you act that?’ I said, ‘Well, I’ll show you.’ I would sit on the stairwell of the fourth floor of the Dorothy Chandler and coach people. Those were my first students. And it was such a blast; I fell in love with it.”
Twenty years later, Jentzen is still teaching, still helping actors connect with characters and build tools that will serve as a valuable foundation. She says she can’t imagine doing anything else. “I’m very grateful for my students,” she says. “[Teaching has] allowed me the opportunity to really understand life and art, and if it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be the teacher I am today, because I’ve learned from them, too.”
Jentzen — whose book, Acting With Impact, will be released in the fall — notes that she’s very technique-oriented. “I don’t believe in just directing an actor,” she says. “I believe they should absolutely know what they’re doing and make choices from the material, know how to break something down, know how to look at material. I like to give them their foundation. If they don’t have a foundation, they need one.”
As an actor, Jentzen has a rich training background of her own. She has a B.A. in theatre arts from UCLA, attended the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, and has studied the techniques of Meisner, Chekhov, Adler, Hagen, and Strasberg. Over the years, she’s built her own teaching style. “Obviously it’s based on the masters,” she says. “I combine imagination with personalization. Actors get very heavy, and then it gets very difficult to get into emotion. To teach them a light approach, to be able to access all of their emotion, is instrumental. A lot of people don’t speak in a language of emotion, but your directors will. A lot of schools shy away from it: ‘We don’t go directly to emotion.’ But of course you do; directors ask it of you all the time. So you have to speak the language of emotion and know how to go there and pay the price of the material and find your depth.”
Another key element of her approach is building a bridge between “foundation and vocation.” “Foundation is essential,” she says. “You can’t really have longevity unless you have your foundation. The foundation is based, obviously, on the teachings of Stanislavsky. It’s really important that the actor has some kind of foundation training for longevity, because trends change. Episodics are different than they were 10 years ago. The acting is different. You have to be able to adapt your instrument. What I’ve discovered is: There are a lot of schools that teach traditional or vocational, but there’s no real bridge on how you bring the tradition or the foundation into the environment of a profession. I teach that.”
Jentzen offers ongoing classes, private coaching, and cold reading weekend intensives. She interviews potential students by phone and offers a sort of open-house class once or twice a month in which she speaks with actors about her approach. “Depending on how much time we have, sometimes I coach every single one of them throughout the night to see where they’re at and give them some support,” she says.
In general, Jentzen likes to keep her classes to 16 students. She describes her typical class atmosphere as tough but loving. “I don’t feel like actors should compete with anyone but themselves,” she says. “It’s supportive. Nobody gives anybody feedback but me. I don’t believe in actors giving other actors feedback, because when I was a young actor, one thing I noticed in some of those environments is that actors tend to project their own issues onto other actors. So it’s very safe. And if an actor is going to give feedback, it will be positive feedback.”
The teacher doesn’t believe in going soft on her students, however. “I am tough,” she says. “I don’t allow people to get away with stuff in my room. Actors who are coming to me that are expecting it to be soft are going to get a harsh surprise. The business is too difficult. My feeling is, I’m responsible [for preparing] you for that space. It should be tougher in my room than it is in the profession. Because if it’s tougher in here, you’re ready out there.”
And when it comes to succeeding “out there,” Jentzen offers the following tips:
• Don’t limit yourself.
“As an actor, you have to know yourself,” she says. “And you have to know yourself in so many genres. You have to shine in each one. You don’t know where that opportunity’s going to be.” Jentzen recalls that when she was working as an actor, she once did a soap. “I [never thought] I would do a soap, because I was in film,” she says. “But that was an opportunity that presented itself, and I wanted to stay alive as an actor. You’re an actor; you act. That’s really important to me — that the actor develops not only an emotional range but a range with their genres, that they’re able to adapt. It’s a survival thing. And if you can survive in many genres, you will work a lot.”
• Always remind yourself of why you love acting.
“Love is artistic fuel,” Jentzen says. “You have to do everything you can to not get bitter; otherwise it can steal your talent. The love has to be fueled consistently. So that means you’re going to be doing things that remind you of that love. Go to museums. Go to places that invite and applaud and acknowledge self-expression.”
• Be a student of life.
“Seek your own growth, and make it fun,” she says. “One of my favorite things is to learn something new every day.”
• Believe in your own magic.
“This business is so random and unpredictable,” Jentzen says. “You never know. Dustin Hoffman got The Graduate after I don’t remember how many years of study. What I admire the most about these great actors is their perseverance and their staying true to what their voice internally wants them to do. It’s so important to not get sucked into the external hype of the industry, but rather to know you’re a product and that’s a game that you’re engaging in but it doesn’t define you.”