🗓 8 classes, June 4-July 23

🕰️ Tuesdays 6pm-9pm

🗺 Vangeline Theatre: 126 10th St #207, Brooklyn

💰 Sliding scale: pay anything within the range of $90 (scholarship level) to $720 (standard rate for acting classes) to $1200 (supporter)

🤙 No formal theatre experience required

👥 Class limited to 16 students

📋

Application: apply here

Painting of a yidam, a type of meditation deity that advanced Vajrayana Buddhists practice becoming

Beyonce’s onstage persona of “Sasha Fierce” helps her find confidence and, yes, ferocity

Two children playing pretend

About

Across fiction, clowning, Tibetan deity yoga, playing pretend, shamanic shapeshifting, “letting Jesus take the wheel,” and even the personas we adopt at work, it is a fundamental human capacity to assume alternate identities. We will explore alternate identities to ask the question: What if our expanded self already possesses the superpowers we seek?

Perhaps you feel you’re terrible at math, creativity, or public speaking. This course will teach theatre techniques to see whether there might be someone else inside of you who isn’t.

Structure

Weeks 1-3: Stretching the identity

Embark on a series of self-possibility practices. Examples may include maskwork, clown, constellations, acting techniques, adapted pseudo-deity yoga, and more.

Weeks 4-5: Developing an alter-ego

Identify an alternate identity that extends your capabilities. Practice walking as that being, talking, entering & leaving a room, ordering a drink, etc.

Weeks 6-8: Alter-ego collaboration

Our alter-egos will collaborate on a collective project. It may be a theatre production, it may be a conference or volunteer project – but whatever it is, it will show you new sides of yourself.

The facilitators

Allison Boenig is a writer, actor, producer, and matchmaker queer who loves existing in flux, creative containers. Tyler Alterman is a writer, entrepreneur, and occasional performance artist from NY. Both have had transformative experiences in flirting with and/or adopting alter egos.

Tuition

Tuition is a sliding scale of anywhere from $90-$1200:

$90 is a scholarship-level tuition for those who can’t afford higher tuition. It covers our space rental. Please do not hesitate to choose this option!
$720 represents the low-end of the standard hourly rate for acting classes in NYC (~$30) and helps us, the organizers and teachers, afford living in New York City.
$1200 is supporter-level tuition; it supports the wider FractalU project, making it possible to expand class offerings, rent classroom space, host residency programs, and more.

Identity-play: a transformative theatre workshop