Meet Our Instructors! | Performing Studio Chicago

We’re lucky to have such inspiring lecturers at ASC. We’re excited to focus on a number of new additions which were serving to our college students develop. Meet our instructors, Sarah Tolan-Mee, Joshua Moaney, and Sara Mountjoy-Pepka!

Sarah Tolan-Mee is an actor and director from NYC. She guides actors and inventive artists, together with Pulitzer Prize winners, MacArthur Fellows, and PEN award winners, in expressive embodiment. She is a protege of the good motion trainer Moni Yakim and holds an MFA from Juilliard in Drama. Performing contains: Martyna Majok’s queens (LCT3), Sarah Ruhl’s Melancholy Play (13P) and Stage Kiss (The Goodman). Moreover, New Saloon’s Minor Character (Underneath the Radar), and Wallace Shawn’s A Thought In Three Components (FRANK). Additionally together with Lucy Thurber’s Named (Rising Phoenix Rep), Kenneth Prestininzi’s Love within the Seventh Kingdom of Wrath (Dream Up ComPetition) and Chaste (Lure Door), Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (Andre Gregory). She has developed work with Playwrights Horizons, Soho Rep, Clubbed Thumb, NYTW, P73, The Roundabout, The Winery, The Lark, Main Phases, Denver Heart, and The Playwright’s Heart.

What’s your favourite a part of instructing?

My favourite a part of instructing is watching college students’ radically completely different processes, and seeing them come alive by means of exploration of method. The phrases “method,” “craft” or “ability” can sound overly mechanical, however I’ve discovered the other. Good method frees an actor, opens her creativeness, and creates an immediacy in her work. It’s breathtaking to witness actors really experiment and to be in a room stuffed with people who find themselves prepared to make the leap into artistic course of. I really like witnessing the magic of transformation and the dwelling laboratory nature of the classroom. I want extra rehearsal rooms included the daring of an ASC class.

Why ASC?

I really like ASC’s combine of heat, rigor, and dedication to truthful, expansive appearing.

BONUS: When you weren’t an actor (or a trainer), what would you be?

If I weren’t an actor I’d be a physicist. The drama of area and time!!!

Joshua Moaney is a Chicago-based actor and trainer. He graduated together with his MFA from The Theatre Faculty at DePaul College in 2013. Moaney’s stage credit embody theaters reminiscent of Remy Bumppo, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, and Lifeline Theatre, the place he’s additionally a instructing artist.
Concurrently, Moaney works with The Lyric Opera of Chicago. His most up-to-date appearing credit embody Le Comte Ory, Macbeth, Eranani, and Fireplace Shut Up in My Bones.
On-camera credit embody Empire (Fox) and Chicago Med (NBC). Josh has additionally been seen in nationwide and regional commercials for manufacturers like Dicks Sporting Items, Goal, Kraft, ComEd, Massive Heaps, Room Place, Ace {Hardware}, and extra.

What’s your favourite a part of instructing?

I study as a lot from my college students as they do from me. The passion and pleasure they create to the studio makes instructing straightforward.

Sara Mountjoy-Pepka involves Chicago by way of Los Angeles and Seattle and may be very glad to be right here. As an actor, Sara loves all theater however has a selected focus in Shakespeare. Sara has loved working regionally with Nice River Shakespeare ComPetition, Seattle Shakespeare/ Wood O, Montana Shakespeare within the Parks, Will Geer’s Theatrical Botanicum, and extra. An expert improviser, she was an organization member of the award-winning Impro Theatre in LA and Seattle’s Sudden Productions. Every with a particular deal with improvising full-length performs in basic genres like Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Dorothy Parker. An organization member of Magic Circle Mime Firm, Sara spent 17 years miming throughout North America, Europe and Asia with the world’s greatest symphony orchestras. Sara can be a director, together with Impro Theatre/ Garry Marshall Theatre’s smash-hit Jane Austen Unscripted, and 7 sold-out seasons of The Improvised Technology (within the fashion of Star Trek: TNG).

What’s your favourite a part of instructing?

I benefit from the journey of determining what every scholar must thrive and shine. Typically, [a student] has a breakthrough their very firstclass, and typically, you’re assessing and experimenting collectively for some time till all of a sudden, one thing clicks.

Why ASC?

Straightforward – I began as a scholar right here and instantly felt this was an excellent group for me. I’ll proceed being a scholar at the same time as I step into instructing…I used to be refreshing the grownup lessons web page at present!

BONUS: When you weren’t an actor (or a trainer), what would you be?

A farmer. In one other life, I personal and run a self-sustaining natural farm within the Pacific Northwest with principally crops/ orchards and some glad hens. I can not emphasize the hole between the information it could take to succeed at that and the information I presently have, however my metropolis interest within the meantime is native plant gardening.