As a Teacher,
I support students as they develop their unique capacity for expressive connection. My range of training and experience is a tool kit made available for each student's specific goals. Master Teacher Catherine Fitzmaurice says, "Teach what is in front of you". Every student is the spark of their own inspiration. My job is to collaborate with them and to provide practical tools for growth.
Currently,
I am the Academic Department Director for Classical and Period Acting at AMDA. In addition to creating, maintaining and updating curriculum for AMDA, I teach; contemporary and period scene study, acting technique, Shakespeare, voice and speech. I have also taught at Rutgers University, Rider University, City College of New York, The Barrow Group, the New York Film Academy and others.
Loui Movement Technique
In addition to using LMT in my university teaching work, I run LMT workshops for professional actors in New York City.
Loui Movement Technique is a dynamic, actor-focused movement modality based in contact improvisation and developed by master teacher Annie Loui. We use the architecture of the body to exchange energy and weight. The technique requires full body communication and is an excellent tool for ensemble building. When applied to text, actors experience the liberating experience of 'improvising' given text.
For more info check out Counter-Balance Theater.
Testimonials
“I think [LMT] is a great work-out for actors and encourages us all to do a bit of risk-taking in a safe environment. Anika is a warm and supportive presence in the classroom. She and her co-teacher Soren are impressive practitioners and created a challenging but accepting environment.”
“I truly connected with the way in which you taught me and your strong presence and infectious (yet calm) energy really allowed me to open up as a person and learn experientially.
I will forever be grateful for the time spent together as your direct communication and openness inspired me to put into practice things that I’d always read about but never fully understood - like “simply breathing” and being present in the moment. As a person that shift in consciousness has changed the way that I see my journey and is helping me face my fears more than you’d know.”
“I would like to say That you are an awesome teacher and I like every moment of your class and enjoy learning shakespeare with you:-)”
“I really loved this class, the other classmates, Anika, the warm-ups, the acting exercises, the speech and breathing practices, I loved it all! I had a fun time and I learned such an incredible amount, it was a great experience.”
“This class has shown me I can still overcome fears, try new things and open up to complete strangers baring my insides freely.”
“So this is kinda out of the blue, but I really just wanted to thank you again for being such a great teacher. I feel like Speech was one of the few classes where I walked away from the quarter and still kept the exercises and knowledge that I gained over the quarter. Over break, I was asked to perform a monologue for this conference that I was attending. I didn’t realize it at the time but I was going to be performing for about 1,000 people! In preparing for this performance I found all the exercises and visualization work that we did in class was super helpful And I even destructured before my performance to calm my nerves! The performance went really well and I felt really good about them. But anyways, I just wanted to share this small success will you, because as my teacher you have had a hand in my progress, and made a huge impact on my growth as a performer. I mean the second week of class I couldn’t even perform my Edmund monologue in front of our class because of nerves! And now I have a 1,000 person performance under my belt. So thank you so much!”
“I truly cannot thank you enough for what you’ve done for me and for our whole class this quarter. Knowing you has been one of the highlights of my career at UCI.”
