JASON CHAET
– STORY AND STRUCTURE
– BUILD YOUR IDEA
Jason Chaet is an award-winning Filmmaker, Theater Director, Producer, Editor and acting teacher based in New York City. He got his start at New York’s famed Ensemble Studio Theater where he worked closely with Off-Broadway icon Curt Dempster. There, he developed the new work of many playwrights, including David Mamet and Arthur Miller, and served as assistant director on Mamet’s critically-acclaimed No One Will Be Immune: Five Pieces for Theater and Miller’s Elegy for a Lady. He founded and was the artistic director of Stage One, an Off-Off Broadway theater company that specialized in developing and producing new and under-performed one-act plays. Credits with Stage One include Fool’s Mate, In Fireworks Lie Secret Codes, Acapulco, Dead Bird, and All Men are Whores, which was produced with special permission from David Mamet.
He co-conceived and directed “Off The Page” for HBO and the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen. Jason has scores of New York and regional directing credits, including Black Wannabe (N.Y. and L.A.), the multimedia Capitalist Pig Hour in Chicago, Laughter on the 23rd Floor and Crossing Delancey at the Fayetteville Playhouse, Worker Bee (PSNBC), and Talk Radio (Altered Stages). Recently he directed, produced, and edited the award-winning feature film Putzel, starringJack Carpenter, Melanie Lynskey, Susie Essman and John Pankow. It has played at over fifty film festivals around the world and was released internationally by Filmbuff. Upcoming projects include the feature films Verona (starring Ruben Blades) and SIFU, as well as a number of television projects in various stages of development. Jason holds a B.F.A. in Drama with a concentration on Acting and Directing from Syracuse University’s Drama Department.
Jason is a long-time member of the acting faculty at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy where he teaches acting, on-camera acting, and screenwriting and has directed over one hundred and fifty showcase productions. He has trained hundreds of actors who have had successful careers in Film, Television, and Broadway.
ALEX BRIGHTMAN
– AUDITION PSYCHE
Alex Brightman is a two-time Tony nominee, known for his star turns in Beetlejuice and School of Rock. He has been seen on Broadway for the last twelve years in productions of Wicked, Big Fish, Glory Days, and Matilda. He teaches all over New York City with a strict focus on audition confidence training, demystifying the abnormal art of “the audition.” As a writer, he is currently working on a musical adaptation of It’s Kind of a Funny Story and an animated musical feature of the award-winning children’s novel The Whipping Boy (both with his writing partner Drew Gasparini). His plays, Everything is Fine and We Left It Here are currently being developed. He is a big believer in the art of pretending.
RAY VIRTA
– SHAKESPEARE: Close Reading The Text
2002 St. Clair Bayfield Award for Outstanding Shakespeare Performance in the Metropolitan NYC area for his work as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing at The Pearl. BROADWAY: 12 shows including Arcadia, Democracy, The Real Thing, The School for Scandal OFF-BROADWAY: 19 shows including four at the Roundabout and three at Manhattan Theatre Club. Resident Company at The Pearl. National Tours: M. Butterfly; six shows withThe Acting Company. Regional: Over 40 lead/featured roles including Romeo, Macbeth, Torvald, Orsino, Berowne. His television and film work includes The Thomas Crown Affair, Closer To Home, My First Kiss…, Remembrance, all incarnations of Law and Order, recurring roles on all New York soap operas, and, most recently, “Egg Sandwich Guy” in the feature film Seneca, directed by AMCP Faculty member Jason Chaet.
Ray has been a teacher for over 40 years, leading classes and workshops from Fairbanks to Taipei. He taught Shakespeare Performance at NYU/PHTS and for the last 18 years he has been full-time at AMDA, teaching a wide array of classes across all semesters.
ALICE EVE COHEN
– Solo Theatre 1
Alice Eve Cohen is a solo theatre artist, playwright and author. Winner of the Jane Chambers feminist Playwriting Award, her plays and solo works have been performed for over 250,000 people on four continents, at theatres including The Kitchen Theatre, Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company, Philadelphia Women’s Theatre Festival, New York Theatre Workshop, The New Georges, All for One Festival, Cherry Lane Theatre, HERE, 78th Street Theatre Lab, Bayview Women’s Prison, KiMo Theatre, Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, LA Women’s Theatre Festival, Barnard, Fordham, U of Michigan, Smithsonian Institution’s Discovery Theatre; and internationally at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Galway Festival, Jerusalem’s Theatre Bama, Trinidad’s Astor Theatre, Oslo Festival, and the upcoming Women Playwrights International Conference Montréal 2022. The premiere of her newest solo play will be produced online in 2021 by the Jewish Repertory Theatre of Western NY. Alice is a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop’s Usual Suspects, and Honor Roll! Her memoirs have won the Elle Literary Grand Prize & Oprah magazine’s 25 Best Books of Summer.
Alice has an MFA from The New School and a BA from Princeton University. She teaches playwriting at Augsburg University’s MFA Program and at The New School, where she received the 2020 Distinguished Teaching Award. Visit her at www.AliceEveCohen.com
DANIEL SINGER
– Alexander Technique
Daniel Singer is a senior faculty member at the American Center for the Alexander Technique Teacher Certification Program. He has a private practice in NYC and is currently on staff as the Alexander Technique teacher at three performance Conservatories: AMDA, Circle-in-the Square and Michael Howard Studio. Daniel is an author of the book The Sacred Portable Now (Prima Publishing, 1996). He also co-produced a CD “The Back Alive Advantage” based on principles of Alexander Technique self-lesson work. Additionally trained and certified in educational and therapeutic uses of visualization by the American Institute for Mental Imagery, he’s an artist whose mediums have ranged from glassblowing to painting, from poetry to fiction, and for the last fifteen years he has also pursued a passion for Argentine Tango. He has been teaching actors the Alexander Technique for 4 decades.
Charley Layton
– Speech For Actors
Charley Layton is a professional speech/dialect coach who has been working in New York City since 2001. He attended the Atlantic Acting School, graduated through NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts (BFA Drama), and is a current faculty member. He also holds a BA in Linguistics from Brooklyn College. Charley has coached dialects for theater/film/TV/internet productions in NYC and abroad (Broadway: Kinky Boots, Jersey Boys, and Summer: The Donna Summer Musical, and co-coached Ain’t Too Proud and Escape to Margaritaville) and has recorded a dialect tutorial for Samuel French. He also works privately with actors, singers and public speakers. Charley was a two-time semi-finalist in the National Shakespeare Competition with the English-Speaking Union (Lincoln Center).
Tiffany Vega-Gibson
– Intro to Copyright Law and Intellectual Property
Tiffany Vega-Gibson works as an independent consultant through her performing arts management and DEI consulting company, La Vega Management, which has worked with dozens of organizations throughout the US. She most recently served on the Steering Committee for the New Orleans based theatre company, No Dream Deferred, and currently serves on the National Board of the Parent Artist Advocacy League and the Board of Directors for Kyoung’s Pacific Beat. She is a certified Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion facilitator through artEquity and Northwestern University. She is also an adjunct professor at Loyola University New Orleans. Previously, she was the General Manager at Hi-ARTS NYC (Formerly Hip-Hop Theater Festival) and was a Customer Success Manager at AudienceView. Tiffany is experienced in organizational management, board management, fundraising, fiscal development, and community relations. She has worked both on the presenting and producing side of performing arts as well as tour management and holds an MFA in Theatre Management & Producing from Columbia University and a BA in Theatre Performance from the University of Maryland-College Park.
JEFFREY DREISBACH
– Self-Submissions That Book Auditions
Jeffrey Dreisbach has been a casting partner at McCORKLE CASTING, LTD for over 10 years. He received his BFA Degree in acting at Wayne State University and Masters education at Roger Williams College of Actor Training in London and at Cal-Arts in California. Jeffrey began his New York career accumulating Broadway, Film and Television credits for over 20 years. His last Broadway show, A Few Good men, written by Aaron Sorkin was performed over 500 times. Additionally, he found success in commercials, Voice-over’s and countless regional theatre’s throughout the country. Jeffrey is the author of “Conversation Pieces out of the Studio, The Voice over Workshop for Professional Actors (Dog Ear Publishing 2011) and his podcast Casting Actors Cast has reached a worldwide audience with over 25 thousand downloads (castingactorscast.com). McCorkle Casting Ltd. has cast over 50 Broadway productions, 65 Off-Broadway, 62 feature film projects, 68 shows for television and hundreds of regional theatre credits. Mccorklecasting.com
AMCP 