The Actors’ Training Project Challenges Talent
		By Lissa Tyler Renaud, Ph.D.
	In early 1984, John McConville, Christine Sanders and myself entered into a three-way "training project": all three teachers—already long-time working professionals—became each other’s teachers as well as students. That is, the dancer studied acting and voice, the actress studied voice and movement, the singer studied acting and movement. During sustained and intensive study, all three of us performing artists found ourselves using remarkably overlapping vocabularies in teaching our respective lessons. This eventually led us to a synthesis of the three disciplines which we found deeply inspirational to our work in our respective professions. Through our separate private studios, our work began to influence students and professionals at large. We were encouraged to combine our studios, and in April of 1985, we formally became the Actors’ Training Project. When we are faced with a song or a dance or a scene, what are we to do with it? All good methods offer us both technical skills and emotional range. But few methods explain how to coordinate the technique with the emotion; it is implied that inspiration or "talent" somehow stitch the two together. This way of teaching divides students of the arts into those who "can" and those who "can’t." In fact, it is the teaching methods themselves that are at fault. People are not exclusively skilled and or emotional beings; they are also intellectual, spiritual and highly aesthetic beings, and without addressing these elements we cannot hope for a rounded artist. At the Actors’ Training Project we have seen that the skills and the sensibilities required to be a good actor can be taught and learned. The other part, which is often called talent, je ne sais quoi or "that extra something", is nothing other than generosity. This means simply that the pleasure in entertaining is greater than the anxiety at doing so—that the willingness to offer your work to the audience is greater than the will to keep it for yourself. Both the pleasure and the willingness can be reached through confidence; confidence in turn is gained through the knowledge that you have a sound approach to your art. This program offers a synthesis of a great deal of material; the student also has experience and information to contribute: together we create a structured method of work which will support you in the professional and artistic challenges you undertake. The Actors’ Training Project collaborates with students in the creation of a performance method that works for each individual. In the context of hard work and in the spirit of generosity, the Actors’ Training Project offers its students self-sufficiency as an "actor" of dance, dramatic text or song. It provides the profession with actors who are healthy in person and in craft, willing and able to act as full-fledged collaborative artists of the performing arts, internationally, in all media. [Find more information about Lissa Tyler Renaud’s professional training for Acting, Voice and Movement at www.interarts-training.org.]
	© 2001 Lissa Tyler Renaud. All rights reserved.