Covid-19 is tapping people's creativity and TPS is embracing that!
If there's one thing this virus has taught us, it's that staying connected to each other is key to our sanity. Music has been connecting communities all over the world and people are finding all kinds of ways to sing and make music together. We are excited to provide new virtual group performance opportunities for singers far and wide!
TPS is committed to doing our part to help keep our vulnerable communities safe.
Online Music Lessons
Concerts In Salt Lake City
Beginning Acting Skills
What do all the famous, GREAT performers have in common? They all use basic acting skills to bring their material to life! No matter the genre of music you sing, what kind of dance turns you on or if you do plays, t.v. or film, there are some key skills and acting exercises that will make you as the performer more memorable and more grounded in your performances.
The Performer Studio’s Beginning Acting Skills course offers instruction in elements and exercises that will add depth and dynamics to any performance. Both dances and songs are stories, just like monologues and great performances deliver that human connection from one person to another. This course helps performers...
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Understand the story being told
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Dig into true, personal connection to poetic lyrics, words or movements
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Unearth/create the character, (whether it be a written character or interpreting a jazz or pop song, lyrical or jazz dance, anything where you get to create a deeper human connection to the story being told)
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Explore how using different focus points adds visual dynamic
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Become versed in simple stage directions and how they affect how the performance is received by the audience
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...and much more...!
We are here to assist you as you reach your full potential as performers who want to connect with your material and your audiences!
BEGINNING ACTING SKILLS: $150 (10 student maximum)
DATES/TIMES: 11:15-1:00pm, April 6, 13 & 20
WHERE: Columbus Community Ctr. on 2531 So. 400 E.
Room # 106 South Salt Lake, UT 84115
FINAL CLASS/MOCK AUDITION: 11:15am-12:15pm, April 27
WHERE: Columbus Community Ctr. Room # 102/103
REGISTER TODAY! (10 students maximum)
photo by michael bateman
Kait Kingston
Lead Acting Instructor | Director | Casting Director
Kait Kingston has been a performer since she could walk. Starting out on Virginia Tanner's LAP for her very first modern dance class in SLC, UT, Kait began her career as a performer at the age of 5. Continuing on in dance, Kait became a company member with the Children's Dance Theatre Co. (CDT) and for the next 7 years, she was able to perform year-round with the company both locally and abroad in Canada, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Kait was also chosen as one of the young dancer girls in the Doris Humphrey piece Day On Earth, where she toured nationally with Repertory Dance Theatre (RDT), an adult dance company also based in SLC, UT. At the age of 12, Kait developed rheumatoid arthritis which effectively ended her dance career. Once in high school, Kait returned to performing in her school's rock band Rowtown, at Rowland-Hall St. Mark's as the band's drummer. There, she began singing backup vocals and realizing her love for musical performance. Kait then attended the University of Utah where she received her BFA from the Actor Training Program, then directed by Kenneth Washington. It was from Kenneth that Kait learned the core of her acting skills and how to discover and then realize
the humanity of the written word through both classical and contemporary theatre. After this, she moved to California where she pursued and received her M.F.A. in Musical Theatre from San Diego State University (SDSU). It was while here that Kait began her teaching career. She founded small private coaching business for the undergraduate students as well as her peers in the MFA theatre program as a result of her work as both an adjunct faculty at SDSU for various levels of acting courses and as the acting coach for the Kurt Weill show, Berlin To Broadway! It was there in San Diego that The Performer Studio was born. After completing her master's thesis on character development for the performer and a third year of teaching at the University level, Kait moved to Los Angeles for 5 years where she complete post-graduate study in vocal technique with world master voice teacher, Edward Sayegh and the American Musical Theatre Workshop. In 2004 Kait returned to her roots in Salt Lake City, UT to continue both her performing and teaching career.
Kait: "My goal with each student is to help them to become the very best they can be as performers and to assist them as they find their "voice." But in addition, I aim to lift their spirit during the time they spend here, so that when they leave for the day, after the work they've done, they feel better, more inspired, more empowered and more confident and driven than they did when they arrived for class."
ACTING | DANCE | SINGING | AUDITIONING
Take all 4 courses together and receive $100 total course fee!
ACT!
Robert Scott Smith
Guest Acting Instructor
Robert Scott is a professional actor who received his MFA from the prestigious Old Globe Theatre Actor Training Program at the University of San Diego and his BFA from the Actor Training Program at the University of Utah.
As a professional actor, his NYC credits include Kreutzer Sonata (World Premiere) UNITED SOLO FESTIVAL; Keeping Ishmael (Workshop); Pericles (SLANT); and the co-development of Roger Benington’s new work, Mormon Bird Play. SLC acting credits include Two Henrys and Crucible (PTC); Shhh! Burlesque, Pains of Youth, and Santaland Diaries (Tooth and Nail Theatre); Climbing With Tigers, Rapture Blister Burn, Good People, CHARM (World Premiere), Swimming in the Shallows, Six Years, Big Love, BATBOY: The Musical, and Gross Indecency (Salt Lake Acting Company); A Streetcar Named Desire and OUR TOWN (The Grand Theatre); Mockingbird (Pygmalion); and Ice Front (World Premiere) and Kreutzer Sonata (World Premiere) and BASH (Plan-B). Film and TV credits: Wildlife (Official Selection Cannes Métrage Selection 2015) Blessing, Animae, Guiding Light. Print: The Unfortunate Moment of Misunderstanding (Jim Fiscus).
Robert Scott is also Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Flying Bobcat Theatrical Laboratory. As a creative laboratory, FBTL pursues ongoing research and experimentation in source material, process, and performance and quest for ever
greater expressivity in our use of movement, text, sound, technology and design. Projects include an original work created in collaboration with Ririe-Woodbury and Flying Bobcat, live creature and ethereal things a dance performance inspired by The Red Fred Project. Other recent collaborations include; the 2018 world premiere of Jump (a co-production with Plan-B in partnership with The David Ross Fetzer Foundation for Emerging Artists);in 2016 the World Premiere of Climbing With Tigers, adapted for the stage by Troy Deutsch, based on the book by Nathan Glad and Dallas Graham Produced by Salt Lake Acting Company in collaboration with Flying Bobcat and Red Fred Project. Climbing was a new devised work involving animation and live action and was featured in American Theatre Magazine May 2016. In September 2014 Flying Bobcat collaborated with the SLC Men’s Choir to create LOST IN THE WOODS a theatrical concert at The Masonic Temple. In May 2015 collaborated with choreographer Charlotte Boye-Christensen, NOW-ID and NYC Playwright Troy Deutsch to create FEAST a site-specific performance at The Great Saltair. As former Creative Director at The Leonardo Museum in SLC he created the POPUP@LEO program; a fusion of science, technology and art, which featured three new devised theatrical productions. SENSES 5, LOVE, and MIND OVER MATTER.
Directing credits include credits include Big Loveby Charles Mee with the U of U Department of Theatre; SLAC’s NPSS Reykjavik by Steve Yockey; an All-Female Production of HAMLET with the U of U.
Cassidy Wixon
Teaching Assistant
Past Performer Studio student and Singers Academy Graduate, Class of 2011, Cassidy Wixon went on to study musical theatre at Weber State University for 5 years. During her time there, she choreographed numerous dance numbers for different productions and took a wide assortment of dance classes from many professional dancers from Utah, Los Angeles, and New York City. She has performed in 13 educational theatre shows, ranging from musicals, to 'straight plays,' to innovation theatre projects. Her SLC choreographic work includes The Performer Studio's (TPS) Broadway Tributes (2014 & 2018). She has worked professionally in many shows across Utah including a summer performing at Lagoon Amusement Park in the famous Carousel Theatre. Her latest post-graduate training was attending the Open Jar Institute in NYC with Jeff Whiting where she learned choreography from some of Broadway’s current best selling shows including Frozen and Mean girls, some of which you will learn if you register for our April dance class! Cassidy loves teaching and is always eager and excited to meet her new dancers! She thanks Kait Kingston for her on going support in pursuing her dreams as a performer!
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Cassidy: "TPS rocks! Come let us be a part of YOUR journey as a performer!"