Spring 2025 Class Schedule:
L I V E I N T H E M O M E N T
8-week Scene Study Intensive
Online: Stanislavski’s Cognitive Analysis
Viewpoints Workshop with Alexandra Billings
Stanislavski’s Cognitive Analysis (Online)
Over the final stretch of his career, Konstantin Stanislavski, along with his former student and colleague at the Moscow Art Theatre, the director Maria Knebel, developed a multi-pronged, holistic acting process called ‘Active Analysis’. It is comprised of two parts” 1) Cognitive Analysis and 2) Physical Analysis. This 6-week online PraXis Acting Studio class with Hugh O’Gorman is a deep investigation into part one, Cognitive Analysis.
“To evaluate the facts means finding a key to the secrets of the character’s spiritual life hidden under the facts and the text.” -Konstantin Stanislavski
At the most fundamental level, actors need to be able to read a script for its dramatic action, as playing action is what you will eventually do in performance. More specifically, as action is embedded in events, actors need to read a script for the specific event in each scene. Therefore, in your own acting you need to become ‘event detectives’, actively investigating and discovering clues for how to discover the events which you will eventually act in performance. As action is at the heart of every event, when you identify the events of any script, you also reveal its dramatic action. The work will prepare you for rehearsal, what Stanislavski himself called “Mental Analysis”. It is comprised mostly of tools that will assist in how to read a script and prepare your role alone, including some psychophysical exercises you can do before you meet with your scene partner. A thorough vetting of the Cognitive Analysis is absolutely necessary before you get to the Physical Analysis. In fact, what you are able to do and accomplish in the physical work will depend on how much effort you have put into the cognitive aspects.
What I can confidently say about the process presented here is that it is reliable, repeatable, and time-tested in the real world by working professional actors and student actors alike. It will lead to success in your work. And again, by success, I specifically mean performing to your fullest potential with the least amount of interference, exacting precision, and long-term repeatability. This process gets results. The track record is strong. Playable action is the result.
“Creative feeling is guided along the pathways prepared by mental analysis. The actor should observe this sequence during Active Analysis.” -Maria Knebel
This online class meets for 6 weekly sessions via Zoom and is structured into three parts. The first part is comprised of the introduction of Stanislavski and Knebel’s vocabulary for Cognitive Analysis; part two is the application of the technique via analysis of a variety of short stories; the class concludes with the analysis of two full dramatic texts.
Consecutive Fridays April 11 - May 16, 2025
from 10 AM to 12 PM Pacific Time
Email: hugh@hughogorman.com
Tuition: $360 one-time payment
Location: Online via Zoom
Contact Hugh O’Gorman to request to enroll in the class:
8-week Advanced Scene Study Intensive
This in-person weekly scene study intensive for the professional actor meets on Monday nights for 8 sessions.
The work is grounded in the belief that all acting is psychophysical and plays out at the intersection of the actor’s imagination and body.
The class incorporates the methodologies of Konstantin Stanislavski, Michael Chekhov, Warren Robertson, and others.
The focus is on releasing the actor’s fullest potential and creative individuality via the techniques of Playing Action, Psychological Gesture, and the rehearsal process of Active Analysis.
Consecutive Mondays March 17 - May 5, 2025
from 7:00-10:00 PM
Email: hugh@hughogorman.com to set up an audition appointment. Former students of Mr. O’Gorman need not audition.
Tuition: $600 one time payment (due before the first class)
Location: MiMoDa Studio (entrance through Paper Or Plastik Cafe), 5774 W. Pico Blvd. Los Angeles CA 90019
Contact Hugh O’Gorman to request to enroll in the class:
Viewpoints Workshop with Alexandra Billings
(Sold Out)
Presented in partnership with The Last Acting Studio
Viewpoints Workshop:
Anne Bogart (originator of Viewpoints) says Viewpoints teaches us possibility. It helps us recognize the limitations we impose on ourselves and our art by habitually submitting to a presumed absolute authority, be it the text, the director, the teacher. Viewpoints frees us from the statement: "My character would never do that." In Viewpoints, there is no good or bad, right or wrong—there is only possibility. You are no longer bound by unconsciousness. It awakens all our senses, making it clear how much and how often we live only in our heads and see only through our eyes. Through Viewpoints, we learn to listen with our entire bodies and see with a sixth sense. We receive information from levels we were not even aware existed, and begin to communicate back with equal depth. There are nine viewpoints of time and by their nature, they encourage more risk-taking and bolder choices in acting that are not confined by any particular expectations or a strict process. Through the improvised exploration of Viewpoints, artistic discovery is possible. These Viewpoints are timeless and belong to the natural principles of movement, time and space.
About the Instructor:
Alexandra Billings has been acting since 1968 and has performed across the United States in hundreds of plays and musicals. She’s played everyone from Mama Rose in Gypsy to Mrs. Lynde in A Doll House. Most every stage role is considered to be a first for a transgender actress. Her one-woman autobiographical show, Before I Disappear, toured from Chicago to Boston to Los Angeles, and finally off-Broadway at The Producer’s Club, winning rave reviews and running for over 10 years.
Alexandra teaches Viewpoints through the lens of Stanislavski, Meisner and Uta Hagen. She is the first actor in a lineage of The Viewpoints practice, that begins from originator Anne Bogart, that has realized them to be a common language, more than just physical movement. This intensive is about igniting the actor’s internal life. Starting from self and forming the marriage of one’s own personal history with the imagination of the author of the play. Bringing to fruition; truth under imaginary circumstances through the original voice of the artist. That is the practice. That is the exploration.
“Hugh brings to every class he teaches his care, his particular insight, and his passion. The actors he sends to me always impress me with their training, their poise, and their inherent professionalism. I recommend him without reservation for any class he teaches.”
— Deborah Barylski: Emmy award-winning casting director