Junior Academy: Musical Theater returns to give young actors a yearlong opportunity for focused growth and training in musical theater performance. In the first session, students will be introduced to essential acting, vocal, and audition techniques through improv, theater games, vocal exercises, and auditions for a junior musical production or broadway musical revue. Sessions two and three will challenge the students to apply what they are learning in an extended musical showcase at the Academy Festival. 

To apply for Junior Academy: Musical Theater, students should fill out an academy application form, and submit a video audition of the student performing a 1-minute monologue, as well as a video of the student performing 30-60 seconds of a musical theater song of their choice. Students are encouraged to use one of the monologues provided below. Applications are due Wednesday, June 26, 2024, at midnight.

The cost for Academy is $325 per session ($250 covers class tuition, plus an additional $75 fee per session for performance rights, artistic/tech team, performance space).

Instructor: Jacob Filegar

Acting Academy One Acts will give students the opportunity to work on acting technique with slightly shorter scripts giving them the opportunity to master their characters and material. Students will be introduced to essential acting techniques through improv, theater games and acting exercises. Students will apply what they are learning in an extended showcase of the one-acts at the Academy Festival. 

To apply for Acting Academy, students should fill out an academy application form, and submit a video audition of the student performing a 1–2-minute monologue. Students are encouraged to use a monologue from the list provided below. Applications are due Wednesday, June 26, 2024, at midnight. 

The cost for Academy is $325 per session ($250 covers class tuition, plus an additional $75 fee per session for performance rights, artistic/tech team, performance space).

Instructor: Ashley Love

Film Academy will be producing an episodic mockumentary series about a teenage boy band, with an original script and music from current CharacterWorks students. This class will focus completely on PRODUCTION (casting, pre-production, on-location filming). Students will learn about and get to experience all aspects of the production process, giving them a wide view of the film production business. Filming equipment is provided, but students will be art directing the show, using props and sets they create or are able to find.

Since we will film on location most nights, classes will not always be held at Kingsway. Students and parents will be provided with a schedule before each of the three sessions during the year.

Film Academy students are not required to be in the Film Academy Post Production class, but they can apply to and take both classes if they wish.

To apply for Film Academy, students need to submit an Academy application that includes a theater resume, a film resume if available, and essay question outlining why the student is interested in Film Academy. The actors for this film will be chosen from students within the class, so a video monologue audition will be required for any student wishing to act in the film (boys and girls will be cast in this series). If a student does not wish to be considered for the cast of the film, a video monologue audition is not required. Applications are due Wednesday, June 26, 2024, at midnight. 

The cost for Academy is $325 per session ($250 covers class tuition, plus an additional $75 fee per session for performance rights, artistic/tech team, performance space).

Instructor: Blair Keeley 

Film Academy Post-Production is a new class that will solely focus on POST-PRODUCTION for the series being filmed by Film Academy. Students in this class will learn and practice the editing process, special effects, sound design, scoring and the coloring process. Post-Production is where the story is built and told and this class will be responsible for the output that will be premiered at Academy Festival 2025.

Our post production studio will be at Gayton, but we may have a field trip or two during the year to see some of the filming.

Film Academy Post students are not required to be in the Film Academy Production class, but they can apply to and take both classes if they wish.

Film Academy Post students will be required to have a laptop for editing in class and occasionally at home. We will be using Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects, which are both part of the Adobe Creative Cloud. There are student rates for subscribing to these applications.

To apply for Film Academy Post Production, students need to submit an Academy application that includes a theater resume, a film resume if available, and essay question outlining why the student is interested in Post Production. Applications are due Wednesday, June 26, 2024 at midnight. 

The cost for Academy is $325 per session ($250 covers class tuition, plus an additional $75 fee per session for performance rights, artistic/tech team, performance space).

Instructor: Blair Keeley

Advanced Acting Academy: Steel Magnolias will help students learn the acting process, from how to tackle a role to scene analysis, through acting exercises, theater games and partner work. Students will spend time learning how to apply these techniques while rehearsing the play, Steel Magnolias, full of rich characters and a beautiful story. Students will be challenged to apply the acting techniques they are learning in their performance of Steel Magnolias at the Academy Festival. 

About Steel Magnolias by Robert Harling: Filled with hilarious repartee and not a few acerbic but humorously revealing verbal collisions, the play moves toward tragedy when, in the second act, the spunky Shelby (who is a diabetic) risks pregnancy and forfeits her life. The sudden realization of their mortality affects the others, but also draws on the underlying strength—and love—which give the play, and its characters, the special quality to make them truly touching, funny and marvelously amiable company in good times and bad.

*PLEASE NOTE Steel Magnolias is an all-female cast, so this will be an all-female class*

To apply for Advanced Acting Academy: Steel Magnolias, students should fill out an academy application form, and submit a video audition of the student performing a 1–2-minute monologue. Students are encouraged to use a monologue from the monologues provided below.  Applications are due Wednesday, June 26, 2024, at midnight.

The cost for Academy is $325 per session ($250 class tuition, plus an additional $75 fee per session for performance rights, artistic/tech team, performance space).

Instructor: Ashley Love

Advanced Acting Academy: The Diary of Anne Frank will focus on learning different acting techniques based on the teachings of great acting teachers like Constantin Stanislavski, Uta Hagen, and Standford Meisner.  These exercises will help students learn how to create a character, bring truthfulness to their performance, and to listen and respond well to scene partners.  Students will be challenged to apply the acting techniques they learn to their performance of the play, The Diary of Anne Frank, at the Academy Festival.

About The Diary of Anne Frank by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, newly adapted by Wendy Kesselman: In this transcendently powerful new adaptation by Wendy Kesselman, Anne Frank emerges from history a living, lyrical, intensely gifted young girl, who confronts her rapidly changing life and the increasing horror of her time with astonishing honesty, wit, and determination. An impassioned drama about the lives of eight people hiding from the Nazis in a concealed storage attic, THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK captures the claustrophobic realities of their daily existence—their fear, their hope, their laughter, their grief. Each day of these two dark years, Anne's voice shines through: "When I write I shake off all my cares. But I want to achieve more than that. I want to be useful and bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met. I want to go on living even after my death!" This is a new adaptation for a new generation.
 
To apply for Advanced Acting Academy: The Diary of Anne Frank, students should fill out an academy application form, and submit a video audition of the student performing a 1–2-minute monologue. Students are encouraged to use a monologue from the monologues provided below.  Applications are due Wednesday, June 26, 2024, at midnight.

The cost for Academy is $325 per session ($250 class tuition, plus an additional $75 fee per session for performance rights, artistic/tech team, performance space).

Instructor: Becky McNamee