Sandi Carroll has taught a wide range of approaches to acting including movement, physical comedy, improvisation, devising, clown, film & TV, scene study, voice & speech and Shakespeare. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Acting at the University of Connecticut. She has taught at Pennsylvania State University, American University, New York University, Brown University, Emerson College, University of Virginia, The Public Theater, Theater for a New Audience, Everyman Theatre and Theater Development Fund. As a Research Fellow at Penn State’s Arts & Design Research Incubator, Sandi investigated the impact of the “Discipline of Play” on a range of health and human development issues, including teaching a graduate level course and culminating in a collaboration with colleagues from the School of Education to explore the impact of learning the “discipline of play”—as it is taught by traditional comedy techniques—on how we teach. As Artistic Director of The Mud/Bone Collective, she oversaw community outreach and education initiatives and ran the weekly Theater Lab which served as training for professional actors with a focus on ensemble and classical work. She has performed on Broadway, in film, on television, and in her own original work. She has studied with Jane Nichols, Ron Van Lieu, Slava Dolgachev, Chris Bayes, Philippe Gaulier, Faye Simpson, Mick Barnfather, Giovanni Fusetti and SITI Company, and has a BFA in acting from Boston University, and an MFA from the University of Virginia. Check here regularly for an updated schedule of classes or join the MAILING LIST (at the bottom of the page) to find out about future classes.
Previous Courses Include:
PENN STATE:
The Discipline of Play: Building Resiliency, Igniting Innovation
Learn to integrate play into your work. Laughter guaranteed.
Learning the discipline of play as it is taught by traditional physical comedy techniques teaches us how to be resilient in the face of the inevitable failures that come with true innovation, and helps us welcome those failures as essential guideposts on the path to success. Whatever your work might be—teaching, creating, learning, researching—infusing it with your personal brand of fun will lift your work to new levels of discovery and productivity. This class will teach you to play as if your life depended on it, to risk breaking the rules and being a fool, to go beyond the bounds of normal and access the infinite resources of fun that exist inside us all to work and live better.
Hosted by the Arts & Design Research Incubator (ADRI) and open to all disciplines. The course culminates with individual and group projects applying play to your particular field.
Improvisation at University of Virginia
What is Improvisation? Executing a tactical maneuver as a ranger in the army, coming up with a spur of the moment rebuttal in a political debate, making a first down after you’ve just been blitzed, walking through the streets of New York City. War, politics, football, love, theater, life is improvisation.
In this class you will:
- Learn to be funny using your own innate intelligence and stupidity.
- Learn to find genuine comedy through accepting and embracing failure.
- Learn to turn impulse into exciting, original and engaging choices.
- Learn comic timing through structured play.
- Learn to be a fearless performer through the art of the unknown.
- Learn to apply the technique of improvisation to drama, comedy, sketch, creating original work, and life outside of performance.