Acting Out

For Robin Reese, the road to the theatre has been a long, but fascinating one.

Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Reese spent most of her childhood living in Philadelphia and its suburbs. Around the age of twelve, she and a best friend decided to take dance classes. Reese quickly developed a passion for the art; that passion lead her to major in dance when she began her undergraduate career at the University of Maryland, College Park. Then she changed her major to women's studies … then back to dance … then women's studies … then dance again. Unable to make a definite decision, Reese returned to Philadelphia, enrolled at Temple University, and majored in journalism. But her love of dance was ever-present.

"I started writing about dance. I had a dance criticism column in the Center City Star and I started writing features for the Philadelphia Dance Alliance newsletter. I was attending dance performances sometimes three or four times a week and I got to interview and meet with internationally known dancers and choreographers. It was a great way to spend two or three years."

Upon her graduation from Temple in 1991, Reese immediately moved to California to begin her graduate career at UCLA. While studying dance history, she met Peter Sellers and Tim Miller, two post-modern theatre director/choreographers with a passion for experimental theatre.

"I took a performance class with Tim and often had lunch with Peter. And the two of them were always asking me 'Why are you here? You should be making your own work right now.' They spoke from experience because these were two non-academic people who had made it big and who really had something to say with their work."

Reese took their advice and moved back to Philadelphia to begin her own dance company and to create performances utilizing movement and text. A foot injury inspired another shift in her focus from dance performance to choreography and theatre directing.

"I realized that dance alone wasn't cutting it. I needed text. I needed words."

Through her involvement as co-founder and co-artistic director of the Women's Ensemble Theatre Company, Reese began to work in earnest on theatre pieces.

"I'd be directing these trained actors and they'd ask me things like 'what's my motivation?' or 'what's my objective?' and I realized that if I really wanted to do this, to get involved in theatre, I needed training."

Reese enrolled in the Actors Studio MFA program in New York City at New School University and began her study of Method acting, a technique in which actors draw on their own experiences and emotional history to create a more realistic character. She earned her MFA in 1999 and continued to work in New York theatre for several more years as an actor, director, and playwright. She joined the world of academia when she accepted the position of visiting assistant professor of theatre at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In 2004, she moved to Penn State Altoona, where she continues to teach and direct theatre students. In addition, Reese continues to work professionally in order to keep her own skills sharp and to pass her real-world experience on to her pupils.

"Students come into my class with different expectations. Some of them really want to be actors, some of them acted in high school and just thought it was fun and now want to do it as a hobby. And a few come in just because they think it's an easy A. In fact, there's a general misconception that acting is easy. That's a notion I start breaking down right away. There is a craft. There is a technique. It requires a lot of hard work and discipline. You can't be lazy and expect to be a great actor."

In educating her student actors, one of the methods Reese employs is the training of contemporary Japanese master Tadashi Suzuki. This training involves the union of western ballet with Japanese martial arts. The process is physically demanding and is designed to provide the performer with increased focus, awareness, imagination, and creativity.

Robin Reese, in center, with cast from summer stock in Todd Mountain Theatre Company

"I like to say that my acting course is really a course about 'you.' We work on getting to understand your emotional life, your sensations. It's about opening up and allowing yourself to be vulnerable. Students will finish an exercise and say 'Oh my gosh, I didn't know that I had so many feelings inside.' Even if they don't go into acting as a career, I feel like they can take what we do in class and use it in their life. If nothing else, they walk away knowing themselves better. At the end of the day, that's truly satisfying."

-JONATHAN O'HARROW