About the Workshops

In the Gary Austin Workshops, the actor, playing actions and staying aware of himself in relation to others and his environment, allows himself to follow his impulses. Thus, there is the chance that he will portray truthful human behavior in a compelling way, so as to command the attention of the audience. Techniques are developed and practiced in support of that ideal.

Workshop members develop characters (including "playing oneself") and material. Onstage relationships are explored. The player learns how he is actor, writer, and director at the same time.

Jeffrey Sweet, author of "Something Wonderful Right Away" (a history of Second City), writing in New York's "Backstage" -- "Gary would side-coach, drawing voices out of the improvisers, suggesting topics for rants, changing the characters ages, genders, nationalities. When something clicked, he would send other actors onstage to create contexts in which these newly found characters could be challenged. Gary has an uncanny sense of what to toss out when. Within a matter of minutes, a vague impulse would become a rough sketch, and over the days that followed, the rough sketch would acquire definition, specificity, humanity."