Workshops
Hone your skills or learn something new!
We offer workshops in acting, directing, improv and other stagecraft throughout the year.
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Note: If registering through PayPal isn't your thing, you can always pay at the first class. However, you do need to contact us to sign up in advance, so we can manage the numbers. Thanks!
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Collaborative Directing
with Cathy D. Warner & Greg Fritch
Postponed until fall--new date coming soon...
This one-day workshop is designed for directors and actors to experience and explore what it means to co-direct, and the unique opportunities presented by a collaborative approach. While directors can learn a great deal by watching performances (the culminating result of another’s work), we rarely have the opportunity to grow the actual skills used during the rehearsal process except by what we glean from “research” and our own experiences experimenting with what seems to work or not to work with actors in rehearsal. This workshop will provide a learning opportunity for directors and actors to grow this layer of our craft through reflecting about and sharing how we approach directing, experimenting with co-directing, and observing the rehearsal process of other directors and co-directors.
Auditions: In an effort to meet the specific needs of our participants, we are requesting all involved to please share some info about themselves in advance through an informal audition process. This is NOT for casting purposes, but will allow us to select scenes that best meet your goals, and work for the size of the group. All interested participants should also provide a resume.
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Actors: Please prepare a 1-minute monologue. With your resume, include the monologue you chose and why you chose it.
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Directors: Please submit a brief statement with your resume. Be prepared to briefly share it and what draws to you growing your skills as a collaborative director at the audition.
Preparation: We will be working with excerpts from 3 plays (one comedy, one drama and one tragedy) which will be made available to participants prior to the workshop. Please plan to read and begin reflecting about the plays prior to attending.
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Cost: $50 to $100, sliding scale (All proceeds benefit Actors' Theatre and the Young Directors Endowment Fund to support and encourage new directors.)
Maximum of 24 participants.
Email sccactorstheatre@gmail.com or use the PayPal button to sign up.
Greg Fritsch is passionate about directing and teaching. He has directed plays, musicals and
operas for a wide range of organizations in a variety of venues.
He has taught directing and acting at Santa Clara University, Notre Damede Namur University in Belmont and the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Cathy D. Warner is a theatre artist, dancer and choreographer who was the head of the Theatre Arts and Dance Dept at Harbor High School for
37 years, where she
designed a student-centered, collaborative approach to teaching.
She has has co-directed many arts institutes for The California Arts Project, severap plays for the 8 Tens @ 8 Festival, and co-directed serveral seasons of The Best of the Rest. She has vast experience in working with all levels of teachers and students, and igniting their passion for the arts.
Pre-pay to ensure your spot!
Directing for Actors & Playwrights
​with Bill Peters
Sundays, Aug 3, 10, 17, 31, Sept 7 from 11 am to 2 pm
Mondays Aug 18, 25, Sept 1 from 6:30 to 9:30 pm
This workshop is about awakening the directorial instincts of the participants by looking at very small things. The skills and sensibilities involved in directing are the ones that also distinguish good acting and playwriting. In the world’s great acting ensembles, both actors and directors work in harmony to provoke and explore acting moments, feeding off each other’s theatrical imaginations. And the writers that we are transformed by are the ones who understand that the language of the theatre is not exclusively verbal.
Exercises will address story-building, character development, and the exploration of spatial relationships. Special attention will be given to the use of movement, rhythm, and space, and in locating and rendering the dramatic details of a text. The workshop will also open up opportunities for experiencing alternative methods of analyzing and rehearsing a play
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Cost: $160. Maximum of 14 participants.
Email sccactorstheatre@gmail.com
or use the PayPal button to sign up.
Pre-pay to ensure your spot!
Bill Peters is a professor emeritus at San Francisco State University where he taught playwriting, acting, directing and Shakespeare performance for many years.
His directing credits include projects at the Manhattan Theatre Club, The Denver Center, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Jewel Theater in Santa Cruz, and the Magic Theatre in San Francisco. He has directed many times for Actors' Theatre's 8 Tens @ 8 Festival.
"What a privilege to be able to take a directing class with Bill Peters. It was utterly fascinating to watch Bill dissect a performance, pulling it apart, thread by thread, to show how there is no right or wrong way to say something, only a way unique to that director."
--Sally Bookman
Directing for Actors workshop
Writing Your 10-Minute Play:
A Workshop for Imagining, Creating, Polishing & Submitting Your Script
with Wilma Marcus Chandler
Saturdays, Sept. 20, 27 & Oct. 4 & 11, 2025
11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Ten-minute play festivals began on the East Coast with Actors’ Theatre of Louisville and on the West Coast with Santa Cruz Actors' Theatre! Since that time, they have blossomed all over the country and there are myriad opportunities to submit your work nationally. Have an idea for a play? Join others in bringing those ideas to the page and the stage!
Topics will include:
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Developing your ideas
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Characters
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Plot line
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Settings
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Style and genre
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Pitfalls
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Formatting the script
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Table reads
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Submission opportunities
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Cost: $50. Maximum of 16 participants.
Email sccactorstheatre@gmail.com or use the PayPal button to sign up.
She is Emerita Chair of Theatre Arts at Cabrillo College, Aptos. She is the founder of the on-going annual 8 Tens @ 8 Festival at Actors' Theatre and was the Festival's artistic director for many years. She is the founder and producer of the In Celebration of the Muse writers' festival and co-founder of the National Festival of Women's Theater and My Kin Talk, a Jewish Readers' Theatre Company. To date she has written, directed and/or produced over 100 productions and literary festivals in the Bay Area.
Wilma Marcus Chandler is a playwright, theatre director, and teacher. Her many books on theatre scholarship, directing, stage combat, and scene study have been published by Smith & Kraus, Inc.
The Actor's Toolbox
Techniques for Building Your Craft
with Christopher Peak and Suzanne Schrag
Mondays, Nov 3, 10, 17, 24, Dec 1, 8, 2025
6:30 to 9:00 pm
This workshop series is designed to give actors concrete techniques to develop their craft and enhance their performances. We will explore specific ways to deepen your work physically, vocally and textually—all of which can lead to greater freedom of expression in your body, voice and intention. Develop the tools that will help you build a truthful and truly engaged performance.
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We will cover the following topics over the six sessions:
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Journey to Neutral—Finding a Starting Point Free of Pretense
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Three Vocal Channels and the Daily 18—Bringing Greater Life to Your Lines
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Entrances and Exits—Coming and Going with Physical Comedy
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Geography of Thought—Taking Them with You with Your Words
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Action!—Bringing Physicality to a Script
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Free Climbing the Vowel Tree—Mapping a Vocal/Emotional Journey
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Cost: $75. Maximum of 16 participants.
Email sccactorstheatre@gmail.com or use the PayPal button to sign up.
Pre-pay to ensure your spot in the November series!
Christopher Peak holds an MFA and BFA in Acting and Theater. He served as an Associate Professor of Theater at University of California, Davis, and taught at the Berkeley Rep School of Theater.
He has extensive movement training including Lecoq technique with a focus on mask and character work, stage combat, clowning, and a wide range of movement methodologies, including Suzuki Method, Viewpoints, Laban Movement Analysis, Alexander Technique and commedia dell'arte, where he has performed several stock characters.
Suzanne Schrag has been exploring the craft of acting for most of her life. In addition to her many years of performing and teaching with Um...Gee...Um Improv Troupe, she has studied Meisner Technique with Ian
​McRae and trained with Bay Area Theatresports, the New Actors' Workshop in NYC and Shakepeare & Company. She has also had the great good fortune to work with and learn from the many amazing theater teachers here in Santa Cruz. She is excited to share some of the favorite implements in her own acting toolbox with the wider Actors' Theatre community.
Coming next Spring...
Acting Shakespeare
​with Bill Peters
Mondays, January 26 - March 16, 2026
from 6:30 to 9:30 pm
Shakespeare’s plays, besides everything else they are, are huge lumps of language that often seem like a chore to digest. Making them one’s own is often seen as a heavy duty rather than a pleasure. We will start with the idea that Shakespeare was not in the business of mystifying or boring his audiences, but that he was a master entertainer concerned with entrancing his audiences and awakening in them “the desire to listen with their entire being.”
This workshop is designed to help actors and directors master the intricacies of Shakespearian text. It is designed to serve people who have experience performing Shakespeare, as well as those who don’t. Over the course of 8 sessions, we will explore the nature of Shakespeare’s theatrical imagination, and the linguistic tools he used to create his themes, plots and characters. The work will consist of studying and performing various monologues and scenes from his collected works. This workshop will also serve to enhance the participants' responses to other styles of playwriting. The techniques we will explore in the workshop will be of use to actors, directors, teachers, playwrights and all those who are interested in unlocking the power of Shakespeare in themselves. People who are Shakespeare-phobic are particularly welcome.
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Cost: $160. Maximum of 14 participants.
Email sccactorstheatre@gmail.com or use the PayPal button to sign up.
Bill Peters is a professor emeritus at San Francisco State University where he taught playwriting, acting, directing and Shakespeare performance for many years.
His directing credits include projects at the Manhattan Theatre Club, The Denver Center, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Jewel Theater in Santa Cruz, and the Magic Theatre in San Francisco. He has directed many times for Actors' Theatre's 8 Tens @ 8 Festival.
Pre-pay to ensure your spot!
Bill Peters is a professor emeritus at San Francisco State University where he taught playwriting, acting, directing and Shakespeare performance for many years.
​His directing credits include projects at the Manhattan Theatre Club, The Denver Center, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Jewel Theater in Santa Cruz, and the Magic Theatre in San Francisco. He has directed many times for Actors' Theatre's 8 Tens @ 8 Festival.