Charlotte has taught classes and workshops at Juilliard, Gibney, Barnard, Peridance and for the Playground NYC at Baryshnikov Arts. She is currently on faculty at Stella Adler, The New Group/LIU BFA Program and HB Studio. She does one-on-one acting coaching with professional dancers/actors around the world, and has done company-wide coaching for Limon Dance and NVA & Guests. 

UPCOMING WORKSHOPS

IMPROV FOR ACTORS @ HB Studio
Ten-week course in person at HB Studio. Thursdays from 6-8:30pm. Pre-registration required. 
Click HERE for full details. 
In this course, you will learn how to use improvisation to foster creativity, authenticity and deeper connections in your acting work. We will be looking at ways that improv is directly applicable to and used in the craft of acting; whether it be in the context of an audition, or in rehearsal with a director that likes to work with improvised exercises to build out backstory and to generate blocking. You will gain the necessary tools to structure viable improvisations (with emphasis on circumstances, relationships, tension, and subtext) that you can then use to prepare characters, monologues, scenes and audition material. Actors of all levels are welcome.

DISCOVER: MOVING     INTO    LANGUAGE 

Moving Into Language is an approach to acting designed to encourage performers & creators of all kinds to use their bodies’ intelligence and expressive capacities as the primary source of their creative play. Students will learn how to dive into text immediately and viscerally, allowing discoveries about the character/scene to be made through action and experience, as opposed to through static or intellectual analysis. They will also garner tools to begin establishing a personal method of preparing text physically so they can arrive at an audition or rehearsal creatively full and ready to play. 

Moving Into Language can be taught as a consecutive class or as a focused workshop of varying lengths. It exists in two branches; one that uses the teachings as a means of helping dancers along their acting journeys and towards working more successfully with text in their choreographic exploits. The other is as a movement language for actors that can be immediately incorporated into their work on stage, on camera and in auditions. With a high level of training and professional experience as a dancer, actor and choreographer, Charlotte is exceptionally well placed to guide students of all disciplines on their quest to connecting voice, body and imagination. She has led workshops and classes at The Juilliard School, Gibney Dance Center, HB Studio, Barnard, Peridance, Stella Adler, the Ken Studio (founded by Ken Schatz), BeMoving, Western Oregon University, Pinellas County Center for the Arts, Dance Device Lab and at NVA & Guests seasonal workshops. She also works directly with individuals performers and companies. Most recently, she created a multi-day acting workshop for the Limon Dance Company to dig into the theatricality of Jose Limon's repertoire. 

ACTING   FOR   DANCERS

Moving Into Language was originally conceived as an approach to acting created specifically for trained dancers; taking what they know & understand so deeply about their bodies and using that as the foundation for their acting explorations. Dancers learn how to use movement as a launching pad for building character, unlocking a scene and arriving at a unique interpretation of spoken material. They gain greater access to their voice by seeing it as simply a natural progression of a scene’s physical expression. They acquire the tools to independently prepare a scene/monologue so they can arrive at an audition or rehearsal creatively full & ready to play.

Classes begin with a series of physical improvisations aimed at tapping into the dancer’s impulses and at generating a sense of freedom & play in their initial experience of the text. The dancer is released from any pressure to perform the words and encouraged to discover the world that exists around the words. They learn how to inhabit a character’s circumstances & point-of-view, and how to place that character within the dynamics of a scene.

Based on the discoveries made through these improvisations, we progress towards creating a score for the text. This represents the dancer’s interpretation of the material, an amalgamation of the discoveries they made in earlier lessons and the choices they’d like to make now to solidify their unique performance of the material. We then practice how to “play” this roadmap, while allowing new impulses, as well as feelings/emotions/opinions, to arise. These early lessons encompass the essential first steps of the acting process by taking a dancer through a period of exploration and invention, then into a conscious process of selection and refinement, and back into a state of discovery as unconscious reactions/feelings arise at the time of performance.

With this method of working established, we finish by looking at how to apply these tools to a wide variety of material. We’ll explore the humanity and immediacy in more heightened texts, as well as the fullness and complexity in very stripped-down naturalism. Dancers also have the opportunity to bring in audition material, poetry, pieces of their own writing or texts that they’d like use in their choreographic work.

All the material described above is broken down into three essential components; Exploring, Interpreting and Playing. Workshops can focus on a single component, or take students through all three stages over a longer period of time.

MOVEMENT   FOR   ACTORS

Previously taught workshops targeted towards actors include:
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GETTING BACK INTO YOUR BODY
Finding it hard to shed the PJ bottoms and to activate your whole system after two years of acting in 2D? Re-energize your body with this *free* ninety-minute workshop designed to jumpstart your kinetic imagination after months and months…and months of working on Zoom! Learn some quick, easy and engaging ways to integrate movement-based explorations back into your acting practice. Whether you’re preparing a self-tape, a Zoom audition or getting ready to step back into a live rehearsal room for the first time, this workshop will help you shake the dust mites off your mind-body connection and get your physical impulses back in gear! 

MOVING INTO SHAKESPEARE
The goal of this workshop is to dissolve the barrier of unfamiliar language that can stand between Shakespeare’s characters and our own humanity. Through a series of physical explorations, Charlotte will teach you to embody the movement of thought within Shakespeare’s poetry and to explore his rhythms & imagery viscerally. You will learn tools to transform complex ideas into actions driven by immediate, instinctual need. Participants will have the opportunity to delve into some of Shakespeare’s greatest characters and speeches, gaining a deeper understanding of their humanness and timeless relevance. This approach to Shakespeare is sure to get you up, moving, and connected to the muscularity of these famous texts!

PHYSICAL COMEDY**
Join choreographer, actor and expert physical comedienne Charlotte Bydwell for tips & tricks aimed at sharpening, specifying and spicing up your comedic work. Explore the use of time, space and physical posturing to nail your punchlines, embody larger-than-life characters and hone your comedic instincts as an actor. Learn to generate physical choices from a place of joy and fun, while also getting really specific about the demands and style of the text. This 5-week course should leave you excited about all the ways your traditional acting work (who, what, where, why, when…) can serve you to craft unique, truthful and repeatable moments of physical comedy.
Whether you’re looking to improve your self-tapes/in-person auditions, to feel more excited about the choices you bring into a rehearsal room, or to simply get back into your body after years of acting on Zoom, these classes are sure to connect you to the funny that is innately and wonderfully YOURS. End this course with renewed confidence in your body’s impulses, in your personal humor barometer and in your ability to get laughs by reacting honestly (and fully) to imaginary circumstances.
Charlotte’s workshops are aimed at inviting the actor’s body back into the early stages of their exploration, so they can be viscerally engaged and in a state of action from the very beginning of their work on a scene/monologue. All the tools are designed to be immediately useful to you in the practice of your craft. Learn something today, and use it on a self-tape tomorrow.

** This course can also be taught online to focus on the use of physical comedy in self tapes and Zoom callbacks. 

TESTiMONIALS

"I cannot wait to take Charlotte's workshops again. Instead of feeling like I was starting from zero, Charlotte gave me the tools to approach text using the physical intelligence that I already had as a dancer. This enriched my practice as a performer on the whole and made me want to dare greater when jumping into a new room! Charlotte's way of working on text also gave me so much information about my body. I was excited about making movement material afterwards from a different perspective. And using my voice became such a thrill!"
~ Arika Yamada, dancer with Goteborg Opera

"Training with Charlotte has been an absolute godsend! She encourages you to be unrelentingly creative in how you approach material, which has helped me grow in all facets of my artistic life and allowed me to find a new sense of agency over my choices and my contributions."
~ Mark Osmundsen, dancer with Company XIV

METHODOLOGY & MOTIVATION

What is your teaching philosophy?
I approach acting for dancers from the fundamental belief that a trained dancer has a profound connection to the extremes of the human experience, and can learn to express them through language with incredible sensitivity and vividness. As dancers, we are trained in size, expansiveness and exaggeration, as well as in specificity and simplicity. We can evoke feelings through the most complex and distorted of movements, or through the power, precision and articulation of a single gesture. As we move into acting, we must exploit this capacity to express SIZE to fuel our creativity and then learn how to contain our choices within the bounds of normalcy (walking, talking, sitting). So that within, we are full; while on the outside, we are relaxed and vulnerable. 

Why do you teach?
Teaching provides me with an opportunity to synthesize the knowledge that I have collected through a wide variety of experiences and to crystalize the through-lines that have become the foundations of my personal creative practice. Sharing these explorations with my students reminds me why I fell in love with what I do, and the glorious moments of growth and discovery that a life in the arts can offer. I teach because it is an opportunity to play; for my students to play with ideas and concepts that are presented strictly for the sake of discovery and growth, never for perfection or achievement. And for us to play together as we seek to reconnect to an infinite sense of possibility.