The Matchbox Theater Company (MTC)  will be operating out of the studios at Dance Theatre Southwest (DTS) for our 2023-24 season. DTS is the home of Festival Ballet Albuquerque, located at 3805 Academy Parkway, NE, Albuquerque, NM 87109. Our mission is to become a respected professional theater and acting school which serves quality productions including small cast contemporary and classical works, solo performance works, one act plays, and highly entertaining original works by local playwrights.
 

Our professional acting school will now be called MTC Film Actors Lab (MTC FAL), providing a fun and safe environment for youth and adults to explore acting through our various classes in stage, film, television, commercials, voice overs, and improv. We will also offer beneficial movement classes for the actor.  Student participants in our school will learn how to integrate the three key pillars of the actor: The Voice, The Body, and The Mind into a dependable acting technique.

Our teaching philosophy embraces and integrates the best of American, British and Russian traditions of acting methodology but particularly the techniques espoused by Constantine Stanislavsky, Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, Uta Hagen, and Sanford Meisner.  However, we acknowledge that acting is largely individual and the serious actor will eventually discover a technique that works best to suit their own needs.   At the end of the day, acting must be believable, honest, and natural.  Our training will assist the individual actor find their own pathway to success.  Actors must train their instruments including the voice, the body, and the mind.  The Matchbox Theater provides training that touches on all three of these essential areas of an actor's daily practice as follows:
 

The Voice:  Students will learn how to project their voice, articulate words and enunciate sounds through vigorous vocal exercises, tongue twisters and other methods of vocal development.  Breathing is a critical part of vocal development and students will practice ways to bring a richness and fullness to their voices during the course instruction.

 

The Body: Actors will learn basic physical exercises to warm-up the body. Students will explore movement through several creative exercises that develop an awareness of the body on stage.  Proper deportment of the body including stage positions, gestures and stance will be taught to coincide with other important factors in character development.

 

The Mind: Emotions driven by specific and concrete actions make up a large part of an actor's study.  The development of a strong subtext is also important.  Knowing how to prepare mentally for a role is essential to the development of a character and a solid acting technique.

 

Practice and Performance:  The ability to apply learned acting skills from individual and classroom practice to actual performance is what acting is all about.  Without an audience, the actor is useless.  Teacher and  peer feedback is essential to the growth of an actor.  Each student will typically prepare, practice and perform monologues and scenes with fellow actors for presentation throughout the course of study as a way of applying their learned classroom studies to work.  Additionally, actors will explore their creativity through improvisation and other useful exercises that develop keen observation, action and reaction.  Videotaping will be used primarily for playback purposes in all film and television classes. The goal of our classes is to assist the actor in formulating the personal skills, techniques, discipline, dedication and professionalism required in acting for stage, film and/or television. And, we endeavor to make all of our classes fun, exciting, educational, useful and meaningful!

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