Best Drama School Oxnard Near Me

4worldlovers: Adult, teen and younger students at Ventura Actors Studio (VAS) have acted in Grey’s Anatomy, National Commercials, Call of Duty trailers, ABC shows, network and internet television series, music brands, music videos, independent films, Netflix shows, CW Network, Hallmark films & More! We are currently expanding our film division VAS STUDIOS and will be shooting more films in 2022 & 2023. Some students at VAS have participated in productions with well-known directors and producers.


Our on-camera beginners audition classes for acting in Ventura are in high demand and we will be adding more classes in January 2022 & 2023. We prepare our students (all levels including professional working actors who are actively auditioning in LA) for their auditions and help with their submissions to casting (in person and on-line submissions). We will be adding more audition technique classes in 2022 & 2023. The newly formed, Gina Nemo Studios is for professional actors and classes are invite only.


We also submit our professional students to local projects (Santa Barbara to Los Angeles and in between) through our casting subsidiaries www.805Casting.com and www.ojaimodels.com.


Founder and Head Instructor of Ventura Actors Studio (VAS), Gina Nemo has produced television pilots in Los Angeles and Ventura County. Students from the VAS Master and advanced classes all played featured and starring roles in some projects. Some beginners got to play minor roles in some projects. VAS is the premiere school for acting in Ventura. We teach our students Television, Film and Audition techniques that have proven results. We have classes for adults (18+) in Ventura & Ojai and private lessons and audition prep is available for all ages. Currently we have students from Ventura, Ojai, Oxnard, Santa Barbara, North Hollywood, Santa Paula, Camarillo, Westlake and other surrounding areas. We also have acting in Ventura for actors from Los Angeles. Some guest actors join our Master Class or private classes as guests when they are in the area. Some of our students were traveling to Los Angeles for class and have now joined VAS and are landing parts weekly (Locally, in Los Angeles and out of state).

4worldlovers: Quality live theatre at the beautiful Channel Islands Harbor. Scroll down for more details.

The Elite Theatre Company (ETC) has been entertaining, educating and enriching its audience since 1994. After 19 seasons at the Petit Playhouse in Oxnard's Historic Heritage Square, ETC moved to present, larger venue at Channel Islands Harbor Fisherman's Wharf at the site of the old Maritime Museum, a facility that will elevate ETC's ability to produce the highest quality theater in Ventura County on its Main and South stages.

ETC brings together the local talents of amateurs and professionals who share a passion for theater and who generously volunteer their time on the stage and behind the scenes. This collaboration creates a variety of quality live theatrical productions showcased in our unique setting.

THE ELITE THEATRE COMPANY IS AN ACTIVE MEMBER OF THE COMMUNITY

4worldlovers: In 1931, a group of young actors joined together to establish The Group Theatre after seeing the work of Konstantin Stanislavsky. Where early American theater favored a representational style of acting, the Russian theater was grounded in an internal and truthful approach and this group decided they would build a theater that would do the honest life-depicting story telling that he was doing, and in doing so they reshaped American theater. Mr. Sanford Meisner was a founding member of the Group Theater along with a who’s who ; Lee Strasberg, Sella Adler, Cheryl Crawford, Elia Kazan, Clifford Odets, Harold Clurman and many others.

In 1933 Meisner broke with the Group’s methods of acting training, he found the method too negative and lacking in imagination. He decided that to achieve his goal of “living truthfully under imaginary circumstances,” a new purely American approach was needed. In 1936, he was invited to run the drama dept at The Neighborhood Playhouse and he put his plan into play by developing his exercises that would accomplish this new approach. He did leave the Playhouse from 1958-1964 to run the talent department at 20th Century Fox but returned and taught full time from 1964-1988 then with age slowing him he would only teach there sporadically until 1990.

Meisner’s technique is not simply about learning your lines and running the scenes; it is about honest, moment to moment, truthful, authentic, communication. This is what makes technique different from scene study. All that any technique seeks to do is equip an actor with tools that allow them to be an authentic communicator, on demand, as many times as necessary. Making any scene look easy, like you’re dong it for the first time, every time you do it, takes technique.

At the Westlake Acting Studio, Markus Flanagan teaches the technique the way he learned it from Mr. Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse. Accordingly the class follows the same two-year format.

The technique is taught in a First and Second year format. Each “year” takes 9 months to complete and consists of exercises that layer on the next so the process is cumulative, a person entering class midway through just wouldn’t understand it. This technique demands that it be taught in a set of specific steps. Each exercise is designed to create new habits and awareness of your sense of truth. So, one must learn by experiencing and practicing each exercise before the next exercise is added, not in an intellectual or symbolic way. Growing habits takes time and patience and perseverance.

First Year is the foundation of listening, following your impulse, living truthfully, doing things with reality, and trusting your point of view. You will learn to listen one moment at a time, without an agenda, and hear exactly what is going on in your partner. Life teaches us to listen defensively, art demands that we don’t. We do one scene at the end of the year that puts all the exercises into practice.

Second Year builds on the First Year skills adding new elements that make a character. You will do 2 scenes this year that allow you to practice your newly developed approach to acting.