Teacher Spotlight: Alyson Schacherer

Doug GoldringCommunity, Training

We’d love to help you get to know our incredible TBG teaching artists a little bit better, so we got Alyson Schacherer to answer a few questions! Check out our interview with her below…

What is your favorite class to teach at TBG and why?

AS:  I love teaching all of the classes I teach at The Barrow Group. And I love coaching actors on auditions and jobs to make the stuff they want to happen happen!  And when it comes to class, I particularly love teaching beginners. I find the richest rooms are the ones where people come together for all different reasons, backgrounds, and experiences, and play.

What is something you recently learned or were reminded of in the world of acting, writing, or directing?

AS:  I recently directed a production of Annie Baker’s The Antipodes in the SF Bay for ARC. It’s a wild play that, because there is no intermission, keeps the audience sort of trapped in the (writers’) room with the actors onstage. I knew we were doing something fun, magical, and quite profound, actually, but I had no idea how it would land with audiences.

People loved it, some came back multiple times to see it from different sides of the audience, the critics lauded it, and audiences hung out in the lobby afterward talking about it – people who weren’t talking about the play were talking about how much other people were talking about the play! It exceeded my expectations. I was surprised in the most beautiful and welcome ways how the production affected people.

So often in the not knowing some of us may tend to go to the negative “they are going to hate it,” but if I can stay in the not knowing, and do the next right thing, it actually feels more true and helpful.

Allow yourself to not know; you might just be surprised in lovely ways.

What is a recent, current, or upcoming project that you’d like folks to know about?

AS:  Billie J Simmons and I met in Berkeley, California when she took my class is 2018. Since then we’ve worked together on career stuff, auditions, and jobs. Now we are producing the film adaptation of her father Tobie Levingston’s memoir Soul on Bikes about the first all-Black, all-Harley Davidson Motorcycle Club in Oakland, California.

To take a class with Alyson…check out Beginner Acting Class I: The Basics starting February 6th or Professional Film/TV Acting Class II: Technical Skills starting March 7th!

Find TBG’s schedule of upcoming classes here.