Margolis Method Virtual Intensive for Theatre Educators  
an immersive laboratory experience
Introductory Week: July 10-14, 2023 • 11-4PM ET

Join us for our 12th year of Introductory Week and Teacher Certification programs with Master Teacher Kari Margolis, an award-winning international theatre artist who has trained thousands of actors and educators over the last four decades.  

We’ll explore new approaches to creating original work and interpreting pre-existing text by diving deep into Margolis Method’s theatrical exercises and improvisation structures—which merge physicality, vocal work and dramaturgy. 

Sessions are structured to give you an opportunity to experience each lesson as an artist first, before discussing how to integrate this research into your existing syllabus. 

“I always leave a session feeling I am more empowered, like I know more and I can’t wait to tackle the next challenge…”

Blake Hackler, Head of Acting at Meadow School of the Arts, SMU, shares his experience with Margolis Method and working with Kari and company virtually.

✔︎ Gain new perspectives and tools for resolving pedagogical problems

✔︎ Strengthen your connection between voice, body and mind, and be better able to strengthen this connection in your students

✔︎ Learn Margolis Method improvisation structures for creating original performances and staging pre-scripted plays

✔︎ Better articulate your artistic vision and feedback to students and colleagues

✔︎ Lay the groundwork for a consistent training practice to support ongoing creative research long after the session ends

✔︎ Connect with like-minded professional colleagues from around the country and abroad

✔︎ Earn a Certificate of Completion that qualifies you to enroll in the Margolis Method Educators Certification Program

Workshop Enrollment Includes:

• 20 hours of live on-your-feet sessions with Master Teacher Kari Margolis and company members in an immersive laboratory experience

• Individualized feedback during and after the workshop

• 30-Day Trial Membership to Margolis Method Network online courses with extra resources made available to Educators

• PDF download of the 300+ page Margolis Method Workbook
($65 value)

Pricing and Payment Schedule

Workshop Fee: $500*

*$400 Margolis Method Network Annual Member ($100 Discount)

$100 Non-refundable deposit to secure your place
(Balance due by June 26th)

*Inquire about Discounts and Partial Scholarships

If you have questions you would like answered before applying, feel free to contact us first.

What Colleagues are Saying

Gina Lori Riley
Associate Professor of Theatre
University of Windsor

Last summer, I was fortunate to have been able to take the Margolis Method Professor Certification Program with Kari Margolis and members of her Company. As someone who has experienced a number of different methods and trainings, I found Kari's Method to be remarkably focussed, articulate, and specific for the training of actors. It continues to resonate in deep and meaningful ways. If you have the opportunity, I highly recommend this program.

Janice Orlandi
Artistic Director
AMSC NYC

Kari Margolis is an amazing teacher and theater-maker. Her work and Method is a major gift to the world of Devised theatre and physical training of Actors! I am indebted to her for her generosity and unique approach and enormous gift to Theater Making!

Anna Demers
Middlesex County College

Margolis Method has inspired me endlessly. It is truly an approach to total actor training that can be seamlessly applied across genres/styles from text-based work, to devising and everything in between. My students are energized by this work and the fundamentals can be incorporated into your existing pedagogy! Kari Margolis is a masterful teacher and amazing powerhouse.

Elizabeth McCormick Smith
Parkland High School

The Margolis Method has deepened my understanding of the art of theater and has empowered both my students and myself. The training is focused-articulate-& specific- the actor both novice and advanced have an infinite set of tangible skills to practice their craft.

Jonathan Becker
Assistant Professor of Theatre
Ball State University

I spent the first two weeks of August at the Margolis Training Center in Barryville, NY training with Kari Margolis and her company.  I went in hopes of finding inspiration for myself and new ways of inspiring an understanding of the physical instrument and its relationship to the actor’s process in my students.  I am not sure what I expected to find.  What I found was a pot of gold.

The work Kari Margolis is doing with her company, and the actors and artists who come to train and research with her is of tremendous importance and has the potential to contribute significantly to the development of actor training in much the same way as the work of Jacques Copeau, Jerzy Grotowski, Tadashi Suzuki, Eugenio Barba and Jacques Lecoq.

Kari has developed a vocabulary addressing the physical aspects of actor training in much the same way the work of Copeau, Grotowski and Lecoq changed the entire landscape of theatre training.  The physical method she is working with allows for a direct connection to the actors process and is applicable to all aspects of acting and creating theatre.  It is a method and vocabulary that directs the actor to a much deeper understanding of what is happening moment-to-moment, providing a clear way of scoring that creates a pathway to repeatable action. 

In addition to the acting methodology expressed in the Margolis Method there is a full body training that accompanies it.  This physical training is designed to create a body that is a vessel of sensation; one that provides a kinesthetic understanding of the acting process.  This entire training regime exists in a pedagogical environment designed to provoke questioning, creativity and the need to come to a profound understanding of the moment the performer is engaged in creating. 

I encourage you to go spend 2 weeks next summer training and learning with Kari and her company, and I highly recommend that you challenge your students to take the opportunity to learn from a master teacher and artist. Kari and her company also do residencies at universities across the country; her work with college students has been seen at the Kennedy Center as part of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, and countless testimonials from her students prove that an investment in this opportunity will offer life-changing benefits to your undergraduates.

As university professors I believe that it is now part of our responsibility to support as much as we can, free lance artists. In our current economy, we run the risk of loosing our nation’s most valuable artistic resources if we don’t take a moment to look outward. Having freelanced for 18 years prior to entering a University position full time I have now realized now how insulated I am from the economic conditions that control the life of the artist who must live on grants and bookings from not-for-profits and educational institutions. This recent downturn has meant for many the loss of nearly all income and for the established artists, and the potential disappearance of a lifetime of work.  I know that we are all doing more with less these days so let’s actively support in any way we can our colleagues who don’t have the umbrella many of us live under.  It’s pouring rain …

Belinda Mello
Brooklyn College

This summer, after the workshop, I invited some of my students to work with the exercises so that I could get a sense of what I was able to communicate. I learned a lot about what I understood intellectually vs somatically. It also fueled my imagination when I saw how excited they were when experimenting with the Margolis Method. "I Weigh" is so freeing for my students. Moving their energy through their pipelines is empowering! Creating Packets...challenging! This semester I am teaching in two different actor training programs. At Brooklyn College and at the new conservatory of the Tom Todoroff Studio. In both classes I have been using the inside/outside exercises as contexts for bridging the Alexander Technique into the acting process through the body, breath and energy. I'm going very very slowly. They love it.

Sallie Lyons
University of Toronto

Why, after 20 years teaching movement education to actors in a university setting would I recommend the Margolis Method for Actors?  Because, this is what I learned and what I learned I knew:

It’s practical, cogent, well thought out, organized and creative. It’s scope is broad; capable of inspiring the novice and taking them to professional standards by addressing the balance of intellectual, physical and emotional creativity.

It is based on what as human animals we already intuitively understand on a cellular level: physics - the objective, universal language of action/reaction.  Because the laws of physics are universal it makes decision making and choice simpler - dramatic timing is innate.  Not easier maybe but consistent and therefore truthful, practical and concrete.    

It integrates the acting and creative skill sets right from the get go by immediately applying the technical training  to creative exploration and devising. Going from lab research directly to scripting is challenging and empowering because the student is required to make choices and live the consequences during the technical skill building period, not after the skills have been mastered.  

Kari talks about creativity and how physics fosters and enables the practice of being in the creative state.  This pragmatic approach to the too often romanticized mystery of creation is refreshing and encouraging.

It implicitly engenders respect, support, confidence and self empowered learning by  addressing learning principles; not personalities or ‘talent’,  nor does it hide behind that ubiquitous , mysterious or ambivalent theatre jargon.  Inherent in the method is the belief that creativity and the ability to learn and improve is achievable by everyone.  It espouses acting as skill and a vocation that does not rely luck or ’being discovered’ . This philosophy is backed up with tangible exercises that identify specific skills that can be learned and practiced therefore empowering all students to improve through practice on their own.  Naturally the speed and degree of improvement varies.  The point is that its not magic that determines success but rather hard work and rigor.  

Margolis Method considers the audiences’ experience as paramount to the craft and art of acting.  ‘Honestly reigns‘ and ‘Actors need stuff to do‘ are 2 of the Method’s mantras.  The Method shows the actor what to do to get better at manifesting what is going on inside the character.  This means the audience sees and more importantly feels the truth of the moment to moment choices the actor is making on behalf of the character’s circumstance because they are being revealed before their very eyes.  Therefore the actor and the audience are in confluence - both having real stakes in creating art.

‘Trust your intuition, the skill is to manifest it’ is another mantra of the Method.  This means that in order for the individual to express at their highest level it is vital that they ensure that the needs of the ensemble are met -  i.e.:  the actors need to support their partners’ actions by transparently fulfilling set up expectations.  

And finally, but no less importantly these tools enable the student and teacher to self and peer analyze  in a practical, objective, non threatening, constructive and loving environment.    These skills provide a common language that fosters a camaraderie based on a shared vision - the premise that as each individual strives to achieve their personal best they are ensuring that the ensemble is functioning at the highest level possible. 

So… the Margolis Method recognizes that understanding a concept and knowing how to manifest it are not conflicting approaches but rather  2 points on the same trajectory - the manifestation being a much longer process.  

Perhaps especially in an post secondary educational institutional setting intellectual cognizance is sometimes mistaken for embodied knowing.  While the first does not in any way imply the second they are connected.  Kari’s approach respects and integrates intellectual, creative and emotional intelligence and by addressing all three in her work she triples it’s impact. It’s a win win situation - something that sadly in this industry, is not always the case or even the goal.

Denise Myers
Associate Professor of Theatre
Millikin University

Eating the Elephant: A Class with Kari Margolis

While as theatre movement teachers we may instruct from a variety of methods, we ultimately want to help our students become more free to have variety and clarity in their theatrical choices. For those of us who teach in academia though, our system is set up and therefore encourages students to compartmentalize their learning. Often what is learned in acting class, for example, is separated from techniques learned in Play Analysis, Voice, or Movement classes. While I'm sure that we all speak of the eventual necessity of integrating these studies, often we leave that blending to happen magically in production work or in an upper level "capstone" course. Is it possible instead to begin teaching theatre with out these divisions?

I took advantage of the offer made to ATME members from Kari Margolis to receive a free DVD that featured clips from her teaching, philosophy and performance work. Intrigued, I was able then to take class for three weeks this summer with her in Barryville, NY. I came away with some specific exercises, of course, but more importantly with a way of teaching that is very exciting to me. Her methods integrate everything about creating a theatrical moment immediately. I was training as an actor, one who is capable of thinking feeling and moving in an integrated way, right from the beginning.

What I found was that my goal with her was not so much to learn a codified way of moving, but rather how to use a way of moving specifically to practice the larger issues of making theatre. The daily challenges for research would change, but the overall goal of creating something strong and vital emotionally, physically and thoughtfully was always essential.

To give an example, using "the international language of physics" Kari would begin by leading a simple movement score such as breathing down into the core through the top of the head ("whale spout") while the arms respond to that impulse by moving upwards. Then we would reverse the movement to breath up into the core through the tailbone while the arms respond by moving down. We would also transfer the motor to the arms pressing up/down causing the response to be an in-take of breath in the core.

We then would improvise with those movements, but are instructed to say what we are doing out loud. Voice is therefore immediately connected to the movements as well as a conscious awareness of what movements are being done or attempted. If you begin to go into a monotone drone, you can hear that disconnect and change it because the exercise is to match the energy of the voice to the dynamic of the movements. Eventually then to change to any text is a matter simply of changing words, not of adding the mechanism and intent of speaking. It becomes difficult to waft through space just "feeling" it, because the mind is connecting to what is happening both by impulse instinct and by choice. The physics of the movement must influence the shape of the vocalization.

We are then challenged to devise a "packet" of sequential moves. The packet, like a beat, asks that the movements connect, transform from one another, and develop through a beginning, middle and end. Once the movement cycle begins, active resistance is used to keep the character from coming to stasis. In something as simple as putting five moves together, you are drawing on techniques of play analysis, shape, dynamics, objective, conflict, and of course physics.

Then as you move in space, you also consider more elements ofdramaturgy, as for example, what do your three steps mean vs. your onestep? Where are you moving in reference to the space available and to the perspective of the audience? How do you take what you are doing and work with another person, inspiring the other through your voluntary actions and your vulnerable responses to what the other is giving you? What is the pattern/story that is developing and how can you work with it and your partner to find its conclusion or its development into the next moment? 

What I especially like is her attitude towards vulnerability, speaking about it as a simple honest result of physics, rather than as an opening of your entire being and soul to the world to be ripped asunder as most of my students seem to think I'm asking them to do when I mention "being vulnerable". Margolis works with how you voluntarily set a movement in action, which then results in an involuntary response. As the actor you need to be able to instigate that initial cause, but then you also, to be truthful, have to be open to where that movement may take you or to be available to what it causes to happen in the other person. Sometimes your action goes just where you planned and other times you are surprised at the outcome.This process is of course, the same as a character's journey through a play. You, as actor and character, need to be able to receive the result of your action muscularly, psychologically and emotionally. You are asked to keep the history of the effect as the basis from which to transform into your next voluntary move. By keeping vulnerability as a result that continues to transform, it seems to position that notion as something more dynamic and useful and less emotionally terrifying and static.

Time to flail around is important time in class, and since Margolis terms all of this work as "research" I was encouraged to use that time to look both at what I was developing as well as how I was finding it, what was missing, and what was yet to be done. Questions of "what" "why" "where" "how" and "what next" were continuously guiding me through my solo investigations, my constructions of packets as well as my improvisations with others.

`Yes, you are trying to do, think, feel 2,573 things at once, and yes, it's hard and frustrating. But isn't multi-tasking what we are doing when we are acting? It takes practice to connect since we have all been taught so well to separate and to compartmentalize. It takes practice to find an honest psychophysical ease of acting in the moment, i.e., eventually to just do it. Even though I was there only three short weeks, I feel that I came away with a method that gives me a way to study further because Kari Margolis has created a method that integrates learning about how theatre works; I am deliberately practicing using the parts to create a theatrical moment of specificity and depth.

Yes, her method is about eating the whole elephant right away. While many other techniques and most academic programs start by munching an ear and then progressing to nibble at the right leg, I think with Margolis' work I can start with gulping a whole elephant the size of an ant. If I can do that, I get the whole elephant and have a good idea of what the elephant is. With practice I can then progress to bigger sizes, but I'm still working on the whole.

Click here for full letters of recommendation.