This Is Albuquerque: Ovations Film Actors Studio

\ Mar 03, 2016

3 min read

“Acting is the ability to live truthfully under imaginary circumstances.”-Sanford Meisner

My reason for opening Ovations some 10 years ago was to provide hands-on acting classes for those wishing to get away from cookie cutter and paint-by-number classes and delve into the deep-rooted process of acting from the heart.

As a citizen of Hollywood for 27 years, I made the rounds looking for personalized classes and mostly found seasoned vets chronicling their own experiences and personal relationships within the industry to a room full of inexperienced thespians eager to start their own careers.

We would then proceed to read from scripts with other actors and were told to replicate the instructor’s style, usually being interrupted every other line. Let me quote from one of my former students—“another really good trainer here in Albuquerque is Steve Willmon. He has a studio on Morningside NE and his classes are very actor-centered. In lieu of sitting, listening to some alleged instructor go on and on about the same stuff you can easily read in just about any book on acting, Steve brings his students together in front of a camera each class. Later we get a chance to observe the film and hear valuable advice from both him and other students about the performances. I find that style far more valuable than sitting listening to an instructor giving pinpoint instructions to another student. So, from this point forward, my training will be from Steve Willmon.”

What I have to offer at Ovations are eight sets (living room, dining room, cafe, bar, office, kitchen, bedroom and an outside patio/backyard set) and hundreds of film, TV and theatrical scripts, along with wardrobe and props for just about any conceivable scene.

I customize each class to the individual participants and many Ovations trained actors have performed in feature film productions and TV series with speaking roles. Several have won best acting awards in New Mexico film festivals, including the 48-hour Film Festival and Duke City Shootout.”As a working director and filmmaker, I take the work very seriously, which is why our motto at Ovations Film Actors Studio is “dedicated to excellence.”

All classes are filmed on professional equipment. Each performance class is critiqued on a playback monitor to enable each student to actually see and hear how they appear on camera.

Additional testimonies available upon request.

I look forward to seeing you on set and in class!