The Curiosity Group
PRESENTS:
Viewpoints
WITH
Alexandra Billings
December 2, 2022 – 5-10 PM
December 3-4, 2022 – 10 AM - 5 PM both days
$325 for students of The Last Acting Studio and PraXis Acting Studio
$400 for non-students
Anne Bogart (orignator of Viewpoints) says Viewpoints teaches us possibility.
It helps us recognize the limitations we impose on ourselves and our art by habitually submitting to a presumed absolute authority, be it the text, the director, the teacher.
Viewpoints frees us from the statement: "My character would never do that."
In Viewpoints, there is no good or bad, right or wrong—there is only possibility. You are no longer bound by unconsciousness. It awakens all our senses, making it clear how much and how often we live only in our heads and see only through our eyes. Through Viewpoints, we learn to listen with our entire bodies and see with a sixth sense. We receive information from levels we were not even aware existed, and begin to communicate back with equal depth.
There are nine viewpoints of time and by their nature, they encourage more risk-taking and bolder choices in acting that are not confined by any particular expectations or a strict process.
Through the improvised exploration of Viewpoints, artistic discovery is possible. These Viewpoints are timeless and belong to the natural principles of movement, time and space.
Alexandra teaches Viewpoints through the lens of Stanislavski, Meisner and Uta Hagen. She is the first actor in a lineage of The Viewpoints practice, that begins from originator Anne Bogart, that has realized them to be a common language, more than just physical movement. This intensive is about igniting the actor’s internal life. Starting from self and forming the marriage of one’s own personal history with the imagination of the author of the play. Bringing to fruition; truth under imaginary circumstances through the original voice of the artist. That is the practice. That is the exploration.
Meet Your Instructor
Alexandra Billings is an actress, singer, author, teacher and activist. She served as Viewpoints Associate at the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago.
Billings played Davina on Amazon’s Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning hit TV show Transparent. She has also appeared on The Conners, How To Get Away With Murder, Grey’s Anatomy and the Amazon series Goliath, starring Billy Bob Thornton. In 2005, Billings played Donna, opposite Katherine Heigl, in the ABC film Romy and Michelle: A New Beginning. It was the second time a transgender actress played a transgender character in the history of television. She’s had guest starring roles on How To Get Away With Murder, Grey’s Anatomy, Eli Stone, E.R., Karen Sisco, Nurses opposite Lynn Redgrave, and playing opposite Dot Jones in the Ryan Murphy pilot Pretty/Handsome, co-starring Blythe Danner and Robert Wagner. Her first feature film role as a non-trans character, Valley of Bones, debuted in the fall of 2017.
Billings has been acting since 1968 and has performed across the United States in hundreds of plays and musicals. She’s played everyone from Mama Rose in Gypsy to Mrs. Lynde in A Doll House. Most every stage role is considered to be a first for a transgender actress. Her one-woman autobiographical show, Before I Disappear, toured from Chicago to Boston to Los Angeles, and finally off-Broadway at The Producer’s Club, winning rave reviews and running for over 10 years. She originated the role of Alejandra in Time to Burn by Charles Mee at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago and toured to off-Broadway in Jeff Richmond and Michael Thomas’ camp classic, Hamlet! The Musical! Her album Being Alive, produced by Ralph Lampkin, Jr., was up for Grammy consideration in 2002.
Ms. Billings began her teaching career in 1994 at The Steppenwolf School in Chicago and continues that tradition for Steppenwolf West in LA.
