FSEM 165   Acting I: Touching the Source

Faculty Profile for Professor Sweeney

ACTING I: OPENINGS (Touching the Source)

Explores individual and collective creative potential, familiarizes students with the rigors of creating theater and introduces them to fundamentals of actor training. The study of acting teaches poise, presence and observation, vocal and physical awareness, and how to follow a line inquiry both physically and intellectually. Through warm-ups, individual and ensemble exploratory work, exercises, acting theory, scene work and script analysis students acquire a shared working vocabulary and collaborative skills to create together. Students who successfully complete this seminar will receive credit for THEA 254 and satisfy one half of the human thought and expression area of inquiry requirement.

April Sweeney is an actor and theater maker originally from Dallas, Texas. She teaches acting and performance classes in the Department of Theater and directs Colgate students in both studio and university mainstage productions. She has performed in theaters and festivals in the U.S., Latin America and Europe; from basements to Off-Broadway; the Bolivian jungle to regional theater and everything in between. Professor Sweeney believes in the transformative power of theater to cultivate the agency of the imagination and develop important tools that can be applied to any field of endeavor. In fall 2020, she is teaching a first year seminar in acting to introduce students to the exciting and unpredictable creative process of making theater.