BADA STUDIO – LAUNCHING MARCH 2025

The Business of Acting with Melissa Maxwell

Thursday, March 20th. Time 3:30pm-6pm

Class Limit: 30 participants
Fee: $50

One of the most difficult but important parts of being a professional actor is navigating the business side of things. Melissa Maxwell will teach the group how to work smarter, not harder as professional artists. She will work with the students on type versus brand, how best to network, self-tapes, and how to set yourself up for a long and successful career.

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Melissa Maxwell is a director, actor, writer, educator, motivational speaker, the Co-Associate Artistic Director of The Great River Shakespeare Festival and the Director of Professional Development at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting. ACTOR: SAG-AFTRA and AEA Member. A graduate of Boston University with a BFA in theatre performance. Stage credits include the Mint Theater, Guthrie Theater, Great River Shakespeare Festival (where she is a proud company member), George Street Playhouse, The Public Theatre of Maine, The Pearl Theatre Company, Capital Rep, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Delaware Theatre Company, Helen Hayes Performing Arts, Cincinnati Playhouse, Crossroads Theatre, Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center Institute, A partial list of film and TV credits include: FBI: Most Wanted, Manifest, Madam Secretary, Mrs. Fletcher, HOSTAGES, The Thomas Crown Affair, Law & Order, The Sopranos, Third Watch, Oz, Special Victims Unit, Never Again, Petty Crimes, 13 Conversations About One Thing, Jonny Zero, As The World Turns, All My Children. and countless TV commercials. As a voice over artist, Melissa started at WGBH in Boston where she recorded several radio dramas (most notably playing Eliza in Uncle Tom’s Cabin to James Earl Jones’ Tom). She has recorded numerous audio books for the American Federation for the Blind and several voice overs for commercials and industrials. DIRECTOR: SDC Member. Upcoming: STEEL MAGNOLIAS (Utah Shakespeare Festival). Select previous credits include: CLYDE’S (Playmakers Repertory Theatre); lMBROGLIO (Great River Shakespeare Festival, world premiere); CLYDE’S (George Street Playhouse); TROUBLE IN MIND (Utah Shakespeare Festival); TUNNEL VISION (Pittsburgh’s Off the WALL Theatre, world premiere); SAFE HOUSE (The Repertory Theatre of St Louis, BroadwayWorld.com’s BEST OF 2015 by Chris Gibson list and ranked #3 on Ladue News’ The Best Theatre of St Louis 2015 list); SLASHES OF LIGHT (The Kitchen Theatre in association with Civic Ensemble, world premiere; NYCWAM Collaboration Award Honored Finalists); American Slavery Project’s UNHEARD VOICES (NY Historical Society, Shabazz Center, Ensemble Studio Theatre, CAP 21 and other venues; developed to give voice to the nameless souls buried at the African Burial Ground in NYC); CRUMBS FROM THE TABLE OF JOY (Juilliard School of Drama); OLIVER TWIST (The New School of Drama); MACHINAL (Queens College); THE AFRICAN COMPANY PRESENTS Richard III (Nevada Conservatory Theatre); INTIMATE APPAREL (Texas State University); LITTLE WOMEN, the musical (University of Texas at Austin); IN THE HEIGHTS (NYU Tisch School of Drama), John Biguenet’s SHOTGUN (Webster University); TROUBLE IN MIND (Ohio State University); INTIMATE APPAREL (University of Texas); SHOW WAY (Vital Theatre, a children’s musical based on Jacqueline Woodson’s award-winning children’s book of the same name, received an Off Broadway Alliance ‘Best Family Show’ nomination); NATHAN THE WISE (Pearl Theatre Company), TABOOS (American premiere at Soho Playhouse, written by Professor Carl Djerassi, the scientist who invented the contraceptive pill). WRITER: Dramatist Guild Member. Melissa is an award-winning playwright. Her latest play, IMBROGLIO, received its world premiere at the Great River Shakespeare Festival in 2023. SALT IN A WOUND, a Julie Harris Playwright Competition finalist, was produced by Chicago’s eta Creative Arts Foundation, for which it received 5 Black Theater Alliance Award nominations, including ‘Best Play’ and ‘Best Writer’, and a ‘Production of the Year’ nomination from The African American Arts Alliance of Chicago. UNREQUITED LOVE was produced at New Perspectives Theatre Company in NYC, for which it received an Audelco Award nomination. It also won her the New Professional Theatre’s Our Words Award for excellence in playwriting. Unrequited Love is in print and available through Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com, the Drama Book Shop and other booksellers. It is also available for download through iTunes, Nook and Kindle. Both plays have had staged readings in various festivals including CAP 21’s BlackJack Festival of New Works, The Alabama Shakespeare Festival’s Southern Writer’s Project, and New Perspectives Theatre Company’s Voices From The Edge. Her one-act, FETUS ENVY, a political satire that examines where our society is headed when women’s healthcare is commandeered by ambitious politicians and faceless bureaucrats, was originally featured in the NYC Fringe Festival as part of Urban Rock Project’s production, Patriot Acts: The Constitution Project. It was later produced by manhattantheatre source in their 2007 EstroGenius Festival, and is now published in their anthology, Book of EstroGenius 2007. In 2012, Melissa adapted it into a short film, earning her an AAPEX Filmmaker Award. The film can be viewed here: www.fetusenvy.com. (trt: 13mins) MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER: Melissa is often asked to speak at schools and universities. Most notably she has been invited to present two TEDx Talks: TEDxMosesBrownSchool: Taking Ownership and TEDxBarnardCollegeWomen: On Courage.

Re-Speak the Speech: Tackle Your Old BADA Speeches with Andrew Wade

Friday, March 21st. 10am-1pm

Class Limit: 15 participants
Fee: $50

The Workshop will involve preparation voice work, structure of a Shakespeare speech and give opportunity to apply this to a Shakespeare speech first encountered at BADA. Please bring along a hard copy of the speech you’d like to work on.

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Andrew Wade (Faculty – MIO) was Head of Voice at the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-Upon-Avon from 1990-2003. He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1987 as Assistant Voice Director to Cicely Berry, where he oversaw all of the voice work for the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and the Swan Theatre. In conjunction with Cicely Berry, Mr. Wade recorded WORKING SHAKESPEARE: RSC MEETS USA (a broadcast series) produced and directed by Tom Todoroff, featuring Jeremy Irons, Emily Watson, Lindsay Duncan, Toby Stephens and other members of the Royal Shakespeare Company with US actors: Helen Hunt, Samuel L. Jackson, Claire Danes, Blythe Danner, Robert Sean Leonard, Cherry Jones, Victor Garber, Diane Venora, Tony Goldwyn and others. Mr. Wade trained at the Rose Bruford College, where he was made a Fellow and taught at many drama schools including East 15,  where he was Head of Voice. Mr. Wade was Verse Consultant on the film SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE. He also coached Courtney Love for the role of Lady Macbeth, and worked on the musical LORD OF THE RINGS. Since leaving the RSC, Mr. Wade has continued to work all over the world in a freelance capacity. Currently, he is Voice Director at the Public Theater, Resident Voice Director at Theatre For A New Audience, and on the faculty at the Juilliard School. Mr. Wade also coaches voice & speech extensively for Broadway and West End productions including, most recently, MATHILDA: THE MUSICAL and HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD. Mr. Wade’s West End Credits include: LA TRAVIATA, DONKEYS’ YEAR, and BOEING-BOEING.

Sharpening Your Craft with Chekhov with Tom McClane

Friday, March 21st. 2pm-5pm

Class Limit: 15 participants
Fee: $50

Join us for an intensive acting masterclass exploring Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov.

This session will dive deep into the play’s rich and layered text, complex character relationships, and Chekhov’s unique ability to see through the characters’ eyes. Through scene work and practical exercises, actors will develop a nuanced understanding of the play’s emotional depth, while also sharpening their actors’ instinct and imaginative ability to connect with their characters’ wants, problems and circumstances.

The purpose of this class is to ask the question; What is a play? How does the play function on the level of ideas? How does the actor contribute as an artist to the ideas and problems contained within one? And what, if anything, does this contribute to the wider world?

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Tom McClane (Faculty – MIO/LTP) trained as an actor at Drama Centre London and as a director on the MFA at Birkbeck College. As an actor he worked regularly with Cheek by Jowl, Di Trevis and Owen Horsely.  Directing credits include The Giant Killers at Wilton’s Music Hall, UK National tour.  The White Devil at the Courtyard Theatre CSSD.  Hedda Gabler, Ghosts and A Dolls House at Guildford School of Acting. Twelfth Night, Holy Ghosts, The Wild Duck, Three Sisters, and Here Comes a Chopper at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. He was the trainee director at Jermyn Street Theatre, where he  was the associate director on A Woman Before a Glass directed by Austin Pendleton. He was an associate on the Hound of the Baskerville at the English Theatre Frankfurt and the Deutsches Theatre Munich, directed by Lottie Wakeman.  He has assisted Bijan Sheibani, Alice Hamilton, and Tim Crouch. He is a regular acting tutor at Drama Centre London, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Guildford School of Acting and Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. He is artistic director of Telos Theatre, an acting studio and theatre company based in London.