TEACHING STATEMENT:
“Acting still means action. Whether teaching acting, or acting improvisation, I find that improvising and theater games are an important tool with which to approach and prepare for the demands of acting in general, and scene study in particular. Both require the actor to step out of his or her comfort zone and get to the basics: what am I doing? Am I actively engaging my partner? Am I using my imagination to create character and place? Awareness and practice lead to options and better choices, but first, we have to actively listen! Toward the end of the term, I will offer short summations of plays and movies that will give the students an opportunity to pull together the acting and improvisational elements that they learned during the term. ”
BIO:
Rasa is an actor, director and mime, a member of AEA, SAG & AFTRA. As a founding member of the Morse Mime Theater in the West Village, she partnered on stage with Richard Morse and worked in various theater styles in a number of theater productions. As an actor and a mime, Rasa also appeared in concert with Lena Horne at Carnegie Hall, as the Narrator in Stravinsky’s HISTORY OF A SOLDIER at the Manhattan School of Music, mimed to music with the Cleveland Philharmonic, the Miami Beach Symphony Orchestra and the Saginaw Symphony. Rasa toured seven countries in Middle East with the Morse Theater as Cultural Ambassador for the State Department Other company tours included Israel, Greece and Cyprus.
ON ACTING: roles include, THE VISIT, THE CHERRY ORCHARD; GINGERBREAD LADY; MEASURE FOR MEASURE, TROJAN WOMEN, and TANGO. Currently she is creating and performing short plays in Maine and Vermont. One of her favorites recent projects happened at the Lithuanian Consulate in NYC, with a resurrection of a number of short Musical Melodramas, music composed by Schumann and Shubert.
FAVORITE DIRECTING PROJECTS: Mark St. Germain’s FREUD’S LAST SESSION with Fritz Weaver, Don DeLillo’s VALPARAISO, and CAGED VISIONS, a play she created from poetry written by inmates within the NYC prison system and developed at the HB Playwrights Foundation. Her directing work abroad includes FOOL FOR LOVE in Sarajevo, Bosnia and ETCHED IN AMBER in Vilnius and Kaunas, Lithuania.
Rasa previously taught acting and movement classes at AMDA, acting workshops at Colombia U. grad film school and at other universities across the country. Her studies include Uta Hagen, Warren Robertson, Larry Moss and Richard Morse. She has a BA in theatre from Smith College.