Strasberg class
ADMINISTRATION
Victoria Krane, President
Emily Kirn, Associate Director of Student Affairs
Taylor Sheehan, Student Services Specialist
METHOD ACTING INSTRUCTORS
CHARLOTTE ARNOUX
Charlotte Arnoux (she/her) is a Casting Director and acting teacher based in New York City. Her recent casting credits include Caddo Lake, dir. Celine Held and Logan George and produced by M. Night Shyamalan (release planned for 2024); Laurel Parmet’s The Starling Girl (Sundance ‘23, SXSW ‘23); Smoking Tigers (TriBeCa ‘23, Winner of Best Performance Award), and The Feeling That The Time For Doing Something Has Passed (Cannes ‘23). In addition, Charlotte played a crucial role in casting the NETFLIX series Grand Army. A graduate of NYU’s Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute herself, her passion for casting emerged from her passion for teaching. The two now go hand-in-hand. She has taught scene study and Acting for Film/TV classes at GoodCapp Arts, Stonestreet Studios, Columbia University, and more. She is particularly proud to say that her private acting students star in series on ABC, CBS, NBC, Peacock, Netflix, Apple TV, Nickelodeon, and have graced the screen in feature films across the world. Charlotte is a member of the Casting Society of America.
BILL BALZAC
Bill Balzac has been an actor, director, producer, and teacher for more than 25 years. He teaches at The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute and NYU Tisch Program at the Strasberg Institute. After being inspired by the teachings of Lee Strasberg, Bill co-founded the Hyperion Theatre Group, Soul Productions, and the Hyperion Children’s Theatre. He then formed and directed the Mixed Nuts Improv Company, which performed throughout NYC. Bill has been a member of the Brooklyn Shakespeare Company under the artistic direction of Geoffrey Owens and appeared as Gately in the New York debut of the two-act version of James McLure’s Pvt. Wars, directed by Gene Frankel. His directing credits include Israel Horovitz’s The Indian Wants the Bronx in Scotland at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the New York premiere of Israel Horovitz’s Sins of the Mother, SubUrbia by Eric Bogosian, and LaRonde, The Laramie Project, Dancing at Lughnasa, Rumors, The Norman Conquests and Into the Woods all for NYU/Strasberg. He also recently co-directed Crimes of the Heart and Sunday on the Rocks with Geoffrey Horne. Bill graduated from NYU Tisch School of the Arts with honors and is a member of SAG/AFTRA and Actors’ Equity Association.
GINA BONATI
Gina Bonati has been teaching Method Acting since 2001. Early studies in Stanislavski’s Method from high school teacher Lewis Campbell as well as ACT Young Conservatory led to further pursuit. In 1981, she moved to New York to earn a BFA from the Dance Division of The Juilliard School. While at Juilliard, she continued her acting studies, studying with John Stix. In 1982, she began studying Lee Strasberg’s Method Acting Technique with Sharon Chatten, continuing with Sharon for years, Sharon being of most influence. Further influences are Geraldine Baron and directors Ildiko Nemeth, Lee Grant and Robert Woodruff.
A lifetime member of the Actors Studio since 2003, she continues to bring work into sessions and holds her membership most dear. She has acted all over the world and counts her experience opening for the Centennial at The Strindberg Intima Theatre, Stockholm in August Strindberg’s The Stronger (directed by Lee Grant and Elizabeth Kemp) as one of her most memorable stage successes. She works as a theater artist with The New Stage Theatre. She creates Dance-Theater works in installation, dance, theater, image, and sound. She holds two master’s degrees. She teaches and creates work internationally. She loves the stage with all her heart.
TIM MARTIN CROUSE
Tim Martin Crouse has taught Institute and NYU students since 2005 and has taught in the Young Actors Program since 1989, where he has directed more than forty productions with the students. As an actor, he has performed in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and All’s Well That Ends Well at The Riverside Shakespeare Company as well as an off-Broadway production of David Mamet’s The Woods. Tim has recently appeared on the Amazon series pilot The Point. He had the lead in the Nickelodeon series Kid’s Court and the recurring role of Barry on The Guiding Light. He produced many programs for MTV and spent five years as head writer at MTV2. Tim directed the short film Mousetrap which aired in WNYC and co-directed the short film Tumors for HBO. He also wrote, produced and directed the independent feature film The Orchard which won an award for Best Suspense Feature at the 2008 NY Independent Film & Video Festival. He also wrote, produced & directed the upcoming documentary Talking with the Piano Player. Tim’s second feature film titled Redemption, on which he is a writer, director and producer, premiered as the closing film of the 2014 Coney Island Film Festival and the New York City Indie Film Festival in the same year.
ROBERT ELLERMANN
As a teacher and director, Robert Ellermann was influenced by Lee Strasberg, Robert (Bobby) Lewis, Kim Stanley, Frank Corsaro, David Garfield, Maria Knebel and Nikolai Demidov. In addition, he studied directing with Jack O’Brien, Adrian Hall, Michael Kahn and Gerald Freedman. Robert also worked with teachers directly certified by Mikhail Chekhov in the 1930’s to teach Chekhov’s work: Deidre Hurst du Prey, Felicity Mason and Beatrice Straight. In addition, Robert had the honor of knowing the last surviving original member of the Moscow Art Theatre’s seminal First Studio – Vera Soloviova. Madame Soloviova was one of Stanislavsky’s earliest students (starting in 1908) and the peer, acting partner and friend of Richard Boleslavsky. Yevgeny Vakhtangov, Mikhail Chekhov and Maria Ouspenskaya. Robert was able to discuss the work of Stanislavsky, Vakhtangov, Sulerzhitsky and Mikhail Chekhov, particularly their use of the ‘system’, with Madame Soloviova. Over the last five decades, Robert has exhaustively researched the work of Lee Strasberg, covering Strasberg’s nearly 60 year career; as well as, the profound influence of Stanislavsky in the US and Russian-Soviet-Russian theatres, especially the work of the Group Theatre and the various studios of the Moscow Art Theatre. In the former Soviet Union, the leading Stanislavsky scholar, Inna Soloviova, humorously referred to him as “the American Stanislavsky fanatic”.
In 1983, he was invited by Robert Lewis to serve as co-director of the Robert Lewis Theatre Workshop in Los Angeles. In 1988, Robert was invited by Stanislavsky’s great-great grandson to the first International Stanislavsky Conference in Paris and in 1990 Robert was invited to the Soviet Union by the Moscow Art Theatre to observe classes and rehearsals in the leading Russian theatres and schools. In 2021, Robert introduced Lee Strasberg’s Method to the Russian Academy of Theatrical Art (formly GITIS) in Moscow via Zoom classes. Robert has taught private classes in New York, Los Angeles, Tucson and Houston. He is currently working on a book about the relationship between the work of Lee Strasberg and that of Konstantin Stanislavsky. Over the years, Robert has directed the plays of Michael Weller, Clifford Odets, Tennessee Williams, David Rabe and Horton Foote, among others. At the Institute, Robert presented a production of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters after an intensive six month rehearsal process.
JACQUELINE JACOBUS
Jacqueline Jacobus was born in Paris and spent her early years in France and England. When 17, she had the great good fortune to begin her acting studies with Lee Strasberg in his private classes in NYC. Several years later, she became a member of the Actors Studio, where she had the opportunity to work with and be influenced by directors such as Arthur Penn, Elia Kazan, and Vivian Nathan, just to mention a few. As a young actress, she worked extensively in TV, Film, and the theater, both in NYC and Regionally. As a member of The Ensemble Studio Theater she worked along side of playwrights such as Jonathan Ringkamp, Rommulus Linney, and Lyle Kessler as they developed their scripts. Favorite roles were Laura in the The Glass Menagerie, Kim in Mama Sang the Blues, Nina in The Seagull, Florrie in Waiting for Lefty, Emily in Our Town, The Whore in La Ronde, Titania in A Midsummer Summer Night’s Dream, Portia in The Merchant of Venice just to mention a few. Most recently she played Marty in Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation. Jacqueline has been teaching acting, and specifically The Method as it was taught to her by Lee Strasberg, for the last 10 years. She is an accomplished pianist who treasures the literature for the piano as much as the literature for the actor.
KELSEY PIETROPAOLO
Notable stage credits include: Orson’s Shadow (Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater), Rhinoceros (W.H.A.T), Blithe Spirit (Capital Repertory Theatre), Larvae (Alchemical), Crimes of the Heart (Fable Theatre), A Turn of the Screw (W.H.A.T.), Measure for Measure (Shakespeare Downtown), The Cherry Orchard (14th Street Y), A Hatful of Rain (Theatr Studio), and a season at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park as a member of the Bruce E. Coyle Acting Intern Company for their 2014-2015 where she understudied 7 mainstage roles and starred in two of their Off The Hill productions. As a writer, Kelsey was awarded a Playwriting fellowship in 2017 by Byrdcliffe Art Colony to write her one act play The Octopus. Her one act with music, Lonelyhearts, co-conceived with composer David Bird went up at Project Q in New York City late April 2018, featuring the TAK Ensemble. In 2018, she won an ArtsUniverse Scholarship to attend the IUGTE Physical Theatre Workshop and International Theatre Conference in Leibnitz, Austria where she shared Lee Strasberg’s techniques. She co-directed Where Can I Hide? as part of Montclair State University’s C.A.R.T. Underground Series in Spring 2022. She is an executive producer on Joe Pietropaolo’s NYFA-sponsored short film My Darling Angel. She is currently pursuing a Masters Degree in Theatre Studies at Montclair State University. Proud member of Actors’ Equity Association.