Testimonials
What students say about Avner’s workshops
I have started to use the things you thought me in my [magic], close up and on stage and the results are amazing. The expressions on people’s faces can be classed as “before” and “after” the workshop.
Ori Ashkenazy
Israel 2007
I want to thank you yet again because there has truely been a before and after and I will never be the same on stage again.
Caroline Dream
Barcelona 2006
Avner’s workshop was like coming home! I learned so much and so much I had already learned and loved was validated in a very supportive and safe environment that had no bullshit.
Julia Baldassari-Litchman
San Francisco 2006
The workshop was amazing. Now, everything is different on stage, it is a new feeling…wonderful. Yesterday I played on stage, with a new philosophy. Now I have time on stage, time I can share with the audience. It gives me much more fun and the time to find the new moments in the theatre. Thank you very much for this skills.
Peter Leonhard
Germany 2006
I’ve just finished performing The Merchant of Venice where I played, among other parts, the Prince of Arragon. I received very notable praises from the critics as well as my fellow actors. I put a large part of my success to my Eccentric acting training.
Jeremy Rubenstein
Celebration Barn 2005
Last night I had to perform in a gym with no air conditioning for hundreds of adults and kids in my hometown. It was my first big show since returning from Maine and I was not expecting great things because I’ve never done well there before. All of my major fears were represented. However, I just tried to establish the complicity and use the “I Know!”, the breathing, the don’t rock, weight on the bottom, etc. I’m sure ya’ll are not surprised that it worked wonders! One teacher came up and said that it was amazing how much I had improved since last year and that I must keep adding tricks and working on it all the time. I just nodded and thanked him, but the truth is that I have not added any tricks. In fact, I have actually taken tricks out of my act! What’s changed is the presentation and I have both of you to thank for that.
As further evidence, our Cirque du Monde Coach sent me an e-mail this week saying that she didn’t quite know how to put it because I had always been funny and a good performer, but now I had a glow about me and seemed much more at ease.
I want to thank you for giving me so much more than I expected. It was an experience I will never forget!
Ron Anglin
Celebration Barn 2005
I found your intensive workshop to be…immediately applicable. I am continuing my exploration of the topics that you discussed and incorporating new elements into my performance as a result.
No one has ever illuminated to me with such clarity the importance and effects of breathing from different points of origin within the body and the how these changes affect the audience.
I found that I gained more directly applicable knowledge from working with you for three or four hours than in other places where I have spent years learning.
Benjamin Corey Feinblum
Motionfest 2003
I learned more in these two weeks than in any other theatre workshop I have ever taken.
Jane Nichols
Celebration Barn 2005
I just wanted to thank you for opening me up to an amazing way of working, and helping to recognize the simplicity of it. Its impact has been huge on my work. I came back to the states and concieved, produced and performed my own clown show. Throughout the process I kept refering back to ... London and your show, and your generocity and vunerability. The idea of breathing, that simple concept has informed and opened up so much for me.
Thank you! Thank you so much.
Lucas Caleb Rooney
London International Mime Festival 2002
I have received more direct benefit in performance, and in life, from your class than from any other.
Mandy Dalton
Maryland
Thanks, Avner, for the incredible investment you’ve made in my performance through your teaching. Learning at Celebration Barn Theater in 2002, and now for a second time with you at the Minneapolis workshop in Jan 2007, has given me an entirely new vocabulary, confidence and comfort on stage. I’ve found your teaching is not only insightful, but immediately applicable and liberating. Though I’ve been performing since the early 80’s, and have attended numerous professional training events, I’d say that none has had such a powerful effect upon me professionally and personally, and consequently also upon my audience. My deepest thanks!
Randy Christensen
Willmar, Minnesota
I was so inspired by the work we did that I decided to do some of it with elementary students at a school in Oakland where I work part time. I wasn't sure how it would go but knew I was excited about it. The response was amazing. We did the indoor/outdoor breathing exercise and then the Lecoq hand gesture with breath, then to this with waving hello/goodbye to our friend arriving on the boat. The students were engaged excited about the communication. Some of them were more engaged them they've ever been with me. But I don't think it was just the material, it was me and how I had been affected by the work. As I was teaching I stood tall and grounded to the spot, and I told them what you said about communicating you discomfort to the audience by shifting around. You could see a difference in them. It was exciting.
Frank Turco
San Francisco Clown Conservatory 2006
Avner and Julie are very generous teachers, taking the smoke and mirrors out of a magical profession, they offer wonderful new ways of seeing why what works works. I'm still reeling from the creative blocks I have been able to move with this course.
Tin Holland
Bellyacres workshop, Hawaii, 2007