The professional actor
is a balanced creation of
Art and Technique
is a balanced creation of
Art and Technique
"It's as though Charles put glasses on me." --Antonio Banderas
Charles S. Waxberg
Director, playwright, actor, and author has been teaching in professional programs and in private practice since 1981. He was first invited to teach acting and playwriting at Carnegie-Mellon University (where he holds his M.F.A.) when New York City's Roundabout Theatre imported him to create and serve as Conservatory Director and instructor for the Roundabout Theatre Conservatory. During his tenure there, he was also Associate Casting Director for two seasons.
After observing a class with the legendary Stella Adler, Charles joined the Stella Adler Conservatory's faculty as a specialist in Script Analysis and eventually became Program Director. He taught script analysis, scene study, and directed projects for the conservatory as well as New York University's Tisch School of the Arts B.F.A program. During this time, he was honored to sit at Miss Adler's side for a good deal of the last five years of her New York City teaching absorbing her techniques and studying her profoundly insightful eye. "I consider those years the most valuable training in a lifetime of theatre and education."
After 11 years with Miss Adler's New York City school, he joined the faculty of her Los Angeles Academy where he taught Professional Scene Study, basic and advanced Script Analysis, and directed the Showcase class. He taught and served as Creative Director of Training there for 7 years before moving to Seattle to focus again on theatre, his first passion rather than film and television.
Raised by a celebrated Broadway parent, Charles joined the theatre at age 7 performing in plays throughout the East Coast. Before leaving NYC for Los Angeles to learn about "the other half of acting," he performed in his own play An Alternate Recipe on Off-Broadway's 42nd Street "Theatre Row." He was asked to be founding Artistic Director for the UNITAS Theatre Company, a currently running not-for-profit troupe of his former students in LA for whom he directed their premiere production.
After ten productions of his plays in NYC, he has since had four of his new plays produced in L.A. and is constantly working on his next. He is recipient of The Bud Yorkin Playwriting Award, and was nominated by The Arena Stage as finalist in the Foundation of the Dramatist Guild/CBS National Playwriting contest. He was a resident playwright and Playwright's Representative for the Manhattan Class Company (MCC Theatre) who developed his play Personal Formulas for an Off-Broadway production, also on Theatre Row.
Charles has been director of uncountable plays both professionally and in workshop/educational theatre ranging from Moliere's Tartuffe to Tennessee Williams to new contemporary plays still in development. Most recently, his production of Edward Albee's Everything in the Garden played to excellent reviews and sold-out houses for Los Angeles' Dreamhouse Ensemble Theatre.
For more recent productions and reviews, look here.
His book, The Actor's Script--Script Analysis for Performers was published by Heinemann Books in 1998 and is now in its eighth printing. It is dedicated to Stella Adler, and to all his teachers--including the students.
