Rocket Improv Director Lulu French is thrilled to offer the Meisner class helmed by actor and teaching artist Turron Kofi Alleyne, with the upcoming spring class beginning Monday, April 18th. French irst met Alleyne when he directed her in the film project Teacher Problems, by writer Tarana Peaches. “As a director he exuded enthusiasm and positive vibes! He was also very encouraging which greatly helped to put me at ease and feel confident about my choices. When I found out he taught acting classes to teen-aged students, I immediately wanted to bring him onboard!”
Turron Kofi Alleyne is a professional actor and director finding success on the stage and screen. He has been featured on the ABC show, For Life, acted opposite Mark Wahlberg in Invincible, and had a starring role in the Sundance Film Selection, Slavery By Another Name. But when he was younger, he didn’t want to be an actor.
“I got into acting as a hobby,” he admits. Growing up in Orange, he did not take school seriously until the age of ten when a teacher challenged him to reach his potential. He decided he wanted to be a chef, and even went to culinary school. But something happened on the way to donning the chef hat. The more he dabbled in acting, the more his hobby transformed into his ideal profession. “This passion for acting just grew,” Alleyne says. He took a leap of faith and decided to audition for a seemingly unattainable training program, reasoning that if he got in it meant he was pretty good. “I tried out for Rutgers. At the time there were about a thousand people at the audition, and only twenty could make it. So I figured, I know acting is a tough business, so let me try a tough school to get into. And then I got in!” he recalls. His passion for acting took off. “The rest was history.”
Turron Kofi Alleyne
It was at Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts that Alleyne first studied the Meisner Technique, an approach to acting that encourages the actor to place their focus on their scene partners and experience their emotions authentically. Alleyne found the training to be a revelation and describes it with a sense of urgency. “What Meisner defines as acting is the ability to live truthfully under imaginary circumstances.” Alleyne stresses that the acting technique is not about performance. “It allows you to work from the inside out.”
Alleyne has taken his passion for the Meisner Technique and used it throughout his professional acting career, and for the last two years he has been teaching it to students at the Maplewood based performing arts school, Rocket Improv. The training involves exercises where two students repeat observations about each other. “It evolves into something so simple, yet so huge,” says Alleyne, noting how it trains the students to be in the moment. “When I teach, I don’t try to teach for the performance. That is not my goal. My goal is to get someone to create internally motivated responses. Because a lot of the students that come… they already have a level of performance they’ve been taught. So what I like to do is enhance their performance by adding true behavior.”
“There are very few opportunities in our area for young people to work purely on the craft of acting,” French says. As New Jersey’s only performing arts school dedicated solely to the teaching and performance of comedic and theatrical improvisation, French felt offering the Meisner class was a perfect fit. “The Sanford Meisner technique teaches actors to respond in the moment and trust their instincts. Students learn to embrace more authentic acting by getting out of their head and getting in touch with their emotions. Improvisation is a big part of Meisner which is why I think this class is a great fit for Rocket Improv. I believe in the importance of process-based work—like improv and Meisner—which is less about creating a product for the audience and more about allowing students to find internal motivations for their character’s actions. I love giving young actors the agency to create their own scenes and figure out how to make their choices truthful based on why their character behaves in a certain way.”
Alleyne is hopeful his students’ training will distinguish them on the stage. “It’s the foundation,” he says. “When you create true behavior, it lasts, it keeps you grounded, it keeps you working… It allows you to stand out amongst the rest. It allows you to win that role.”
Students take Rocket Improv’s Meisner class not just to improve their acting, but to also have a joyful, inspirational, and authentic experience. “I have seen Kofi teach and how his students are so jazzed and intensely focused on his every word,” says French. “He’s amazing with the teens and is a real hidden gem. His class is a unicorn, and I think it’s only a matter of time before people realize that his class is a unique opportunity for teens to explore the craft of acting without going into New York City.”
Actors interested in signing up for Meisner for Teens are encouraged to sign up directly on the Rocket Improv website here: https://www.rocketimprovcomedy.com/classesforyouth
You can watch Alleyne’s acting reel HERE.
Sara Courtney is a writer living in Maplewood.
