About Us
We are teachers, actors, leaders, artists.
Patrick Russell
Founder
Patrick Russell is a professional actor and director who has performed in theaters across the Bay Area, including ACT (King Charles III, Once in a Lifetime, A Christmas Carol), California Shakespeare Theater (As You Like It), Aurora Theatre Company (A Bright New Boise, Wilder Times, Body Awareness, Trouble in Mind, Awake and Sing!), San Francisco Playhouse (Noises Off, Red Velvet, Seminar, reasons to be pretty, and the world premieres of 77% and Trouble Cometh), Magic Theatre (Fool for Love, The Other Place), Marin Theatre Company (Othello), Marin Shakespeare Company (Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Three Musketeers, The Comedy of Errors), CenterREP (Old Wicked Songs), and Shotgun Players (Care of Trees). Directing credits include Synesthesium, Illuminasium, Unbelieavable!, The Ends, All My Sons, The Arsonists, and Eurydice. Film credits include the feature films Being Us and Moss Beach, the web series SanFranLand, and the award-winning animated short film Rapunzel’s Etymology of Zero. His voice-over work can be heard in numerous radio and Internet ads. As a teaching artist, Patrick has taught in American Conservatory Theater’s Summer Training Congress, ACT's Young Conservatory, ACT’s San Francisco Semester Program, Academy of Art University, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, San Francisco State University, Southern Oregon University, and currently teaches acting and movement at UC Berkeley. He has taught numerous acting and movement workshops throughout the US including The Kennedy Center. Patrick is a member of Actors' Equity and SAG-AFTRA. He holds a B.F.A. in acting from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is a graduate of American Conservatory Theater’s Master of Fine Arts Program in Acting.
James Donlon
Teaching Artist
James Donlon has been a celebrated master teacher, international performer and director since 1970. He has performed his original physical theatre throughout North America, Europe and Latin America to critical acclaim. James has been on the faculties of acting schools such as The American Conservatory Theater, The University of North Carolina School of the Arts, The National Theatre Conservatory-Denver Center, The Yale School of Drama, UC-Santa Barbara, UC-San Diego, and the Oregon Center for the Arts. Among his students have been Broadway star Terrence Mann, award winning director & actor Joe Mantello, and noted writer Peter Hedges.
Donlon has presented residencies with special institutions like El Teatro Campesino, Mexico City 's Bellas Artes, Prague's national Academy of Performing Arts (AMU), Dublin's Gaiety School of Acting, and Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus Clown College where he taught Tony Award-winner Bill Irwin and Big Apple Circus icon Barry Lubin.
He has been a film movement coach for Oscar-winners Javier Bardem, Kathy Bates, and Frances McDormand, as well as Benjamin Bratt and David Strathairn. James is the only physical theater artist ever invited to perform with legendary San Francisco street mime Robert Shields of CBS' The Shields & Yarnell Show. He is the first American clown invited to perform in the famed Teatro Dimitri of Switzerland.
In 2009 James founded the Flying Actor Studio, an international center for the study of physical theatre.