Classes starting June 23 at the Second City Training Center will include a new program on TV, film and digital to give improv actors a place to hone their on-screen skills in Chicago.
“That’s the need that we see and I think that it’s long overdue,” Jack C. Newell, who heads the program, told DNAinfo.
The classes will include an audition workshop for voiceover actors, writing for TV, film and the web, on-camera workshop and an intro to filmmaking.
Newell said he believes the new program will change the film industry in the city by creating a new category of improviser: one who is a filmmaker and an improviser.
“I find I’m shocked that it hasn’t been done yet, to be completely honest,” he said. “People are out in the city making films and shorts, but the program will address the need to help students and independent filmmakers understand how to make these films excel.”
The classes are geared toward Chicago’s already rich improv community and also to aspiring filmmakers and writers.
Newell is currently in post with his romantic comedy, “Open Tables,” and is filming the progress of the construction of a school in Haiti that he plans to finish in 2016.
