THE PROBLEM: for actors of every type
Feeling alone onstage and disconnected from your body.
As an actor, have you ever felt alone on stage? In front of a camera? You don’t know what to do, you don’t know how to use your hands. In one word: lost.
Chiara and Valerio are both actors, and they felt this too. So, they decided to search for solutions.
CHIARA AND VALERIO’S SOLUTION: The Relationship Acting Method
We are constantly in relation to others, but we hardly ever realize it. Chiara and Valerio’s method teaches you to understand the relationship with:
YOUR BODY
OTHER PEOPLE
THE ENVIRONMENT
How Chiara and Valerio came to be
Chiara and Valerio met 15 years ago in “Paolo Grassi” Drama School (Milan), one of the best Drama Schools in Italy. They immediately felt the need to go deeper, to find a way to be unique actors, rather than just good actors.
One day, Valerio told Chiara: “I think that talent does not exist –I want to open it up, and see what it is made of, and finally to put it back together”.
That day their acting research began.
Chiara and Valerio studied modern actors as well as the great famous actors who inspired the great methodologies of Stanislavskj, Strasberg, Mejerchold and more. They wanted to return to the source in order to discover the key to those great actors’ power and link them to our modern times.
They explored the relaxation of body and voice; and sweat for hours behind masks; they investigated the communicative possibilities that lie within and beyond the text, in a single gesture, or in a single word.
Regardless if you are on stage or in front of a camera, the actor needs to always be unique.
Their ongoing research led, after many years, to the development of: “The Relationship Acting Method.”
They now travel the world teaching their method to actors, singers, and all other types of performers.
They have taught “The Relationship Acting Method” at Harvard University; in New York, at The Shakespeare Forum, Theaterlab, Lucid Body House and Clown Gym; in Montreal, at Concordia University, McGill University, Université du Québec à Montréal, Université de Montréal.
In 2016 they founded the Montreal based G. Grasso Acting School for Opera singers.
Teatro del Disìo is their international theater company since 2011.
Valerio Vittorio Garaffa
Valerio Vittorio Garaffa is a theatre director, actor and acting teacher. His purpose is helping actors to increase their stage presence and discover their star power. He graduated from the School of Dramatic Arts “Paolo Grassi” (Italy) and completed his training at the Laboratorio Teatrale Santa Cristina (Italy) under the mentorship of Luca Ronconi. He has directed numerous theatre and Opera productions both in Italy and Canada. Highlights include: Cymbeline, The Bacchae, The Assemblywomen, Don Quixote, Trevisan’s Oscillazioni, At the exit, The festival of our Lord of the Ship, The imbecile, Donizetti’s Don Pasquale. Acting credits include: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest, Strauss’s Ithaca, Angeli’s Welcome in California.
Chiara Cimmino
Chiara Cimmino is an actress and acting teacher. Her focus is helping those she works with to find their own way as actors. She graduated from the Milan School of Dramatic Arts “Paolo Grassi” in 2007. She won the Award for Best Supporting Actress at the theater Palio of Chiavari (Italy, 2005) and the “Plautus Theater Award” for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Italy, 2017). Acting credits include: theaters (The seagull, Goldoni’s The fan, Ostrovsky’s The storm, Marivaux’s Harlequin educated by love, The play that goes wrong), films, television, web-series, and commercials.