Boise coach provides space for new and veteran actors to develop skills

The curtain has closed on the goal, but the play will go on.

Boise Acting Studio is the next act for founder April Grady, who opened the space April 1 in downtown Boise. In the black box theater, actors will be coached, plays will be performed and the arts will have another resource for the creative community in the area.

Since 2015, Grady has coached actors in the Treasure Valley wherever she could find space. She opened a physical space in Meridian, but her goal was to open a studio where plays could be performed and students could have the space to develop their craft.

At the new studio, located at 2226 W. Main Street in Boise, there is enough space to accommodate about 30 audience members, and the first play, “Poison Pen,” by local playwright Lance Thompson, is being performed in the theater.

“I needed to see if there was enough interest in Boise for people to regularly study acting and come every week,” she said, “and the answer was, ‘yes.’”

Classes are held three days a week from 6:30-10:30 p.m. A fourth class could be offered soon since demand is increasing, and Grady teaches what she calls a hybrid Meisner method. It’s based on the Meisner technique, an approach to acting that actor and teacher Sanford “Sandy” Meisner developed, instructing students to act truthfully through their emotions.

“I think a lot of actors, whether they are aware of it or not, that’s why they do it,” she said. “I think a lot of actors naturally have like this insatiable curiosity, this need to grow and learn more, this curiosity. And it never ends, so that is, I think, what’s so satisfying about the craft; because it’s about the human experience.”

Not only is Grady a coach, but she is a student herself, who is always learning. Her longtime coach is Southern California-based Andrew Benne, an actor, director, writer and, of course, coach. He has worked on everything from “The Rockford Files” and “Heathers” to “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

Grady’s experience in theater, film and television provides her students with insights from a seasoned professional. Her first role was on the TV series “American Dreams,” for one episode as Gangly Girl. She then went on to have parts on the shows “Quintuplets,” “NCIS,” “Kyle XY,” “Psych” and many other shows and short films, credited as April Matson.

Her students range from people who have never acted a day in their lives to acting veterans, writers and directors. They might be curious about the profession or looking to dive deeper into their abilities.

Meg Sylvester, a Boise-based writer, actor and author of “The Mindful Mom” and “The Body Positivity Journal,” came to Grady to help improve her skills, especially in writing and character development.

“When we’re writing, we’re writing about someone’s either worst day or someone’s best day … we’re not writing about the mundane moment. [The coaching is] really helping to look at humanity beyond the social masks that we present,” Sylvester said. “I believe in this day and age when so much is curated, people just wanting to show the correct response, the curated response, the highlight reel, it’s bringing us back to our humanity and helping us to recognize as actors the social masks that we have on as a person, and how we can begin to put those down so that we can really get to the heart of our own human impulses and … listen very truthfully.”

The direction she has received from Grady has informed how Sylvester approaches not only her acting and honestly reacting to scene partners, but her life outside the black box.

“One of the things that April says — it was a teaching of Meisner — is don’t sacrifice truth for politeness. I really think about that often,” she said. “I’m an entrepreneur, so the way I’m showing up online, I have built a large platform online, the way I tell stories, the way I write … I’m really able to sit with what’s the conditioned response versus what’s my actual truth. And that truth for me is usually I can go bigger. I can shine brighter. I can stop worrying that people are going to say, ‘Who does she think she is?’ I worry less about that now, which is quite freeing.”

Thompson, whose play Grady is producing, is also taking classes at Boise Acting Studio and said that she has extraordinary insights into the craft of acting.

“She can watch a scene and immediately spot anything that is false or artificial and then offer specific instructions on how to improve it,” Thompson said. “April says her job is to keep her students from acting and teach them to respond truthfully to fellow actors. She has made me a better actor and given me a greater appreciation of the discipline of the art.”

When it comes to students who are looking to take what they learn, either in-person or virtually, and use it to pursue a career in TV and films, the proof comes down to how they fare in the industry. Grady has had several students find success.

“I’ve had actors in the last couple of years that have been on almost every streaming network you can imagine, like Apple TV, Hulu, Netflix, on series, regular roles in shows,” she said. “One of them, actually, she’s a really good friend of mine. She was on a show with Alan Tudyk … “Resident Alien.”

That friend is Mandell Maughan, who played Lisa Casper on 11 episodes of the science fiction comedy. Her most recent role is playing Chanel Vanderthal on the Netflix series “Free Bert,” starring comedian Bert Kreischer.

Another student, Callie Haverda, played the lead role of Leia Forman on “That ’90s Show.” Haverda has acted in several other projects, acting alongside the likes of Isabella Rossellini, Josh Duhamel and Nora Dunn.

Those successes are certainly positive outcomes for the actors, but that is not where their focus should be, Grady said.

“I think it’s an important mindset to have for an actor or any artist to try not to be result-oriented, to always be in process,” she said. “Obviously, we want to book things. We want an opportunity to be hired. As someone who has [been hired,] that’s very rewarding, but as soon as it’s over, you have to get back to work.”

Often, when someone interested in learning to act audits a class — what it’s called to sit in on a class to see if it’s the right fit for someone — that person will remark on how hard acting actually is.

For Grady, who wants to impart what she’s learned and help others unlock their potential, continual learning is what brings her back to acting.

“To this day, when I’m teaching, probably more so teaching, I can visually see what’s working and what doesn’t work, and why does that work and why does that not work,” she said. “And that’s, I think, why I’m in love with it so much because there’s always more to learn.”