Welcome back for our Third episode of the Chaos Comedy Podcast! Today's hosts are Matt Seybert, Raymond Epps, Saya Luke, Vicki Sweeney and Corin Friese!

The Chaos Podcast is a short improv comedy play through the microphone. The improvisers take a play title and go into a 10 - 15 minute set.

Check out our monthly shows at: www.lighthousetheater.org
If you're interested in joining the troupe, check out our classes at: www.dearingstudio.com

Welcome back for our second episode of the Chaos Comedy Podcast! Today's hosts are Dakota George, Raymond Epps, Saya Luke, and Corin Friese!

The Chaos Podcast is a short improv comedy play through the microphone. The improvisers take a play title and go into a 10 - 15 minute set.

Check out our monthly shows at: www.lighthousetheater.org
If you're interested in joining the troupe, check out our classes at: www.dearingstudio.com

The Chaos Podcast is a short improv comedy play through the microphone. The improvisers take a play title and go into a 10 - 15 minute set.

Check out our monthly shows at: www.lighthousetheater.org
If you're interested in joining the troupe, check out our classes at: www.dearingstudio.com

Listen to this one act improvised play starring Matt Dearing and Joey Sweeney. They take you inside the life of fourth grader Little Mark and his relationship with his uncle joey. Improv podcasts are cool because they open the audiences imagination to visualize what's going on.

Welcome to another episode of the Dearing Acting Studio Podcast! Today we came together to energize our team and our listeners for the week. We talked about the importance of focusing on what you CAN do, and how that effects your attitude. We also talk about next level leadership tactics and how we're able to look at failiure and grow from it.

Today Jason Jackson and Matthew Dearing get on the mics to bring us yet another amazing improvised podcast. The suggestion is recieved on air at the beginning, so you KNOW it's improv! Sit back as these improvisers take you on a ride into your imagination.

It was so fun doing the radio improv podcast with long time student and friend Jason Jackson. In this improv podcast instead of talking about improv, we get right into performing it. At Dearing Acting Studio we subscribe to all different forms of improv, however our favorite by far is "The Improvised Play." You can see an example of a past Boondocks Improv Show done in this format. We execute performing podcast improv "old time radio" style through our podcast microphones. This special format allows viewers to listen and let their imaginations run wild. Matthew Dearing, Joey Sweeney and Jason Jackson use sound effects, character voices and active listening to pull you into a wold of their own design. 

A storyline for your imagination

The "old time radio improv podcast" format is a product of innovation during quarantine. During the week of the initial shutdown, we had an improv show and refused to cancel it. Now we had Jason on to practice our improv skills and create some funny content. You'll hear a Sylvester Stallone impersonation, four crazy characters, and the best part, you imagine them all as we go! Improv is an art form that can benefit us in more ways than we can count. Wether it's using your voice, thinking on your feet, or just simply a creative outlet, there's nothing quite like doing improv scenes! If you want to try it out, check out our improv classes here which are now available in person AND virtually! 

It's summer time, which means, it's time to talk summer camps and online acting school. Joey Sweeney does his impression of Samuel L Jackson, we discuss the importance of letting go and the team drops a big announcement about our summer program. 

What's the big announcement you ask? Starting June 1st 2020 The Dearing Acting Studio will be re-opening the physical doors for our acting classes in Phoenix Arizona. This is a program wide decision that includes kids acting classes teen acting classes and adult acting classes. We will also be launching our kids and teens summer movie making camp Valleywood Movie Camp

What Will In Person Acting Classes & Camps Look Like ?

We will be taking all the necessary precautions to keep everyone healthy and safe. So how are we going to do it you ask? The “how” is never more important than the “why”. Why are we opening our doors? Because people need us to. Everyone will open very soon we are sure. And when they do - we will help. We will learn and we will share what we learned so others can follow. There’s a reason why creative arts have been around since the dawn of time. We are essential. Virtual and online acting classes will continue for all who prefer that method. For those ready to come back and trail blaze with us. Sign up quick bc space will be extremely limited. We have new cleaning protocols in place. There is more to come - but know that we are extremely sensitive to the needs of our staff and clients and will do everything possible to ensure we keep everyone safe.

New actor hand washing policy for EVERYONE.
Masks will be available when students enroll for acting classes at the studio.
Gloves will be given out freely for on stage acting.
Seats will be separated by safe distance during all acting classes.
Tape will be on stage to keep actors safe.
Our very own Phoenix acting coach Brian Sweeney will be placed in a bubble - (Love you Brian!)

Summer Movie Making Camp 

Valleywood Movie Camp is the premier summer movie camp in Phoenix Arizona. Film. Produce. Star. Teen and youth actors come together over 5 days with professional directors, coaches, cinematographers and editors to create movie magic. The end result: an indescribable bond with peers, high level film actor training, 20 minute short film, IMDB credit, demo reel footage, red carpet walk, black tie movie premiere, award ceremony and heart felt acceptance speeches.You can sign up online on our website to get more information. 

We have two of these camps coming up this summer, The first is in June and the second is in July. Both camps are five day camp, Monday- Friday,  from 8am-2pm.Our June summer camp will take place June 1st- June 5th and is titled "The Missing Cell Phone." 

Available Acting Class Options: 

 Acting Classes at the Dearing Acting Studio Location in Phoenix, Arizona
Virtual Acting Classes - Train right from your home
Online Acting School - Packaged video courses
Free Online Acting Classes - Available on the Dearing Acting Studio YouTube page

Welcome back to the Dearing Acting Studio podcast! On this episode we have Shadow Mountain High School senior, Keegan Sinur. Keegan came into the studio to apply for an internship to get school credit hours and learn more about the acting industry. On this episode, we take a quick glance at what it's like to have an Arizona Acting Internship!

Keegans Backstory

Most of you know our studio producer, and director of media Joey Sweeney. Well, funny story, when Joey moved to Phoenix and transferred to Shadow Mountain, he met Keegan in the drama department and they quickly became close friends. They did multiple shows together including The Addams Family and Rock of Ages, but even after Joey graduated they kept in contact. When Joey heard Keegan was coming in he was ecstatic!

Expectation vs. Reality

Keegan came in expecting this internship to be the typical one we've all heard of. You come in, get the hours, and then it's all over and you forget about it. He was surprised to find that was NOT the case. Keegan says the job exceeded his expectations because he's learning and having a ton of fun! He was super nervous after the tough interview but was ready to take the opportunity and show he had what it takes.

Valuable Lessons

In just this ten minute podcast, Keegan and Matt reflect on the lessons he's learned so far and add a couple onto the list live. Matt believes in the "wax on, wax off" method for our staff. We've all been through it and Keegan was no different. He preaches it's the people that love you the most in life that are willing to critique you. The lesson we uncovered right here in this episode was the difference between saying "I have to" or "I get to". Saying, "I get to" is a positive way to frame a task. You can look at anything with a mindset of I get to, and realize everything you are blessed with. We're so excited to have Keegan in the Dearing Acting Studio fam! 

You might be reading this title thinking, "Find your Purpose?" Pretty big question there buddy. This week on the Dearing Acting Studio Podcast we have a special guest Brad Sweeney. Brad is a store director in his 40th year with Bashas Supermarkets. He is also Brian and Joey's dad. In this episode, we talk about the positives and the negatives of being on the frontlines during this crisis, Review the growth of the studio from Brad's perspective, and the importance of a positive outlook. 

Growth

We start off talking about Brad's memories and outside perspective of the studio. The first thing he said was, "mcdowell road." He's referring to our second studio location, which was in a bad neighborhood, right between two freeways. Matt then talks about how the studio was started in 2007 during the recession but we succeeded because we learned how to grind and didn't know any better. Brad then shares the story of Brian being in the hospital long term in 2018. He remembers Brian's strong purpose to keep pushing Dearing further from the hospital and his refusal to let the studio die. Brian explains his reason why, which was he's never seen a facility focused on love and pushing the person.  

Giving is Powerful

As a store director, Matt brings attention to the fact that Brad is on the frontlines. Brad talks about how there are good moments and bad moments and shares an incredible story. He practices what we preach when he describes the bad moments because he gives those people the benefit of the doubt. He says that the people who come in the store stressed are the ones who are struggling, and they have big hearts even if they aren't showing it. The good is still present. He shares about two customers who came in and chose to GIVE. They bought $1,000 worth of gift cards from small businesses and gave them to his employees. This helped the small businesses, and acknowledged the hard work from the employees. 

On the Next Podcast

As we wrap up with Brad, we called Shea into the podcast to talk about her latest blogs & our upcoming episode of the podcast. Shea has been grinding from home writing these amazing blogs trying to make a difference. Check out her blog on non-essentials and what that means for us as an acting school. 

A Message From Joey

Having our Dad on the podcast today was so much fun. He raised all three of us to live by the golden rule, "treat others how you want to be treated." My dad has faced a ton of hardships in his life. One of which was helping Brian and I fight through living positively with our blood disorder, ALPS Gene. When Brian was in his coma, my dad always kept hope and was a rock for our family. I will never forget being quarantined on my birthday when I was younger with low blood numbers. My dad invited two of my closes friends over and had us decorate face-masks & play video games. He is an inspiration for me to be selfless and always care for others, and I hope his story inspires you all to do the same! 

Welcome back to the Dearing Acting Studio Kids Podcast. We promised our Youth Improv students a personal podcast to help them practice improv from home during quarantine. As the coronavirus has shaken the nation, we've been forced to move our classes online. In 13 years of operation, we've never closed our doors and we refused to give up now. Our Wednesday online Youth Improv class was a huge fail forward. Navigating different programs, and technical difficulties we fought through and had a fun class, but it was far below our expectations. 

What are our expectations?

Our guardian team at Dearing Acting Studio runs on a belief in the 10x rule. We repeat it day in and day out and the concept is simple. You give ten times the value of what the person is paying for or expecting. The key is to do this selflessly seeking nothing in return. We believe that giving is one of the most powerful things you can do in this world, so we seek ways to help every day. Even though the class technically "worked" it wasn't smooth, organized, and seemless yet, and that is what we shoot for. 

What is Yes Because?

Yes because is an improv exercise that helps with building your scene. You might have heard of the famous second city exercise, "yes and" which is what we used to teach. We've transitioned into using because for what it does to the scene. Yes because is a vertical move. What that means is it pushes the scene forward into a new direction, building off of what has already been established. Yes and is a horizontal move. This adds new information to the scene instead of building on what's right in front of you. While they are both great tools, yes because is the foundation for our program.

Teach Me How

Yes because starts with a relationship based statement to your scene partner. For example I might say, "Mom you always make me smile." The second step is agreeing to the information that your scene partner gives you. For example, you would respond by saying, "Yes I always make you smile because..." The third step is giving a logical reason for why the information is true, this is your because statement. For example, "Because we have a strong relationship." From here the exercise continues, with you repeating the latest statement and adding because! 

The team was so excited to hop on the podcast and chat this week. We will let you in on a little secret.  So, our team has an awesome chemistry (still a work in progress) that we have built to chat the way we do on our podcasts, but most of the time, we have an outline as to what topics we want to hit on. That being said, we thrive on being able to adapt to whatever topics of conversation are drawn to our hearts. Do we want to hit our outline? Sure. But, are we free to improvise away from it when necessary? ABSOLUTELY. (Of course that deserved all caps) In fact, some of our best conversations derive from being able to audible with each other and find new discoveries from there. 

We begin this episode of the Dearing Studio Podcast- The Power of "I AM"  with discussing the statements that we often give ourselves without truly questioning them. We also touch on the imposter syndrome and how easy it is to preach advice to others that you may be unwilling to swallow a dosage of. 

NEW SKILL! PUBLIC SPEAKING

Shea took on a new challenge this week as she gave her first official public speech. Her topic was on kindness! So, she obviously wore her "be kind" shirt. Speaking in front of a crowd is one of the struggles that many students have coming into the Dearing Acting Studio. Subsequently, this is why scripted work and improvisation are excellent tools for improving public speaking skills. Check out this cool article about public speaking and why we are so fearful of it. It is an exciting time for the Dearing Team as we have added speaking engagements to our services. Want more info on this? Check out our page here.  

TAKING STUDENTS NEXT LEVEL: LEEANN DEARING 

The Dearing Acting Studio was blessed with a guest youth teacher this week! OG instructor and rockstar improvisor, Leeann Dearing (A founder of Dearing Acting Studio) was able to shake it up with our youth actors this week and give them a whole new perspective on improvisation. Teaching kids the "why's" and "how's" of improv is no easy feat, but Leeann was able to create a high-level-learning atmosphere - while having way too much fun, of course. 

Check out our other Dearing Studio Podcasts and subscribe! Happy listening. :) 

Welcome back to the Dearing Acting Studio Podcast! In this episode Matt and Joey talk about FEAR. With the world in a state of panic over the coronavirus, we sunk right into the topic of how we can transmute fear into positivity. Matt is a personal development coach, and has done extensive research on what fear is and why it is so deeply present in our world. He believes that there are good fears and bad fears. A good fear is something that prevents you from making big mistakes. A bad fear is a fear that prevents you from trying something new. Bad fears are where we need to learn to transmute fear into positivity.

Hard work pays off

Joey spends time on the mic reviewing the past couple of days for himself. We had 4 podcasts to record today, one of which started at 6:00am. He didn't get to sleep until 1:30 the night before and still made it in at 4:00am to set up. This was our last podcast of the day; and we were challenging ourselves to figure out the new live stream technology and go live on facebook for the episode. Long story short it took about two and a half hours to figure out how to get a strong wifi connection and manage a back link to facebook. As you can imagine he was exhausted, but he pushed through and couldn't express enough how great he was feeling. 

Finish Strong

Matt always reminds our guardian team to "finish strong." It's a concept we have all bought into and that is the idea that it isn't about how you start something, it's about how you finish. If you haven't met Matt before, he's one of the most loving and straightforward people you will ever come to know. All he expects from us is our very best from start to finish, on whatever project we are tackling that day. He expects us to fail, but only asks that we learn and grow from our failures. Working in this environment has completely changed my life, and it's something I believe we can all learn from. 

Welcome back to the Dearing Acting Studio Teen Podcast! In this episode we have special student guests, Barbro Checkett and Riley Meyer, with our host Brian Sweeney and producer, Joey Sweeney. Barbro and Riley have two very different stories on how they found Dearing and why they are here, but they both have similar reasons for why they keep coming back!

The Trials are the Story

Barbro's dream is to be a female sportscaster. Her story is incredible, as she was home bound due to illness for most of middle school. She was outgoing, loved playing soccer, and was deeply involved in her community at school before her life took a sudden left turn. Funny enough Joey had a very similar experience going through the thick of his illness in middle school. She talks about what it was like to be isolated, feeling alone, and left out when she would see her old friends having fun without her. This experience took a toll on her and gave her the strength to do what some see as impossible now of days and get rid of all social media. This is where she found her love for watching sports, and really analyzing the game on a deeper level.

Maturing through the Program

Riley's nickname at the studio is Smiley Riley. She has been in the program for five years now and has made leaps and bounds of improvement since she started. Her journey here was learning how to become a more mature human being. She was very open to taking about her flaws in the beginning. She was not a happy person when she first started. Once she overcame that, she talks about fighting through social anxiety through our coaching. Five years is a long time, but getting to watch the growth from the dedication to craft is so amazing. 

Welcome back to the Dearing Acting Studio Podcast! Today our Guardian team had three loaded topics that we reviewed. Masterclass, Goal Rocks, and Teaching to the Person. Let's dive in and unpack these topics as we head into March.

Masterclass Intensive Scene Study 

Our Masterclass scene study intensive is one of the highest levels of mastery training offered at the Dearing Studio. Within a four day period, students perform various scenes from award winning plays receive critique by master coach and studio director, Matthew Dearing. Each scene performs twice over the course of the 4 days, with a day in between to rehearse and apply critique from day one. Matt chose to model this intensive after training with the highly coveted acting coach, Larry Moss. 

Each one of the Guardians team has performed in the Masterclass. We have all had transformative experiences as we have grown as performers and human beings. Each story is unique in the way that our struggles and demons  to light. Although our stories are varying, the outcome was the same for all of us... LIFE CHANGING. We believe in using acting as a vehicle for personal development and this class is a direct representation of that. 

The "Rock" Idea

We revisit our goal "rocks" as Matt explains how the idea originated from Gino Wickman's book, Traction. Wickman speaks about creating small but big goals that are concrete and attainable to hit quarterly. Of course, Matt being Matt encourages us as a team to take a mini field trip to the "mountain of beauty" as his daughter calls it. :) We all gathered different rocks and assigned them goals. We all connect with having a "physical" elements constantly present and reminding us of the goals we set. 

Teaching the Person

As a team, we typically will de-brief after each class to go over the celebrate the successes, but most importantly, discuss growth points and evaluate where we can grow as high-level coaches. Brian mentioned to us that his transformation happened when he was teaching the student instead of teaching the piece. Every student that walks through our doors is coached from where they are at. This means, their state of mind, their skill level, their work ethic, and of course, their willingness to grow and succeed. 

Thank you for listening to the Dearing Acting Studio Podcast. Please like, subscribe.....and have a Dearing day! :) 

In this episode of our professional development podcast we discuss the importance of seeking new clients while you are having success. Or in other words how to "Plant While You Harvest". We're excited to have special guest Tony Calvis on the mic with Brian Sweeney, Matthew Dearing, and Joey Sweeney.

Tony Calvis and the Nextiva connection to professional development

Tony Calvis is an extremely successful human being who believes in constant growth. He works with Nextiva, one of the top business communications companies in world. Nextiva's CEO, Tomas Gorny, is a visionary in the tech industry. Nextiva has been using our Professional Development Services for years. Dearing Acting Studio has partnered in Nextiva for Corporate Training, Keynote Speech Writing, Speech Coaching, Team Building and Sales Workshops. Matthew Dearing also reflects back on the early days of Dearing Acting Studio and how we first came to meet Tony. We enjoyed going down memory lane to celebrate our growth.

Other topics include casting in phoenix, video production and mastery mindset

Tony Calvis is the creative content director at Nextiva. He is also an expert in video production and video editing. Tony was brought into the studio to check out our acting classes, theater and online acting courses in order to help us find ways to continue to grow. In this podcast we go through the importance of conflict within the work environment, having a mastery mindset, casting in phoenix, production best practices, and more. We hope you enjoy this episode of the Dearing Acting Studio Professional Development Podcast where we discuss the connection between life and acting. Please Like, Subscribe, Share and have a Dearing Day!

To see the full video of this podcast go you the episode HERE on our Youtube channel.

The Power of Focus is becoming a superpower. In this episode Matthew Dearing and Joey Sweeney of Dearing Acting Studio talk about the power of protecting your time and zoning in to one thing at a time. Matthew Dearing explains these concepts in detail through his book Acting Is My Day Job: Seven Strategies to Market and Make Money as an Actor. In the book we give specific directions on how to organize your life, track your time and most importantly focus on what's important. 

Celebrate the wins in life

Matt and Joey also talk about funny moments that have helped to shape who they are today. We teach people in our acting classes and professional development courses to celebrate the wins in life. Of course you should be striving to go next level in everything you do but it's also essential to celebrate the small wins along the way. The key is to celebrate where you are, learn from past mistakes and then find ways to grow.  

Focus on the good and good things happen

This simple concept will quite literally change your life. The truth is that what you focus on will become your reality. So do yourself a favor and focus on the good no matter what the circumstance and good things will tend to follow. There are always opportunities to become better and stronger no matter where you are on your journey. A great example of this idea can be found on the Dearing Acting Studio Stories page. Here we discuss how training has impacted our student's lives outside of acting. These stories are all very inspiring and show amazing people from all walks of life finding a way to celebrate where they are while remaining focused on getting better.

To see the full live video go to this Facebook Link.