Behind the Scenes Class

Meet our Guest Lecturer:
ALEXIS BLACK (she/her) received her MFA in Theatre Performance Pedagogy with an emphasis in Movement from Virginia Commonwealth University. She is an educator, fight, movement and intimacy director, performer, and director.

As a movement specialist, Alexis is a certified Intimacy Director with Intimacy Directors and Coordinators, is a certified teacher in the Michael Chekhov Physical Acting Technique, and has a level one certification in the Margolis Method. She has trained with PUSH Physical Theatre and Anne Bogart’s SITI Company, and is a member of the Society of American Fight Directors, The Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, and the Association of Theatre Movement Educators.

As a fight and movement director she has choreographed in NYC, Europe, South Korea, and regionally in the US.  In NYC she has choreographed for the NY Fringe, Off-Off Broadway, and Off Broadway. Broadway credits include Fool for Love on Broadway, starring Sam Rockwell and Nina Arianda, and Macbeth, starring Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga.  Regional credits include Rattlesnake Kate at the Denver Center and Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC.  In Michigan she has served as resident fight and intimacy director for 5 seasons at Hope Repertory Theatre, and has worked with The Purple Rose Theatre, Detroit Repertory Theatre, Tipping Point Theatre, Flint Repertory Theatre and Williamston Theatre.  

As a professional actor and member of the Actors’ Equity Association, she has worked with regional theaters, on international tours and in numerous shows in NYC. Favorite credits include productions with The Dorset Theater Festival, The Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company and touring Europe in several shows with American Globe Theatre and TNT-Britain. 

Alexis has led intimacy for the stage and staged violence workshops at universities across the U.S., and co-authored Supporting Staged Intimacy: A Practical Guide for Theatre Creatives, Managers and Crew for Routledge Publications (2022).  She has explored the powerful combination of Meisner and Chekhov for years in the acting classroom, and wrote about it in the Routledge publication, Michael Chekhov and Sanford Meisner: Collisions and Convergence in Actor Training, and has studied ways to support neurodiversity in the classroom through ongoing research and a publication titled “Acting without Imagery: Aphantasia in the Theatre Classroom” included in the Routledge 2021 Publication Inclusivity and Equality in Performance Training.  

More information can be found at www.alexisblack.net.