The TKS Faculty have named our Notable Students of the Season! I’d like to officially announce and congratulate TKActors: Kylie Esco, Luke Harger, Jasmine Liu, Samantha Lore, Eli Oakes, Hannah Schmitt, David Knott, Alma Maria Arias, Daniel Davidson, and David Ansu on being selected as the Notable Students for Summer 2024.
These 8 students are truly inspiring – meeting the moment with enthusiasm, courage and playful curiosity. They embody what it means to be “committed to excellence.” After notifying these students of their nominations, we asked them to share some insights on their time at TK Studio with the following prompts:
How has your training here at TKS supported your understanding and pursuit of artistic excellence?
Describe a moment in your training journey that you recall as having had a clear and lasting impact on you?
What does being a part of the TKS community mean to you?
Let’s celebrate these exceptional students and send them lots of love and congratulations. We are so lucky to have them and all of you as integral members of our TKS Community!
Kylie Esco
Summer Intensive Student
How has your training here at TKS supported your understanding and pursuit of artistic excellence?
The passion and dedication displayed by the teaching staff and faculty have been a major source of inspiration. It’s clear how strongly the teachers believe in what they’re imparting on us as students. Every educator I’ve come across at TKS has created a safe space in which I’ve felt comfortable exploring who I am as an artist.
Describe a moment in your training journey that you recall as having had a clear and lasting impact on you?
I’ve been staring at this question for almost an hour (honestly longer than that but I’d bet you would think I was exaggerating). There have been so many impactful moments! Every time I have the opportunity to watch a classmate make some sort of breakthrough in their work. It’s happened with every one of them! It’s very cool to witness.
What does being a part of the TKS community mean to you?
Ugh. I can’t even tell you! And I’m going to say this poorly: I’ve met some of the greatest, kindest, most authentically encouraging and supportive people I could have ever imagined having the pleasure of knowing. I simply love it here. How can I phrase that differently?!
Luke Harger
Summer Intensive Student
How has your training here at TKS supported your understanding and pursuit of artistic excellence?
My training here has shown me that to achieve excellence, you have to work with sincerity. Checking the boxes won’t work– but filling your work with your unique artistic perspective, hunting for that missing piece that lights you up? That’s much more in line with the kind of actor I want to be.
Describe a moment in your training journey that you recall as having had a clear and lasting impact on you?
“You have to be willing to get your heart broken.” My journey at TKS showed me that my sensitivity is my superpower. By taking the risk to include more of myself in my work, I discovered a part of my artistic identity I didn’t know was there. It’s a thrill I’ll be chasing for the rest of my life.
What does being a part of the TKS community mean to you?
Being a part of this community has shown me that to grow as artists, we need each other. My classmates’ breakthroughs showed me the path to find my own. We all go so much farther if we go together– and I’m honored to take this ride with actors who show up for each other in the biggest, boldest ways.
Jasmine Liu
Summer Intensive Student
How has your training here at TKS supported your understanding and pursuit of artistic excellence?
Training at TKS has given me the confidence to pursue this craft more seriously. Despite working as an actor before coming here, I had a lot of doubt about my acting abilities and believed that I was born with a less ideal emotional range. (It sounds silly to admit that!) The training here has taught me that I am, in fact, enough of a human being, and I can learn the skills to be the best actor I can be. All of the classes I’ve taken over the summer have been instrumental in changing my perspective on myself. Acting classes got me to really reflect on things that motivate me and set my heart on fire. Voice, movement, and Alexander technique helped me to understand and embrace my physical instrument. Clown awoke my inner child and helped me to be my most spontaneous self. I’m still getting things wrong most of the time, and there are moments where self doubt creeps in, but overall I feel optimistic about my future as an actor and am excited to continue training here in the fall.Describe a moment in your training journey that you recall as having had a clear and lasting impact on you?I vividly recall the first time I had a physical and emotional reaction to my partner in a repetition exercise. I’ve often struggled to be vulnerable in my work, and I was experiencing just that in class that day. I stood at the door, awkwardly repeating my scene partner’s words (“you’re being a bother”) but not taking them personally. Terry saw that my guard was up and called out, “She says you’re being a bother! How does it feel to be a bother?”. Something in me snapped almost immediately. It felt like someone had kicked me in the gut and unleashed a tidal wave of hurt and rage. I honestly cannot remember the last time I allowed myself to express such big emotions, and I just felt like wow, so this is how it feels to be connected to your heart. Being human is so messy but also so exhilarating and wonderful, and I love that we get to experience that in our work!What does being a part of the TKS community mean to you?Being a part of the TKS community means I’m in the company of passionate, dedicated artists who all want one another to succeed. It’s being in a playground where taking big swings is encouraged, and failure is embraced as a healthy and necessary part of the learning process. It’s being able to openly geek out about the arts and having your enthusiasm reciprocated or doubled. I love the community, and I love being challenged and supported by the people at TKS every day I’m here.
Samantha Lore
Summer Intensive Student
How has your training here at TKS supported your understanding and pursuit of artistic excellence?TKS showed me how to embrace my humanity within the process of learning. Excellence comes from a constant curiosity of people and in your own behavior.Describe a moment in your training journey that you recall as having had a clear and lasting impact on you?I had a moment in class where I was doing an activity and I couldn’t stop laughing while I was trying to fix this shoe. Terry told me you aren’t dealing with your partner which is telling me you aren’t as invested in your meaning. I realized that my steadfast desires that I’ve been mulling over for the past 5 years were changing. I could feel from this activity that I was becoming a new person with new wants. This program has helped me reconnect to my dreams.
What does being a part of the TKS community mean to you?
It means that I now have people who speak my language.
Eli Oakes
Summer Intensive Student
How has your training here at TKS supported your understanding and pursuit of artistic excellence?
TKS exposed me to a technique that has widened my understanding and ignited my pursuit of artistic excellence. It has given me the foundational skillset necessary to strive in developing and mastering my craft. This is just the beginning and I can’t wait to continue the journey!
Describe a moment in your training journey that you recall as having had a clear and lasting impact on you?
In the middle of our summer intensive, we were asked to complete the $250,000 Project – through this activity I was able to touch genuine emotions and reach a level of vulnerability that was uncomfortable and challenging. This activity helped me realize the importance of “taking in a moment” and “soaking up reality.” It reminded me of how authenticity creates meaningfulness, persuasion and trust. Being able to find that within as an actor and apply it to whoever / whatever you are portraying is a powerful gift. Being able to touch true emotion and connect to my craft brought a moment of clarity and created a lasting impact for which I am very thankful.
What does being a part of the TKS community mean to you?
Being a part of the TKS Community means I have a home – one that is full of like-minded, inspired, passionate, creative risk takers and storytellers. I like it here…I want to keep coming home.
Hannah Schmitt
2-Year Conservatory Student
How has your training here at TKS supported your understanding and pursuit of artistic excellence?
Training at TKS has shown me that artistic excellence isn’t just fleeting, lightning in a bottle that you sit around and hope for. Through imagination, creativity, and hard work it’s repeatable and reliable. I feel more empowered through my training at TKS. If I put in good work beforehand, I usually do good work in class. I’ve also reframed my relationship to failure and negative emotions. No matter what happens in class I’m going to learn something, and I’m going to experience something.Describe a moment in your training journey that you recall as having had a clear and lasting impact on you?
Pretty early on in our work with the expanded activity I brought in humiliation as a temperament. It was terrifying to work on, I was exploring a part of myself that I like to keep hidden away. After I did the activity though, I felt excited and proud, and like nothing was too hard, too vulnerable, or too revealing to explore. Every time I bring a secret piece of myself into class and explore it, it’s met with support and curiosity. Doing humiliation in a raw and nerve-wracking way showed me that I can do hard things and come out the other end unscathed.
What does being a part of the TKS community mean to you?
Being part of the TKS community means I’m surrounded by people who are willing to engage creatively. Anytime I need to workshop ideas for class, or get inspiration, have people who I can reach out to. And everyone is excited to talk about the work with you. It’s like a positive feedback loop of creativity, with everyone’s input feeding each other’s artistry and their own.
David Knott
2-Year Conservatory Student
How has your training here at TKS supported your understanding and pursuit of artistic excellence?In childhood, my sense of imagination was crushed. As a young adult, I leaned into a pragmatic, technical worldview that helped me get by, but felt lacking in true artistry. My sense of artistic excellence has been expanded and deepened in ways that have surprised and enamored me. Through this training, I have become more of the embodied man and artist I had intellectually longed to become. The intensity of training in the conservatory program has facilitated my development as an actor in ways I could not have anticipated. In particular, the variety, uniqueness, and complementary nature of the voice, movement, alexander technique, and clown classes have interwoven to lead me down a path of artistic excellence.Describe a moment in your training journey that you recall as having had a clear and lasting impact on you?For one of our clown classes I did an improvised one-person show in which I was able to share formative snapshots of my life in a way that really landed with my classmates. I saw, before my eyes, the emotional impact my story had on them. As someone who has struggled to communicate the richness of my lived experience and history with others, this experience was extremely meaningful to me.
Alma Arias
2-Year Conservatory Student
How has your training here at TKS supported your understanding and pursuit of artistic excellence?
Artistic Excellence is actually pretty messy. It requires your total surrender and it pushes you to an almost certain ego death; a total rattling of the cage. However, I absolutely believe all those trials to be in total service and benefit of your spiritual-creative evolution… and I have to say, I’m pretty hooked now!Describe a moment in your training journey that you recall as having had a clear and lasting impact on you?
The moment when I heard Terry say: “Stop Worshipping at the Temple of Your Feelings” was when it hit me. It was kind of revelatory, however hard it was for me to hear and accept. Here I was, swimming in a rip tide of “feelings” most of my life, never quite knowing what to do with them. But because this art form “doesn’t pull any punches,” I immediately began to get curious and find ways to alchemize those emotions into thoughtful and creative “Doing” (even if like 90 percent of the time they were failed attempts). Oh, and! Another quote: “You want to be SO GOOD that they will HAVE to cast you.”
What does being a part of the TKS community mean to you?
Being part of TKS means I have a sanctuary where I can bravely come undone without any judgement, and where I can be seen at my most vulnerable during those emotionally intense moments.
Daniel Davidson
NextGen High School Program Student
How has your training here at TKS supported your understanding and pursuit of artistic excellence?
I’m not going to define excellence here. Everyone will have a different opinion on what it is and what it means to achieve it. However, I will share one thing that TKS taught me is necessary for achieving it. You cannot be excellent without being you. Anyone can read a script. Anyone can say they’re an actor. But the thing that really makes you an actor is being truthful. Being open. Being honest. Being you. If you can just be you, you’re on the right track.
Describe a moment in your training journey that you recall as having had a clear and lasting impact on you?
The program as a whole was genuinely one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had, it’s hard to just name one part of it. If I had to, I’d say the final share. The climax of the program. Getting to show our families what we learned and what we worked on over those two weeks, and knowing that it all paid off. I’ve been in many a school musical, but this share felt different. I didn’t feel like I was playing a character. I wasn’t a character. I was me. Even when we were actually doing characters in Clown, it was a character I created. No one else could have done it the same. I was me. And everyone liked me. I cried after the share. I’m tearing up writing this. I still can’t believe it’s over. Every single part of this program was so amazing and special. I’m so lucky to have been a part of it. I’ll never forget it.
What does being a part of the TKS community mean to you?
The community was one of the best parts of being at TKS. The staff and faculty are absolutely amazing, literally every single damn one of them. They are so kind and so supportive, and if I was to list out every single person and why they’re so great, this paragraph would become an essay. Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of them. And then there’s the student group. Our group could have been terrible. We could have all hated each other, and honestly the odds weren’t really in our favor. But we didn’t hate each other. In fact, we made an incredible team. We all worked together really great and we got along amazingly well. I don’t want it to be over. I’m still in denial about it. I miss them all already. Yurt!
iavid Ansu
NextGen High School Program Student
How has your training here at TKS supported your understanding and pursuit of artistic excellence?
Training at TKS has supported my understanding and pursuit of artistic excellence by instilling in me that “acting is living truthfully under imaginary circumstances” (Meisner). Also, “What an actor does is not dependent on oneself” but more so on an actor’s peers/cast members. “You don’t do anything except what they make you do!”Describe a moment in your training journey that you recall as having had a clear and lasting impact on you?
A moment in my training journey that has had a lasting impact on me was acting with Celestine. Through repetitions, which I was not used to, over time I was more fluent and natural with my responses (I was living in the moment) and more perceptive of how someone else is feeling based on their body movements and tone of voice. This helped me become a better actor by allowing me to be more creative and not so monotone. I feel my emotions more when I’m being truthful in an imaginary circumstance. I may or may not have actually been through it, but I feel as though I have.
What does being a part of the TKS community mean to you?
Being a part of the TKS community means being given a legendary, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. This community allows the next generation of actors to gain experience and knowledge. We are learning key elements of performance, and the cement structure of a good actor. I am learning things that famous actors may not have learned until later in their careers. Being able to live truthfully and be ourselves while also telling a story that’s human and relatable, allowing people to feel and understand.
