Caryn’s Space for Actors

FACULTY:       Caryn West       Jessica Kubzansky   

2015- 2023  “People Love us on Yelp” Recipient

CARYN WEST  

Teaching actors to avoid her youthful mistakes, to learn the current trends, to expand true art in their craft while offering integrity and genuine care to her clients, gives Caryn a higher purpose she is grateful for. 

Caryn is one of the most respected acting coaches and a consistently recommended audition coach by the industry. And she auditions! She is recurring in late 2023 in the Brie Larson helmd streaming series on Apple+TV LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY. She has many episodic TV, film, 3 Broadway shows and many top regional theater credits. She relished playing the-Maggie Smith-imitating Sonia in the  Tony winning play VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE at the prestigious Hartford Stage  ( the 2014 Connecticut Critics Circle Award winner “Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play” amidst many wonderful NYC actors, Long Wharf & Yale Rep folk who were also nominated.) Most recent guest spots: BLACKLIST, CHICAGO PD, THIS IS US, GREY’S ANATOMY directed by Chandra (“Bailey”) Wilson and on an NCIS that was the number one show on tv that week with nearly 19 million viewers. She was in the company of GOOD PEOPLE at the Geffen Playhouse and covered Holland Taylor years earlier there in THE UNEXPECTED MAN.  She was a participant in the coveted DIRECTING WORKSHOP FOR WOMEN at AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE ( her AFI short was in 20 film festivals and was Oscar eligible after a 2nd place at the Palm Springs Short Film Festival) a graduate of STANFORD UNIVERSITY ( BA in Film/Communications) and has an MFA in ACTING from TEMPLE UNIVERSITY. 

She starred as Lane in the International City Theatre Equity  production of  THE CLEAN HOUSE  by Sarah Ruhl:  “Outstanding Performance By A Lead Actress/Comedy”  For Larger Theaters 300 seats+ 2010 Award Lists StageSceneLA.com

CARYN’S PRESS AND AWARDS 

“Caryn West, an actress who is new to me, is heart-breakingly stunning as the sad, frustrated Sonia, who in Durang’s crisp, savage dialogue delivers some of the funniest and honest descriptions of despair and loneliness one may ever encounter on a stage. As an adopted sister, she may feel isolated, but the sly West brings the audience along on her character’s transition into a wickedly modern riff on a Maggie Smith discovering her “prime.”…The actress also has the audience hanging on every word in a telephone call that Sonia receives, for which we only hear one side. The audible disappointment from some audience members at a certain point in the conversation indicates how much West has enabled us to invest into her character.”– HARTFORD EXAMINER ( for Hartford stage’s VANYA & SONIA & MASHA & SPIKE)

NY TIMES “Caryn West’s deliciously dejected Sonia” ( in VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE/ Hartford Stage 2014 Connecticut Circle Critics Awards voted Caryn “Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play” amidst nominations for very fine actors in the season at Hartford Stage , Yale Rep, Long Wharf, Goodspeed Opera etc)

“Caryn West is likewise remarkable as Lane, gently growing from self-righteously officious to genuinely befuddled”  -BACKSTAGE WEST

“[Caryn] West is the most nimble interpreter of Ruhl’s challenging material. Her powerful presence and assured skills are a perfect fit for the uptight doctor…The Clean House is Lane’s journey, and happily West charts it for us with precision, intelligence and nuance.” 

“But in its latest iteration at Long Beach’s International City Theatre….the proceedings seem energized—vital and alive.  Lane, a practicing M.D. and lady of her house (an emotionally spot-on Caryn West) …a top-notch ensemble of actors, and lucid helmsmanship by desai, “The Clean House” is ready for guests.”  

Guest faculty JESSICA KUBZANSKY

SCENE STUDY CO-TEACHER 

2013 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Direction for ” RII” at  The Theatre @ Boston Court

Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle recipient of  the “Margaret Harford Award for Sustained Excellence in Theatre” as a stage director

DIRECTING BIO     LA STAGE INTERVIEW 

YOUTUBE INTERVIEW       Highly Acclaimed GLASS MENAGERIE excerpt

Jessica is the Co-Artistic Director of The Theatre @ Boston Court in Pasadena and an award-winning director working around the country at a wide variety of venues which include South Coast Rep, The Geffen Playhouse, the Pasadena Playhouse, Portland Center Stage, The Aurora, American Stage Co., The Boston Publick, and many more.

Kubzansky directs a great deal of new work,  including her own recent adaptation of RICHARD THE SECOND, “R II”  which garnered exceptional Reviews in October 2013:

•  LA Times CRITIC’S PICK: Jessica Kubzansky has adapted and directed what she’s calling “R II,” a deft distillation of the drama that begins after Richard has been taken prisoner. Performed by an adroit cast of three, Kubzansky’s version proceeds in flashbacks that are staged with laser-like precision, each scene offering another angle on this political object lesson.”  Click here to read the entire review. 

• Hollywood Reporter: “R II maintains its energy and daring throughout and reclaims the poetry and insight of the original with unstinting immediacy and clarifying forthrightness.”   Click here to read the entire review.

Other productions’ review excerpts:

“Kubzansky … has consistently mounted some of the most intelligently imagined, visceral but thoughtful productions in L.A. for the past decade…Kubzansky’s gifts are many-layered: With her loving but unflinching honesty about the vagaries of human behavior, she really cuts to the heart and brain of a play. She does this by casting great, versatile actors and challenging them, and by creating fully theatrical worlds, a step beyond or beneath mere naturalism. She marries design and impulse, the intellectual and the sensual, like few other stage directors we’ve seen.” –Rob Kendt, Editor-in-Chief, Backstage West

“Kubzansky…is one of the most sought-after directors in the region.” –Steven Leigh Morris, Theatre Editor, LA Weekly

“…Daring, inventive staging…”  –Philip Brandes, Los Angeles Times

“…extracts sensitive, nuanced performances from her excellent ensemble…”  — T.S. Kerrigan, Backstage West

“The star is Jessica Kubzansky, whose imaginative ideas and staging keep the operetta fresh…”  –Robert Nesti, The Boston Herald

“…inspired”  –Kathleen Foley, Los Angeles Times