Cynthia Ashperger

Photo of Cynthia Ashperger

Professor The Creative School School of Performance Toronto, Ontario cashperg@torontomu.ca Office: (416) 979-5000 ext. 556784

Bio/Research

Dr. Ashperger has over thirty-five years of professional experience as an actor, director, producer and playwright. She has been a core Acting teacher at the university's School of Performance since 1994 and was appointed Director of Acting Program from 2004 to 2019.

She received trainin...


Click to Expand >>

Bio/Research

Dr. Ashperger has over thirty-five years of professional experience as an actor, director, producer and playwright. She has been a core Acting teacher at the university's School of Performance since 1994 and was appointed Director of Acting Program from 2004 to 2019.

She received training in Stanislavski-based curriculum and a number of other methods as diverse as the American Method, Balinese Mask, Butoh dance and Michael Chekhov’s Acting Technique. Her teaching philosophy has developed as a hybrid of the Chekhov technique and other methods and she has disseminated the benefit of hybridization of a variety of methods in teaching in her book The Rhythm of Space and the Sound of Time: Michael Chekhov’s Acting Technique in the 21st Century (Rodopi, 2007).

In the classroom, she emphasizes investigation. She aims to help the actor find creative freedom through many-levelled acting. She encourages the desire to transform and the ability to think conceptually and abstractly. She is interested in helping students overcome their creative blocks and she researches and utilizes innovative methods within the traditional rehearsal process. She uses these methods in her directing work. She has directed forty productions and scene studies.


Click to Shrink <<

Links

Contact Research & Innovation