Workshop Date: Saturday, August 6th & Sunday, August 7th, 2022
Time: 10:00am-12:00pm PDT/ 11:00am-1:00pm MDT/ 12:00pm-2:00pm CDT/ 1:00pm-3:00pm EDT
Teacher: Marjo-Riikka Makela
Location: Online via Zoom
Performer Track: $110
Participant Track (Sliding Scale): $60-$90
Learn more about our pricing structure
Please contact us with any questions
FULL SCHOLARSHIPS now available to this workshop (Participant Track ONLY) for BIPOC students! Apply HERE.
Step right up to learn all of the Michael Chekhov Technique’s “Best Kept Secrets” for on-camera acting! You’ll get individualized time with the instructor to focus solely on your nuanced, truthful, “born in the moment,” close up work with your scene partner.
This 2-day workshop is for actors interested in on-camera work, especially deepening their emotional availability and on-camera presence.
Performance Track is an opportunity to be coached on a scene with another student by Marjo-Riikka. Limit 6.
Participant Track is an opportunity to do warm-ups, observe scene work, and all other group work during class.
A basic understanding of acting technique (objective etc.) is hoped for but not required.
Meet Your Instructor
Marjo-Riikka Makela (SAG, AFTRA, AEA) is an award winning, world renowned acting coach, actor, theatre director, and intimacy director.
In August 2021 she received an honorary "IHOLLA"-award for her work in creating safe and inspiring practices as an acting coach and intimacy director/coordinator, from the prestigious Red Carpet Festival Jury, in Hyvinkaa, Finland.
Marjo-Riikka is known as the "actor whisperer" for her individualized and unique way of working with her clients. She's helped thousands of actors & directors to not only fine-tune their own craft, but also to find inspiration, overcome creative blocks, and communicate more effectively with each other. Her Los Angeles based acting school, Chekhov Studio International, has offered an artistic home, and a creative haven, for actors, directors and other fellow artists since 2009. Many well known industry professionals have either trained with her in Los Angeles, or if out of state, coached with her online.
Marjo-Riikka resides in Europe part of the year, and is a faculty member at the National Theatre Academy in Helsinki, Finland. She is also a frequent guest lecturer at Aalto University, teaching acting techniques and intimacy coordination for MFA directing students. Marjo-Riikka works with many leading industry professionals, directors and actors, coaching on set for many films and TV-series. Most recently she coached for the first HBO original series in Finland, and for a feature film directed by an Oscar award nominated Selma Vilhunen.
Marjo-Riikka has specialized in a variety of different techniques, including the Michael Chekhov Technique, Emotional regulation, Non-Violent Communication, and Intimacy Direction. Marjo-Riikka is a long-standing faculty member of the Michael Chekhov Association, and teaches at MICHA's Teacher Training Program. During her years as a teacher, she has also taught most of the Stanislavski based techniques, including Meisner Technique.
Marjo-Riikka has a BA in health care, and Equestrianism. She is always looking to widen her knowledge & skills, and lessen her ignorance, hence she keeps training herself further, constantly. Supporting diversity and inclusion and being an advocate for true equality, is important for her.
Marjo-Riikka does weekly private coaching for many successful TV and film actors and actresses*. She has coached actors for Films, and TV series such as True Blood, Madmen, West World, Billions, Unknown Soldier, Her, The Office, Silicon Valley, CSI, Californication, Mentalist, Castle, Nip Tuck, Alphas, Body of Proof, Ghost Whisperer, Entourage, How I Met your Mother, General Hospital Night Shift, Bones, Numb3rs , Deadwood, in Treatment, Manifesto, Beforeigners ... to mention a few. She has clients around the world, and she has been featured in Back Stage, the Los Angeles Times, American Theater Magazine and several major European publications.
Marjo-Riikka started her acting career as a theatre actor in Finland. In USA some of Marjo-Riikka's favorite roles as an actor include Medea in direction of David Bridel at California Repertory Company, Yelena in Uncle Vanya at the Classic Stage Company in NYC (in direction of Rachel Chavkin), and her work with Sarah Kane and Andrei Malaev-Babel at the Stanislavsky Theatre Studio in Washington DC.
Her theatre directing credits include Shakespeare, Chekhov, Schiller, and plenty of devised work.
Marjo-Riikka is an honorary member of the Stanislavsky Institute and Latin American Film Institute & School of Cinema, in Sao Paulo Brazil, and the founder and Artistic Director of Helsinki West Theatre Ensemble and Chekhov Studio International in Los Angeles. She is a faculty member at the National Theatre Academy in Finland, and has lead acting workshops for the country's leading acting repertoire companies such as at the National Theatre of Finland, and Helsinki City Theatre. She has also worked with the European Theatre Collective, Stanislavsky Institute, California State University, Acting Corps, ActorFest, Chapman University, Loyola Marymount University, The Insurgo Theater Movement, The Actor's Movement Studio (NYC), the INTAR Theater (NYC), The Actors' Gang (LA), University of Southern California, and CalArts MFA programs.