About the Play:

HARD TO FIND BOOK, only a very limited number of copies are still available.

Bad Acting Teachers is a full-length comedic drama by Sky Gilbert. We've all had them – those controlling educators who turn students into victims. Determined that they know what's right, these teachers see their charges as insignificant novices who can only learn by being subjugated to their will. Sky Gilbert has assembled a trio of these instructors from hell in Bad Acting Teachers.

Bad Acting Teachers follows a fresh-faced young actor in search of good training. He visits three teachers who advertise private acting lessons – a washed-up B-Movie actor, a New Age woman, and a a flirtatious gay agent. Seeing each of the teachers separately, he reels from one horrific, abusive experience to another and is progressively assaulted, insulted, and molested. Not since Ionesco's The Lesson has being a student been quite so fraught with terror. Three very funny vignettes about three bad acting teachers, this cunningly savage satire turns into an outrageous nightmare about the sadism and humiliation that so often accompany power.

Bad Acting Teachers premiered in 2006 by The Cabaret Company at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in Toronto.

Cast: 1 female, 3 male

What people say:

"...the best sustained feat of comic writing, acting and direction to appear in Toronto in ages." — National Post

"Gilbert... has turned his attention to the teaching profession and the host of neuroses-plagued misfits and losers who inhabit it. His protagonist is the archetypical young actor eager to find his artistic muse ... who must endure a succession of incompetent and unbalanced acting teachers, each with their own peccadilloes and agendas." — Toronto Star

About the Playwright:

Sky Gilbert is a Canadian teacher, writer, director, filmmaker, and he was co-founder and artistic director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (North America's largest gay and lesbian theatre company) for 18 years. He has had nearly 40 plays produced and written six critically acclaimed novels and three award-winning poetry collections. Since 1997, he has worked at The School of English and Theatre Studies at Guelph University where he is now a Professor.