Guest Artist Series
Sarah Victoria
Actress, Director, and Master Instructor of PEM, Perdekamp Emotional Method
In Conversation with Welker White
Thursday, November 21, 2024 – 7:00pm
ART/New York, 520 8th Avenue, 3rd Floor, Bruce Mitchell Room
Sarah Victoria, Australia-based master instructor of PEM, the Perdekamp Emotional Method, joins actress and teacher Welker White and members of The Actors Center’s Resident Company on Thursday, November 21, 2024 at 7:00pm for an evening of conversation exploring our understanding of authentic emotion, reframing its role in acting and actor training, and supporting the emotional intelligence, health, and wellbeing of actors.
The conversation will be followed by discussion and Q&A and will take place at ART/New York, 520 8th Avenue, 3rd Floor, in the Bruce Mitchell Room.
Sarah Victoria has been leading PEM masterclasses at drama universities worldwide for the past 20 years, offering an approach to physically accessing authentic emotion. The method, developed by Stephen Perdekamp, is designed to allow actors to come in and out of intense emotional states quickly, safely, and repeatably without needing to refer to traumatic memories or personal story. Working with six primary emotions, actors can quickly transition through them or combine them to cultivate complexity, depth, and nuance in their work.
Beyond the stage and screen, this holistic approach helps to reframe one’s understanding of emotions to not only refine artistic skills, but manage auditions, stage-fright, expand emotional range, and improve wellbeing. PEM is now scientifically researched in its use for treating Substance Use Disorder and other conditions that stem from imbalances of the nervous system.
Sarah has taught at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, SMU-Southern Methodist University, University of California, Irvine, the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney, the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in Perth, Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, the National School of Drama in Delhi, the University of Johannesburg, and Babes-Bolyai-University in Romania.
An actress and director, Sarah trained directly with Stephan Perdekamp, who developed PEM after observing how actors suffered from accessing emotions through traumatic, unhealthy, personal stories and experiences. She wrote her master thesis about PEM in 2004. She is on the board of directors of the PEM Center Hamburg as well as an actor in the PEM Ensemble Hamburg and the PEM International Ensemble.
As Head of PEM International she has been leading workshops in the US, UK, South Africa, India, New Zealand, Japan, Russia and Europe. She is currently based in Melbourne, Australia where she is CEO of the Australian company Kalliso.
Hosting Sarah in conversation is actor, educator, and company member Welker White. On film, Welker has worked on several films with Martin Scorsese including The Irishman (opposite Al Pacino) and Goodfellas. Other notable films include Dead Poets Society, Nora Ephron’s This Is My Life, HBO’s Emmy-winning Bad Education, Radha Blank’s The 40-Year-Old Version. Welker recently completed filming Outcome opposite Keanu Reeves. Welker has has performed on and off-Broadway and in regional theaters across the U.S. and abroad, most recently completing a tour in Rome and the U.S. of Flannery O’Connor’s Everything That Rises Must Converge.
As a teacher, Welker served on the acting faculty at Brooklyn College for 18 years. With her company The Moving Frame, Welker brings screen acting intensives to programs across the U.S. and abroad, including: NYU Grad Acting, SMU BFA/MFA Acting, FSU/Asolo, Brown/Trinity, ACT, Atlantic Acting School, Emerson MFA Film, University of Iowa MFA Acting, Bowdoin College, Columbia University MFA, and private studios in Seoul, Berlin, Melbourne, and many others. Welker has several published pieces on screen acting, has presented at numerous conferences, is on the faculty of the National Alliance of Acting Teachers’ Teacher Development program, and is a proud recipient of a Fulbright Specialist designation for her innovations in the teaching of screen acting. Welker attended NYU Tisch BFA Acting, holds a BS in Theater Studies from CUNY (summa cum laude) and and an MFA in directing from Brooklyn College.