Piero Dusa
(SAG, AEA, AFTRA, SSDC)
Introduction
Since 1985, Piero Dusa has been one of the most sought after creative coaches and private client media consultants in the entertainment business.
Background
Born in Sicily, Piero spent his formative years in Venice, Italy, painting
Piero Dusa painting in Venice 1976
while surrounded by the masterworks of the great artists of the Renaissance. Piero sought to integrate this formal background into a new artistic venture by moving to New York City in 1978, and thus began a lifelong focus on the modern visual art, film.
First, Piero completed the Meisner Technique
with Meisner’s assistant William Alderson
and was selected by Sanford Meisner
Piero Dusa & Sanford Meisner himself to be among the 16 charter students to train with him in The West Indies, at his island home in Bequia. Following this, he studied under Stella Adler
, and then completed his acting training in the Stanislavsky System - the very foundation of all modern naturalistic acting. Dusa rounded out his professional schooling by getting behind the camera and studying film production at the NYU Film School.
In 1985, Dusa founded The Piero Dusa Acting Studio & Duality Playhouse in New York City. In 1987, he founded The New York Italian Theatre Company, a non-profit dedicated to producing works of Italian and Italian-American playwrights in both Italian and English. In addition, Dusa's strong desire to be of service and to give-back to the community manifested itself in volunteer work at Covenant House, a shelter for teen runaways. One natural extension of these collective endeavors was the establishment of the STAR Teen Theatre Company
, now known as NiteStar, with Dr. Cydelle Berlin. Originally based at Mt. Sinai Hospital Health Center in New York City, the STAR Theatre Company employed teenage actors and today, as NiteStar, it has risen to a national level as one of the country's leading educational theatres and social awareness mediums through the arts for teens. In 1996, Piero moved to Los Angeles and started the Piero Dusa Acting Conservatory and Promenade Playhouse.
Throughout his twenty-four years of studying and training actors, Dusa learned that there is only one hard and fast rule about the craft: no two people learn or act in the same way. He concluded that most people, especially artists, have unique styles of learning and varying ways of communicating and expressing their creativity. He believes that, by acknowledging and accepting these different styles, we learn to nurture society’s diversity. We allow the individual to manifest their talent at its highest level, and THAT benefits us all.
Educational Workshop Development
Accessing a new creative vision, in 1998, Dusa adapted a new scientific system, different from the traditional techniques that had dominated acting in the past century. This intriguing scientific system called the Herrmann International Brain Dominance Model (the “Model”), is a corporate tool designed to be used in the hiring and placement of employees where their particular personal “preference” of styles and skills are best utilized within the company. This model sets forth four quadrants of an individual employee’s “preferences” and decision-making processes: emotional, interpersonal (Red); logical, analytical (Blue); organized, detailed (Green); and intuitive, artistic (Yellow). The Herrmann Model is still used regularly throughout the world by major corporations (including MTV, HBO, Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase, etc.) to improve communication and productivity.
Mr. Dusa recognized the potential of applying this new Model to the actor's craft and created a workshop to synthesize the theory and its real-world application. Upon seeing how much the system improved his students’ character development and performance, it occurred to him that the same system will have an important application in the creation of the actor’s primary material – the script, and he rapidly developed a workshop designed specifically for writers. In 2002, he collaborated with Syd Field, to create an introductory workshop for writers. Then, in 2006, Dusa created an entirely new collection of acting and writing workshops incorporating more of his own teaching style and experience.
Professional Affiliations and Credits
Piero is a member of SAG, AFTRA, AEA and SSDC. During the past 24 years, he directed, at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre (Taper Two), the premier production of the trilogy Fixations: “Dead by Morning”, “The Biz” and “Speechless in Seattle”, written by award-winning writer Thom Thomas. Other directorial credits include: “The Three Sisters”, by Chekov; “We Won't Pay-We Won't Pay”, by Dario Fo; “The Dreamer Examines His Pillow”, “The Italian-American Reconciliation and Savage in Limbo”, by John Patrick Shanley; “Oh Hell”, by David Mamet and “How To Go Out on a Date in Queens”, by Richard Vetere. With his former business partner, he co-wrote and directed “Margarita's Birthday Wish” at the Edinburgh International Theatre Festival in Scotland. Piero is also an accomplished screenwriter. He co-wrote the shorts: “Dark Room” and “All Grown Up”; the features: “The Return”, which won first place in the Hollywood Film Festival Screenwriting Discovery Awards in 2001, “Revenge Play”, and the sitcoms “Acting Strange” and “The Least You Could Do”. He also co-wrote and directed the short film, "No Promises
Piero on location with his student Peter Simon of the movie No Promises ©Chris Priga
".
In 2006, Piero Dusa experienced a personal, physical
September 2006 Chunky Piero 227 lbs. September 2009 163 lbs.
and artistic transformation, the culmination of which was a new spiritual awareness and a renewed focus on "being of service." This awakening led to the creation of the Dusa 16 Levels of Acting, as well as a new collection of workshops and projects: Actors Preference℠, Actors Expression℠, Destructive Preference℠, Writers Preference℠, Attorneys Preference℠ and Spiritual Preference℠. At the moment, Dusa is developing a futuristic trilogy & comic book with producing partner Thor Alexander.
Piero Dusa would like to thank and give credit to all those who played key roles in both his professional and personal development including: Salvador Dalí, Andy Warhol, Giorgio di Sant'Angelo, Kenneth J. Lane and all of the other colorful characters from Studio 54. Many people have touched his life, and while it is not always easy to determine whether some people and experiences were for the better, each one is, nevertheless, an important part of the tapestry, and he is grateful to each for helping him become the person he is today.
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