Pronouns:
She/her/hers

Website:
www.AprilSigman.com

Sandboxes played in:
Actor + Director + Intimacy Coordinator +Devisor + Educator

Degrees & Certifications: 
BFA, Musical Theatre, the University of Florida at New World School of the Art
MFA, Acting & Performance Pedagogy, California State University, Long Beach
Teacher Training Certificate, MICHA: the Michael Chekhov Association
Intimacy Directors & Coordinators (IDC) Certification - pending

Affiliations:
Screen Actors Guild- American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA)
Dramatist Guild
Michael Chekhov Association (MICHA)
Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE)
Association of Theatre Movement Educators (ATME) 
Theatre for Young Audiences USA (TYA USA)

What do you teach:
Acting (stage & screen), movement, directing, devising, clown, musical theatre, theatre for young audience

Teaching Philosophy, in a nutshell:
One size fits none!  I teach to the person in front of me by meeting them where they are at—Which can mean throwing out carefully crafted lesson plans to follow what is needed in the present moment.  Furthermore, It is my mission to change my students’ relationship to failure.  Failure is an opportunity for growth and should be celebrated!

Most memorable performance:
I have two (cheating I know, but I never was one to follow the straight and narrow path)
1. Performing my one woman show, Permed, with my family in the front row. This was the first time I publicly performed an original work I created—it was the scariest performance I have ever done.  
2. Watching a performance of Rover the Bear.  A children’s show I wrote and directed based on bedtime stories my parents told me growing up.  It was like sending my babies off into the world and was executed beautifully by cast and crew!

Most embarrassing performance moment:
Forgetting the entire monologue during the balcony scene of Romeo & Juliet!  Early in my career I performed the role of Juliet in a Shakespeare tour with a demanding schedule—we would perform up to 4 shows a day, 5 days a week!  One particularly long week, during my big moment, I stepped out onto the balcony and completely blanked. I couldn’t think of one single solitary word—It as if I had never before heard of Shakespeare, let alone performed it.  Wide eyed, I looked down at Romeo, telepathically saying “yeah, I got nothin’…help!”  Luckily, he picked up what was happening, jumped ahead and got the play back on track.  I never drop another line for the rest of the tour.

Something we wouldn’t know if you didn’t tell us:
I am profoundly dyslexic.  When I was diagnosed at the age of seven the specialist informed my parents that I would never read above a 5th grade level, I probably wouldn’t graduate from high school and college would be out of the question.  My mother and I didn’t accept this diagnosis for my future and began searching for alternative learning methods.  Through years of determination and grit (and a lot of help and encouragement from my mother) I graduated from high school, college and graduate school with honors and even taught at university theatre department’s as a faculty lecturer.   Although the scholastic struggles of my youth were grueling I wouldn’t change that experience for the world—As they are the very reason I became a voracious learner and firmly believe in innovative, individualized educational methods.