Rachael Adler is the founder and a faculty member of Studio Magnetic. Rachael's influence has been far-reaching, expanding through her students into many aspects of the entertainment industry. Born into a family of professional artists, Rachael's immersion and involvement in the arts began upon birth. At Wesleyan University, Rachael received a degree in film. When she graduated, believing that directing documentaries was to be her future, she went to work with the cinema verite filmmakers David & Albert Maysles in New York. At that time, Rachael also began her professional acting training with Larry Moss in New York. He recommended she enter The Neighborhood Playhouse to study with Sanford Meisner. Both these teachers were to become enormous influences on Rachael's acting and teaching style. While going on to study with other influential teachers in the US, Rachael found that throughout her studies, her fellow students consistently turned to her for guidance and coaching on their professional roles and auditions. During this time, Rachael found she had an an innate sense of how to bring about deeply truthful, rich and compelling work in actors in ways that brought them further professional recognition and success. From her loft in NY, Rachael coached her colleagues on their roles and auditions for free. To a person, everyone Rachael coached landed the professional jobs they sought. These jobs included roles on- and off-Broadway; in films and in television. In 1988, on vacation to visit family in California, Rachael began studying meditation. It was through her daily practice that Rachael was guided to begin a professional teaching career. Within one week she had a dozen students. While Rachael enjoyed great commercial success as an actress and model, she discovered her strong desire lay within her consistent ability to inspire truthful and imaginative work in her students, as well as to articulate and impart meaningful direction to actors, and serious students of acting. It is these gifts coupled with her passionate need for truthful, resonant, and serious acting work, that have fueled her success as a teacher, director, mentor, and producer. In 1999, Rachael returned to the Neighborhood Playhouse as one of three people chosen to participate in the Meisner Technique Teacher Training Program. Upon her return to the Bay Area, Rachael founded the Steinberg Studio and Magnetic Theatre Company in her loft in San Francisco. For the past two decades, Rachael has taught, produced, and/or directed at her own studios. These have included Studio Magnetic, Adler Studio, Steinberg Studio, the American Conservatory Theatre (A.C.T.), as well as other colleges and high schools. In 2008, Rachael began travelling to Europe to teach Master Classes, working with a former graduate of her program, himself a professional actor and acting teacher in NY and Spain. Rachael lives with her family in Marin County, CA, and enjoys cross-country running and training for triathlons in her spare time. Jeff Crockett has been a teacher of breath, movement, and voice for over 20 years. He as been the primary voice teacher at the American Conservatory Theatre's (ACT) MFA program since 1995, and has taught in various acting training programs such as the Accademia Nazionale di Arte Drammatica Silvio d'Amico in Rome; Prima del Teatro in San Miniato, Italy; The Guildhall School of Music and drama in London; The Chautauqua Theatre Conservatory in Chautauqua, New York. He has coached professional actors at ACT; Theater de la Jeune Lune; California Shakespeare Theater; Word For Word. He trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, and is a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique and Middendorf Breathwork.   Matthew Graham Smith is the founder and Artistic Director of Precarious Theatre, San Francisco’s critically acclaimed ensemble theatre company. He is a core member of the Dell’arte company, a group focusing on classical and emerging physical theater forms. He has directed at the Walnut Theater in Philadelphia and the HERE American Living Room series in New York City. In San Francisco he has directed at the Yerba Buena Garden’s Festival, Bay Area Playwright’s Festival, the A.C.T.’s Masters program, where he is an instructor, Aurora Theatre, The EXIT Theatre, Playground, Berkeley Playhouse, Thick House, and New Conservatory Theatre, where his Kiss of the Spiderwoman was nominated for Best Overall Drama 2006 by the Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. He will be directing #5 Angry Red Drum, a world premiere by Philip Gotanda this fall, as well as other productions for Brava and Precarious Theatre. An accomplished educator, Graham has taught at A.C.T.’s Master of Fine Arts program & Summer Training Congress in San Francisco, Assumption University in Bangkok, and the Barcelona Meisner Program in Barcelona, Spain (www.meisner.es). His teaching incorporates principals from many different physical disciplines and traditions from around the world in the service of training a dynamic physical actor. Javier Galitó-Cava After studying with several acting teachers and coaches in San Francisco and Los Angeles, Javier studied the Full Meisner Technique Program with Rachael Adler. One year after graduating from the program, Javier was apprenticed by Rachael, (with blessings from the Neighborhood Playhouse to do so), to teach the Meisner Technique. He opened his acting studio in Europe and met overwhelming success, currently accepting forty new students every year. Residing in New York, Javier works both in United States and in Europe. Although Javier has taught exclusively in Europe, giving priority to his acting career in the States, he has generously agreed to teach U.S. workshops exclusively through Studio Magnetic's program. Lisa Anne Porter is a designated Linklater voice instructor, an acting, voice, dialect and text professor and a professional actress and director.  Lisa teaches in the MFA program at the American Conservatory Theatre and the BFA and MFA programs at UC Davis and the Academy of Art University. She was an associate professor in the BFA program at Syracuse University for six years. She has also taught master classes in voice, dialect, Shakespeare and text in the ACT Summer Training Congress and the Studio program, at San Francisco State University, Shakespeare & Company, The Tepper Center in NYC, Naropa University, California Shakespeare Festival, and Berkeley Repertory Theatre. She has coached voice and dialect in over forty productions. She has performed with numerous repertory companies and Shakespeare festivals throughout the country including the American Conservatory Theatre, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, California Shakespeare Festival, Shakespeare/Santa Cruz, Shakespeare Festival/LA, Marin Theatre Company, Shakespeare & Company, Syracuse Stage, Sacramento Theatre Company, GeVa Theatre Company, the Magic Theatre, Interact Theatre Company, the Bay Area Playwright’s Festival and Boston Theatreworks.  She has a B.A. in Theatre and American Studies from Wesleyan University and an M.F.A. from the American Conservatory Theatre.