"Got The Acting Bug? Try the Intro Course Here"
Asbury Park Press

Please note that our current address is 174 Main Street (Route 35), Crystal Brook Professional Building, Eatontown, NJ 07724. This article has been modified to reflect our current address.

Quietly tucked away in [Eatontown] is one of New Jersey's "best kept secrets," a premiere acting school that consistently turns out professional working actors.

The Actors Training Institute, at [174 Main Street (Route 35), Crystal Brook Professional Building, Eatontown, NJ 07724] is the passion, the love, the life of founder and director John Eyd.

A successful actor and director who has worked in 56 professional productions in the United States and Europe, Eyd has channeled his talents and creative energy into the school for the past nine years.

A 30-year veteran of stage, film, television and radio, Eyd initially came to Red bank at the behest of a theatrical manager who believed some of her clients could benefit from Eyd's expertise. Eyd's private coaching of that handful of students planted the seeds for of the Actors Training Institute, which has grown into a respected school currently working with 70 adults and 100 children.

The institute is unique in that it offers intensive training in the three most respected acting techniques in theater today -- the teachings of Stella Adler, Sanford Meisner and Lee Strasberg, the father of method acting and founder of the world famous Actors' Studio in Manhattan. Eyd personally studied with all three masters.

Additionally, the institute's curriculum includes training in radio and TV voice-over techniques, and business-of-the-business techniques for dealing with managers, agents and casting personnel. Training is done on microphone and camera.

"Of the myriads of people I've auditioned as a director over the years, I've assumed 75 percent will never work," Eyd notes. "I want my people to run in the other 25 percent."

Eyd has turned down numerous professional acting and directing opportunities over the past nine years in order to commit himself full time to the school, which brings him a deep sense of personal satisfaction.

The Actors Training Institute offers children's programs for ages 6 to 15. Adult programs are for those 16 and up.

No experience is required to take the institute's beginning seminar, but Eyd is unwavering in his belief that only those students with a demonstrated ability, interest and commitment should move beyond that level.

"We find out real fast who the dedicated ones are," he notes. "I try to be honest with people about their future."

The institute's beginning workshop runs 40 hours over 16 weeks. the intermediate class is 60 hours over 24 weeks.

Its highest level program, the master class in which students work extensively with the challenging Strasberg method -- based on the premise that acting is the reproduction of reality, based on acute observation of the world and drawing on the deep, personal wellspring of genuine emotion -- is of open and unlimited duration.

Once students achieve that level of expertise, Eyd notes, they are considered members of the institution for life. Eyd estimates about 20 percent of his students make it to the master level. Of those, about half will achieve professional success in the arts, accumulating roles and making money in theater and TV productions and radio and television commercials.

"It's not about bring the star," Eyd notes. "It's about working. Stars fade. Working actors keep working."

Among the institute's more prominent success stories is 10-year-old Evan Jay Newman, who is currently appearing in Broadway's "Les Miserables."

Another institute graduate, 19-year-old alison Siegal, is appearing in the off-Broadway musical "Kerouac."

Two seasons ago, 13-year-old Brett Barsky starred in the Oscar-winning Short Subject film "Trevor," and Marilyn Ghilgliotti had a starring role in the crtically-acclaimed film "Clerks."

Other legitimate productions in which ATI students have appeared include the movies "When Harry Met Sally," "Casino," "Cadillac Man," and "The Juror," the TV shows "All My Children, "General Hospital," "NYPD Blue," "Murder She Wrote," "New York Undercover," and "Saturday Night Live," and the theatrical productions "Beauty and the Beast," "A Christmas Carol," and "Pump Boys and Dinettes."

New classes being regularly. Eyd continually interviews prospective students, and will launch a new session once he has accumulated a group of 10 students.

For more information, call ATI at (732) 578-0055.