Founding Director & instructor, Actor's Workshop, Ithaca

Eliza VanCort is founder and director of The Actors’ Workshop of Ithaca. She studied the Meisner Technique in New York City, taught it in Boston and opened up her own school in her hometown of Ithaca in 2001. The Meisner technique was developed by Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse from 1935-1990. Meisner’s cutting-edge approach taught students to stop “acting” and instead connect and react honestly to their partners from moment to moment. VanCort trained Katie Spallone, who was one of the first local graduates of the Meisner program, as an instructor. Spallone now leads her own mixed-level Meisner classes.