“Atlantic pushes actors to places beyond the limits of their imaginations, and empowers them to set a standard for their work that is world-class.”

About halfway through my senior year of high school, after every college and grant application deadline, both of which I confidently passed on, I remember touching base with my academic mentor at the time, my choir teacher. She was wondering what life looked like for me after high school, to which I replied with a half-cooked response along the lines of: “I don’t know, probably attend some community college and audition on the weekends.” “You want to be an actor?” She asked. “Yes,” I answered. “Then go out and be an actor. Be the most prepared and most disciplined person in line at auditions.” Surely she wasn’t suggesting I attend acting school? How preposterous would that be! At the time, anything other than a college education seemed more like a post-lunch STEM class daydream than anything realistic. 

After a few months of diligent research, I realized not only how unique and nuanced the New York acting school scene was, but also, so simply, how acting is something you can  seek training for, in so many different ways.

I auditioned via Zoom from one of my high school’s conference rooms; in February of 2020, weeks before my eighteenth birthday, I flew across the country to New York to visit the different schools, to become more familiar with their techniques and beliefs about acting.

Walking in and out of each school, I respected each of their methodologies, but when I visited Atlantic, their technique just made sense; it was so obvious. I thought, of course.

Talking with the admissions director, I fell in love with the simplicity of the approach, how it offered a universally applicable formula that allowed me to be specific and authentic while taking the guesswork out of script analysis, a concept that seemed so mystical at the time. The second I left the Google building, I called my parents; I’d made up my mind. 

In August 2020, a time when the entire world was on hiatus, I flew across the country, alone, to begin the rest of my life. Though I was quite a bit younger than my cohort, the rigor and discipline required for a conservatory training ultimately meant my age and experience was irrelevant; we all just came to work. After learning the fundamentals in my first year, it was time for me to take the incredibly thorough instruction I received and apply it to longer, more subtextual scenes. High school Charlie would have never imagined just how much life and history brews beneath the surface of well-written dramatic texts, and how harnessing that history leads to impulsive and authentic action on stage or screen.

Atlantic pushes actors to places beyond the limits of their imaginations, and empowers them to set a standard for their work that is world-class.

My final semester of Conservatory ditched the “training” and put us all to work. We were provided an off-Broadway-sized theater and all the means and support necessary to produce a play. We cast, directed, scored, staged, blocked, acted, and set-designed a classic story, Little Women, reimagined by Kate Hamill. In this period of my life, partially thanks to the moment-to-moment work I learned at school, I was exploring and experimenting the incorporation of sound and music into my larger artistic practice. I had started an improvisational band with a friend of mine named after my Moment Lab class, and thanks to my growing love and dedication to music-making, my peers trusted me to conduct and compose an original score for our production. Moment Lab class taught me how to be specific in my impulsivity, and this opened so many lanes for musical creativity.

Atlantic provided me with fundamentals and creative space that ultimately expanded my entire artistic practice.

Come graduation, I was ready to hit the ground running. Atlantic habitualized the rigor needed to make a seamless transition into the fast-paced, intense New York acting landscape.  To this day I have stayed loyal to Practical Aesthetics, and I still work with my conservatory peers on our various creative endeavors. Atlantic provided me the space to discover what makes the performing arts so joyful and fulfilling for me, and made me realize my love for making music, all while setting me up for success in my acting career.

It’s now been a little over a year since graduating, and I understand why Atlantic’s motto is “Atlantic actors work.”

I have a manager submitting me for life-changing roles; I have performed in and scored off-Broadway productions; I have acted in several short films; I am a hologram (literally) in an original exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage for the next decade; and I have released two albums with my band, Kid at the Corner (@kidatthecorner).

I owe so much to Atlantic — my rigor, my discipline, my entire approach to acting — and I will forever cherish the foundation they provided to me as an actor and artist.

Here is a link to a music video I directed, acted, and played on, featuring James Overton on violin, a fellow Atlantic student from my graduating class. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdC8_ksKP4s

Charlie Lockwood