About SoulWork Studio
SoulWork Studio exists to make live engagement and training from qualified SoulWork practitioners available and accessible. Studio offerings encourage opportunities for artists to connect and collaborate in a learning community that centers equity, inclusion and social consciousness.
SoulWork is a comprehensive method for making performance and training artists that includes acting, movement, singing, directing, writing, devising, ensemble-building, and community engagement.
SoulWork is applicable to performing artists, creatives, and arts practitioners from every discipline.
Rooted in ancestral practices of oral tradition and embodied pedagogy, understanding and practicing SoulWork to any degree requires training by a Certified SoulWorker.
SoulWork is learned in community and cannot be self-taught.
We invite you to Connect + Engage + Learn with us!
Take a SoulWork Studio webinar, workshop, or summer intensive, or book a studio session for your ensemble, program, or organization.
SoulWork Principles
Intention: The Call
Living in Call & Response
Emotional Availability
Unending Climax
The Dream
Read an introduction to these principles in Dr. Truscott's essay on "SoulWork" in Black Acting Methods and in her interview "Good Theatre Got Soul" in Continuum Journal.
For a deeper dive, take our Intro Webinar on SoulWork Founding Principles.
SoulWork Practices
Learn more by attending a Workshop, Studio Session, or Summer Intensive.
SoulWork Theory
Read an introduction to this theoretical framework Dr. Truscott's essay "Cultural Conservatory: Living The Arts" in Are the Arts Essential?
About Dr. Cristal Chanelle Truscott
Is SoulWork for Me? (& Other FAQs)
Who is SoulWork for?
What is meant by describing SoulWork as a "studio practice"?
A studio practice focuses on nurturing the artist and is not dependent on developing a performance or public-facing outcome, though often performances and projects are born out of studio work. Developing a studio practice is also different than taking a workshop. Workshops are often temporary or finite, while a studio practice is continual and serves an artist throughout their creative lives.
SoulWork is a progressive but not a linear method. SoulWork Studio empowers artists to nurture, deepen, expand and/or reinvigorate their creativity at any point in their career or educational journey by offering training and artistic cultivation that is ongoing vs. project-based. For project-based work, SoulWork is best realized and understood when artists first learn the methodology as a studio practice so that it can be applied with embodied knowledge and depth.
What is the difference between being a performer vs. a practitioner?
Generally speaking, we are thinking of Performers/Performing Artists to include Actors, Dancers, Singers, etc.
Performance Practitioners include Performance Artists, Devising/Generative Artists, Performance/Performed Ethnography, Storytellers, Performance Poets, etc.
Practitioners include Culture Workers, Community Organizers, Researchers, Writers, Musicians, Visual Artists, Multi-Media Artists, Educators, Choreographers, Directors, etc.
Can SoulWork be self-taught from the readings or other information I find online?
SoulWork is rooted Black American performance traditions which center embodied practices of oral tradition (vs. written text) to communicate and preserve knowledge, arts, ideas, and culture through live, in-person, and embodied transmission. Embodied and oral traditions prioritize and require learning directly from experts, knowledge-bearers, and practitioners.
