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OTOA Founded 2004
OTOA Teaching Since 2006
OTOA Founder & MasterTeacher
OTOA Founder & MasterTeacher
Gia Forakis
Gia Forakis
OTOA Managing Director
OTOA Managing Director
Darya Gauthier
Darya Gauthier
Photo By: Bill Bernstein
About Gia Forakis
About Gia Forakis
Gia is the Founder & Master Teacher:
Gia is the Founder & Master Teacher:
Gia has been teaching, coaching , and practicing OTOA for over 16 years.
Gia has been teaching, coaching , and practicing OTOA for over 16 years.
BIOGRAPHY
Gia Forakis is the Founder and Master Teacher of One-Thought-One-Action (OTOA)™. She is also a theater artist, recognized as a professional freelance stage director, working locally out of NYC, regionally, and internationally, with well regarded credits as a playwright, performer, producer, educator, visual artist, and Creative Life Practice private coach.
She is the Artistic Director of Gia Forakis & Company (GF&CO) a company dedicated to the development and application of OTOA as a tool for experimentation and education through art, ritual, and performance.
She holds an MFA from Yale School of Drama in Directing, and a BFA from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Graduate Acting. Since receiving her Masters Degree in 2004, her primary focuses have been in the development and application of OTOA, and as a professional Theater Artist.
Gia is a member of SDC (Stage Directors and Choreographers Society). She has had the great good fortune to direct plays and teach OTOA across the United States, and around the globe.
Gia has been nominated for the prestigious Zelda Fichandler Award, and received a New York Innovative Theater Award nomination for Outstanding Theater Direction. She has received a Mary Jean Parson's Award (for directing studies) and a Paulette Goddard Award (for acting). www.GiaForakis.com
Visit her website
In the international journal The Theatre Time
Gia Forakis' Theater Artist Credits, Stage Directing Credits, and credits for her Original Works for the Stage
Gia Forakis' full resume including artistic projects, teaching experience, selected directing credits, affiliations, etc.
Photo By: Joseph Gauthier
About Darya Gauthier
About Darya Gauthier
Darya’s first experience of One-Thought-One-Action (OTOA)™ came by participating in one of the OTOA Performance Technique & Training (PTT) workshops led by OTOA Founder & Master Teacher, Gia Forakis, in the Fall of 2012.
After that workshop Darya was eager to learn more and become a part of Gia Forakis & Company (GF&CO: a not-for-profit forum for the advancement of OTOA).
She first joined GF&CO in an administrative capacity, soon becoming GF&CO’s Associate Artistic Director. Over the last four years, OTOA teaching and development has taken primary focus in GF&CO’s mission, branching out in its application and class formats.
This led to the natural next step of adding the title of OTOA Managing Director to her duties in OTOA’s progress.
As a theater director, musician and visual artist, Darya has found both OTOA PTT and OTOA CLP (Creative Life Practice) to be instrumental in her own projects and vital to her artistic success.
She is eager to continue exploring and mastering the technique and is currently training to become an OTOA practitioner and OTOA instructor.
Darya holds a BA in Dramatic Literature, Theater History and Cinema Studies from New York University, NYC, and is currently studying for her MBA in Entrepreneurship from Post University, Waterbury, CT.
Darya Gauthier's full resume including directing, credits, scenic design, and stage management experience
Photo by: Katrina Foy
Photo by: Lily Jandreska
Photo by: Stephen Taylor
Photo by: Stephanie Shayne
A letter from the founder...
A letter from the founder...
OTOA arose out of a personal and professional imperative as a theater artist, to facilitate a more detailed, specific, and physically dynamic performance from the actors I was working with.
OTOA arose out of a personal and professional imperative as a theater artist, to facilitate a more detailed, specific, and physically dynamic performance from the actors I was working with.
It was this desire that forced me to consider more deeply what it was I found most satisfying and compelling when watching a performance of any kind.
It was this desire that forced me to consider more deeply what it was I found most satisfying and compelling when watching a performance of any kind.
It became clear that what engages me the most is the physical expression of the performer's (or the character's) thinking process -- that this form of physical expression is where I gain entrance into a production as a viewer. This is what pulls me in and what enables me to invest more fully in the production.
It became clear that what engages me the most is the physical expression of the performer's (or the character's) thinking process -- that this form of physical expression is where I gain entrance into a production as a viewer. This is what pulls me in and what enables me to invest more fully in the production.
It is the visualization of thought into action that distinguishes the stage’s capacity for expression from that of radio or literature, thereby providing a more visceral event for the audience.
It is the visualization of thought into action that distinguishes the stage’s capacity for expression from that of radio or literature, thereby providing a more visceral event for the audience.
It was this observation that became the primary motivation in the development of OTOA, first as a Performance Technique & Training then later as a Creative Life Practice.
It was this observation that became the primary motivation in the development of OTOA, first as a Performance Technique & Training then later as a Creative Life Practice.
I have been developing and practicing OTOA since 2003, and teaching and coaching OTOA formally since 2006. Since that time, I have had the great fortune to be invited to teach OTOA PTT across the country and around the globe (including Greece, Macedonia, and Serbia...).
I have been developing and practicing OTOA since 2003, and teaching and coaching OTOA formally since 2006. Since that time, I have had the great fortune to be invited to teach OTOA PTT across the country and around the globe (including Greece, Macedonia, and Serbia...).
In that time, OTOA's principles have continued to evolve as a performance theory, and as a technique and training for performers, directors, theater makers, collaborators, public speakers, teachers and others in the performing arts.
In that time, OTOA's principles have continued to evolve as a performance theory, and as a technique and training for performers, directors, theater makers, collaborators, public speakers, teachers and others in the performing arts.
However, in recent years my professional application of OTOA through the performing arts, led to a personal life practice of OTOA as a daily creative practice, and in 2015 I began developing the OTOA Creative Life Practice curriculum.
However, in recent years my professional application of OTOA through the performing arts, led to a personal life practice of OTOA as a daily creative practice, and in 2015 I began developing the OTOA Creative Life Practice curriculum.
OTOA is a wide-ranging tool that can strengthen craft as well as offer personal and collective growth and transformation.
OTOA is a wide-ranging tool that can strengthen craft as well as offer personal and collective growth and transformation.
One of the joys of developing and teaching and practicing OTOA has been that there is something both practical and creative in it for just about everyone.
One of the joys of developing and teaching and practicing OTOA has been that there is something both practical and creative in it for just about everyone.
~Gia Forakis
~Gia Forakis
OTOA Founder, Master Teacher & Theater Artist
OTOA Founder, Master Teacher & Theater Artist
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