Marcia Kimmell has over 40 years of experience as an actor, director and teacher. She currently teaches and directs at OWH Television Studios in Oakland, CA. She is producing a new topical, magazine style, “good news” show, WAKE UP OAKLAND!!! As an actor she has played such diverse roles as LADY MACBETH, the COWARDLY
LION, as well as the role of WINNIE in Beckettʼs absurdist “HAPPY DAYS,” a tour de
force for her.
Kimmell is a professional story-teller, combining experimental, improvisational theater
training with personal story, couched in metaphors found in fairy tales and myths. She
teaches and performs an entertaining form of improvisational “Story Theater” she has
developed that draws characters and plot from archetypes, as well as actorʼs sub-personalities and personal life, heroic journeys.
Another special area of theater that Ms. Kimmell has developed is the creation of
original theater pieces. With solo actors or with an ensemble of players she helps
develop powerful theater pieces drawn from the personal stories and issues in the lives
of the actors. Most notable of these works is “LEFTOVERS, the Ups & Downs of a
Compulsive Eater,” co-created from psycho-dramatic improvisations with Deah
Schwartz and Anne Wilford. The three improvisational actors played LEFTOVERS to
sold-out houses on the West Coast and had a run off-Broadway, NY. A video of
LEFTOVERS is available (www.leftoverstogo.com).
Kimmell is originally from Chicago where, at 10 years old she started in a professional
acting school for children, doing musical theater. As a teenager she was trained in
improvisational Theater Games at the Second City by the great innovator and creator of
Theater Games, Viola Spolin. considered the “mother of the improvisational theater
movement.” In her twenties she worked with Spolin again in a training
program for professional Theater Games coaches at the Spolin Theater Game Center,
in Los Angeles. She came to San Francisco to study at the American Conservatory
Theatre, where she later became a teacher. Kimmell has been Artist-in-Residence in
several public and private Bay Area schools, including School of the Arts High School,
SFUSD. For five years she was the Drama Specialist for the City of San Franciscoʼs
Recreation & Parks Department. She has been adjunct and guest faculty at various Bay
Area colleges and universities where she has trained actors, film directors, drama
therapists, educators and animators.
In 1979 Kimmell founded The Next Stage Training Programs, her school, where she
continues to work with a wide range of people, from professional actors and film
directors to total beginners. She combines Stanislavskiʼs “System of Psych-physical
Actions” with Spolin Theater Games in her method of teaching, coaching and directing
that enable actors to find playful, inspired, psychologically rich choices. Her training
empowers people of all ages to express themselves with confidence and creativity. The
Next Stage is focused on the development of human potential, using improvisationally
based acting training as a playful medium that enables people to grow to the “next stage”
of their development.
Marcia Kimmell's Weblog 