Dennis is proud to announce that the book Objectives, Obstacles and Tactics in Practice, edited by Valerie Clayman Pye and Hilary Haft Bucs, which features his chapter "Money in Your Pocket: Meisner, Objectives, and the First Six Lines" is now available, published by Routledge. You can purchase a copy of the book directly on Amazon.

Objectives, Obstacles, and Tactics in Practice is the first book that compiles practical approaches of the best practices from a range of practitioners on the subject of working with Stanislavski’s "objectives," "obstacles," and "tactics."

The book offers instructors and directors a variety of tools from leading acting teachers, who bring their own individual perspectives to the challenge of working with Stanislavski’s principles for today’s actors, in one volume. Each essay addresses its own theoretical and practical approach and offers concrete instructions for implementing new explorations both in the classroom and in the rehearsal studio.

In "Money in your Pocket", Dennis takes  Meisner’s famous Repetition exercise further, connectingimprovisation to the first six lines of scene work. By having students approach their scene as “an improvisation with text,” he takes the pressure off the student perfecting the character objective, and focuses on play, which in this case is throwing “snowballs.” Schebetta explores William Esper’s perspective, “a good objective is like money in your pocket,” which means “objectives are not something you can act … but actions are the specific building blocks of behavior upon which you achieve (or don’t achieve) your objective.”

Dennis is proud to announce that beginning in the fall of 2014, he will be joining the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh as Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre Arts.

His new role will include being Head of the MFA Pedagogy Performance program, teaching acting and other performance classes, as well as directing productions on the Pitt Stages main stage.  

He is scheduled to direct DOG IN THE MANGER by Lope de Vega for the 2014-2015 season.