Gina Bonati has been teaching Method Acting since 2001. Early studies in Stanislavski’s Method from high school teachers, Lewis Campbell and Robert Woodruff, then a scholarship to ACT Young Conservatory led to further pursuit. In 1981 she moved to New York to earn a BFA in Dance from The Juilliard School. While at Juilliard, she continued studying acting, with John Stix and sneaking around the drama department (with permission from the dean of course). In 1982, she started studying Lee Strasberg’s Method Acting Technique with Sharon Chatten, continuing with Sharon for years. Sharon Chatten is Gina’s strongest influence.
A lifetime member of the Actors Studio since 2003, she continues to bring work into sessions and holds her studio membership most dear. She has acted (and danced) all over the world. She counts her experience opening for the Centennial at The Strindberg Intima Theatre in Stockholm, Sweden in August Strindberg’s The Stronger (directed by Lee Grant and Elizabeth Kemp) as one of her most memorable stage successes. Struggling with heteronormative and misogynistically repressive translations, she did the translation herself that they rehearsed at the Actors Studio and then brought to Stockholm. That project went on to have stage performances here in New York City at the Actors Studio and at Baruch Performing Arts Center.
Gina continues to work as an actress on stage and in film, and she continues to dance, taking class with Heather Hawk and Nancy Bielski. She creates Dance-Theater works in installation, dance, theater, image, and sound/noise (electronics, field recordings, recorded speech). She is a singer and these days is singing jazz standards though she has studied all kinds of voice. She is a poet and has been published and she writes strange plays, some of which have had stage productions. She holds two master’s degrees, one in Dance and Theatre Studies and the other in Experimental Music with Voice in Performance and Improvisation being her main instrument. Both MFAs are from Mills College in Oakland, California. She loves the stage with all her heart.