Alan Rackham is a director and filmmaker whose path to the craft ran through the actor's side of the room first. Born on Prince Edward Island, he moved to New York City to pursue a career in the theater and worked professionally as an actor before turning to study, earning his BA in History from Columbia University, living and working in Europe, and then attending New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where he shifted his focus behind the camera and earned his MFA in Directing.
At NYU he wrote and directed two short films, both of which screened at festivals around the world and earned him directing awards. He has also taught in the Film and Television Department at The New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts.
That combination of trained actor, working director, and produced writer is what shapes his classroom. In Script Analysis at The Conservatory at NYPAA, Alan teaches students to read a script the way the people hiring them do: finding the structure underneath the dialogue, tracking what a character wants and what stands in the way, and identifying the specific choices a scene is actually asking for. Students leave able to break down a text on their own, arrive at rehearsal or an audition with a point of view already formed, and defend it.
