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Alyssa Rallo Bennett
Artistic Director of Stonestreet Studios
In 1991, Alyssa founded Stonestreet Studios, a film and television studio in downtown Chelsea, New York City that develops and produces projects for film and TV. Stonestreet Studios is the home of The Stonestreet Screen Acting Workshop where she trains NYU Tisch School of the Arts Drama students in acting, directing, and producing as part of their BFA degree program.
In 1982, after having studied acting with renowned Robert Lewis, as well as the techniques of Sanford Meisner, Lee Strasberg, and Stella Adler, Alyssa worked professionally as an actor, in both the theater and in many films with such directors as Woody Allen, Franco Zeffirelli, Jeremy Kagan et al, soaps, pilots and commercials, she started teaching actors about the differences between film and theater acting as well as how to adapt and use their theater training for multiple types of screen acting.
In 1987, she was invited to teach Acting for Film & Television in the Drama Department at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts along with Acting as A Business where she had received a BFA and later an MA in Theater and Psychology. Alyssa taught in the Drama Department while becoming the Director of Acting Training and overseeing the conservatories (Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg, Experimental Theater Wing, Atlantic Theater Company and Playwrights Horizons) that serve the Drama Department's BFA students. While at NYU she began to create a more in depth program, that allowed students to train in the environment that they would later work in, take their training from audition to production level, and to not only prepare to become a professional actor but to open doors and build bridges from school to the professional world before students graduated. She also initiated the Industry Auditions in the Drama Department so that Drama students would have an opportunity to reach the industry professionals. In 1991, she opened her own studio, Stonestreet Studios, which officially became one of the upper level conservatories for NYU Tisch School of the Arts Drama Department. Over the next seventeen years she continued to innovate and expand the program and the studio to serve students needs as actors continuing to train for the screen and the profession.
Professionally, Alyssa recently produced, wrote and directed the feature film The Pack, www.thepack.info, starring Lucie Arnaz, Molly Culver, Adam Ferrara, Zach Galligan, David Laundra, Carlos Leon, Angie Martinez, Elisabeth Moss, Angela Pietropinto, Roger Robinson, Ryan Homchick, Jennifer Merrill & Brooks Hornsby. This year The Pack has been featured in the Hoboken Film Festival, Sedona International Film Festival, Northampton Film Festival, Bayou City Film Festival, Festival of Festivals, Connecticut Film Festival, Sweet Auburn Film Festival and First Take Film Festival. The Pack is represented by Sterling Worldwide Entertainment.
She is the host of the series Inside Acting at Stonestreet Studios which is airing on both Zilo TV and Sandbox TV this fall. Her guests have included Mike Myers, Susan Sarandon, Edie Falco, Kevin Bacon, Peter Gallagher, Michael Imperioli, James Earl Jones, Elisabeth Shue et al. The show focuses on the process and art of film acting in both independent and bigger budget films as well as the differences between film & theater acting and all that surrounds it.
Working with actor and Shakespeare lover Joe Siravo (The Sopranos) and fifteen of her students, Alyssa directed her second feature film, Sonnets in the City, now in the last stages of post-production. Sonnets is a cinema verite style film that brings to life Shakespeare’s more dramatic sonnets by placing a cast of young characters who are all struggling with lust, love and rejection in a downtown bar & billiards joint. The film weaves each sonnet with behind-the-scenes dramas and romances and the actor’s process of grappling with Shakespeare’s material.
Alyssa’s short film Dance for Me Velma, premiered at the New York International Film & Video Festival and also played in the Brooklyn Film Festival and her film The Weather Report premiered in the Santa Cruz Film Festival and subsequently played in Canada in Light Plays Tricks Film Festival, Back East Picture Show in New Jersey and the Great Lakes Film Festival.
Alyssa developed and produced the feature film Rain Without Thunder, distributed by Orion Classics, directed by Gary Bennett, starring Jeff Daniels, Linda Hunt, Betty Buckley, Frederick Forrest, Graham Greene, Ming Na Wen, Austin Pendelton & Steve Zahn. She also produces a dozen or more short films every year in the Stonestreet/Goldberg Dept of Dramatic Writing Film Festival, as well as the feature film, Revengers, Inc., directed by Robert Bella along with The Code, both films star Angela Pietropinto and NYU/Stonestreet alums.
Alyssa co-wrote the feature films Walls and Bridges produced by Cold Grey Productions, Going Under, and Juden Rift which was recently awarded a FADE IN MAGAZINE award in the dramatic category.
After directing Wentz’s music video Waitin’ on the Jones, Alyssa directed many public service announcements for such organizations as the American Cancer Society, Action on Smoking & Health (ASH), Housing Works, and The Families of Freedom Scholarship Fund where the tragedy of 9/11 inspired her to conceive and direct two spots, one of which stars Susan Sarandon. Several of her short films, PSAs and music videos can be seen at www.stonestreetmovies.com
Alyssa has also worked in both films and television in front of the camera with directors such as Woody Allen, Franco Zeffirelli, and Andre Gregory. In New York she directed many short and full length plays at Ensemble Studio Theater and the Harold Clurman Theater and was accepted into Sundance Institute’s Playwriting Festival where she worked as director, writer and actor.
Alyssa is currently developing the feature film, Ms. Fortune, by Henrik Larsson & Tom Conklin, which she directed in the HotInk Festival and is directing and producing the second season of the webseries The 47th Floor.
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