The Saturday morning acting class in the Pearson Hall auditorium at Miles College boasts the school’s highest attendance all year.
The teacher, actress Robin Givens, was a lure few students — and others from surrounding areas — could resist. Some came to learn about their prospective field from a professional. Others were there for pointers to perfect a hobby. Her celebrity status brought the rest.
As Givens talked, the entire room hung on every word, whether it was on how to read a line or how to develop the character who spoke it.
Givens says she jumped on the chance to work at Miles because it would give her a chance to encourage young people.
“I thought this might be a way to capture their attention and really, in a way, give them what they’ll need for anything in their life, which is confidence,” says Givens, 48, who has been acting for more than 25 years. “Entertainment is our biggest commodity as Americans. People are so in tune with it. If you ask some of the kids, they want to be rappers and actors and football players.”
The plan had been to find a way to build up the Alabama college’s fledgling theater program.
Dr. George T. French Jr., the school’s president, says he wanted to find something that would get students more excited about the curriculum while giving those in the surrounding community a reason to be active in the program’s productions.
