Our Fall Catalog is Here
Get ready for an exciting fall season! Download our Fall 2025 catalog now and a variety of classes, workshops, and more that will inspire your creativity. Don't miss out on the opportunity to explore new skills and connect with our vibrant community. Explore our catalog today.
STUDIO FOR ACTORS HOUSTON
PROFESSIONAL TRAINING FOR PROFESSIONAL ARTISTS
Welcome to SFA Houston, where actors develop skills and build careers. We help actors hone their craft to reach their full potential. Our experienced instructors provide a range of personalized training in a supportive and collaborative environment.
SFAH
About The Actor's Craft
David Rainey has spent more than two decades as a Resident Company Actor at the Alley Theatre, performing in more than 100 productions for the company. At Juilliard, he was the second actor to ever receive the Michel and Suria Saint-Denis Prize, the highest honor awarded by The Juilliard School Drama Division. Around the country he has worked for National Actors Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, Guthrie Theatre, Joseph Papp Public Theatre, Hartford Stage, Dallas Theatre Center, Berkley Rep, Shakespeare Festival/LA, Manhattan Theatre Club, NY Shakespeare Festival, Ford’s Theatre, Crossroads Theatre, Asolo Theatre, Long Warf Theatre, Theatre de June Lune, The Acting Company, and others. And locally he has performed with Houston Shakespeare Festival, Stark Naked (4th Wall), A.D. Players, REC Room, as well as Houston Grand Opera, Houston Symphony, and Mercury Chamber Orchestra.
David Rainey,
Studio Director
As an actor I believe in training. I graduated top of my class from The Juilliard School, and credit most of my success as a performer to the training that I received there. Since being in Houston, I have coached hundreds of actors, to help them expand their skills and prepare for training programs around the world.
The goal of this studio is to bring more high quality training opportunities to actors in our community not currently in training programs, but who want to benefit from studying with top professionals. There is no other place in Houston that offers the range of courses and skilled instructors that SFAH provides for artists at all levels.
The work here is not simply about classes. In my mind, training is about long-term development of skills, rather than simply tips for some immediate gain in an area. While we offer some workshops with the quick-fix goal in mind, our primary focus is on helping serious actors develop real skills. We are trying to help the complete artists find the kind of training that they might not have access to unless they were in a training program, and provide the working professional challenging options to expand their skills.
Since SFAH expanded in February 2025, more than 35 instructors have offered programming to artists in our community, and hundreds of actors have benefitted. From professional actors to those as young as middle school, we’ve offered a range of programs that cover advanced acting, voice, film acting, physical movement, masks, acting I, improvisation, spoken work, acting II, text, musical theatre, Shakespeare, as well as playwriting, screenwriting, self-care for the actor, filmmaking, acting for opera, entrepreneurialism, and others.
If you are serious about craft, take advantage of the opportunities being developed here, and learn from some of the most skilled instructors in our community. In a short span of time, SFAH has become the place where teachers come to teach. Join them and gain from what they have to share.
