Arts & Entertainment Business Community

Actorcraft, a new acting school, brings some Hollywood to the Harbor

Have you ever dreamt of being in the movies, or auditioning for a play or commercial? This is for you.

Next week, Gig Harbor will welcome the opening of Actorcraft, a new acting school founded by professional actors and educators Jeremy Kent Jackson and his partner Adrianne Alvarez-Jackson.

Drawing on their years of experience working in Hollywood and educating actors of all levels, Actorcraft will offer acting classes, camps and labs, and individual coaching.

The Gig Harbor Chamber of Commerce will kick off the business’s grand opening “Launch Party” with a ribbon cutting on Monday evening, March 4, at The Kindship Studio in Uptown Gig Harbor, followed by a free class and founders meet-and-greet.

Jeremy Kent Jackson and Adrianne Alvarez-Jackson in their new Gig Harbor business, Actorcraft. Photo by Julie Warrick Ammann

Hollywood backgrounds

Jeremy is best known for his roles starring as Douglas Davenport in Disney’s long-running, live action-comedy series, “Lab Rats,” and as the lead character of “Joker” in “Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.” He has also made guest star appearances on television shows like Netflix’s “YOU,” as well as on “CSI,” “Without a Trace,” and “CSI: Miami.”

Adrianne has performed on television and stage with credits on “Charmed” and “All My Children.” Her stage credits include The Mark Taper Forum’s adaptation of “The House of Bernardo Alba” starring Chita Rivera. She is also a writer, director and theater founder.

In addition to their acting credits, Jeremy and Adrianne are educators. Jeremy held positions as the associate dean of the college and chair of the performing arts department at the now-closed Hussian College.

The Los Angeles performing arts and film school was founded in 2013 in a major Hollywood studio as the Relativity School. The American Musical and Dramatic Academy absorbed Hussian students after its closure in 2023. For 16 years, Jeremy was also as co-creator and creative director at DiscoveryOnstage, a theatre education company.

Jeremy Kent Jackson in Disney’s Lab Rats.

In the classroom

Adrianne has coached drama and taught in both middle and high school. Her years in education and a master’s degree of fine arts in acting include directing and teaching at the famed Los Angeles County High School for the Arts and serving as the performing arts department chair and theatre director at a private high school for over a decade.

While working as a drama teacher and theater director in schools, Adrianne began to notice a pattern. Many of her students with individual educational programs (IEPs are documents that specifically describe what special education services children receive) struggled to read.

Jeremy Kent Jackson as Joker in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.

With a desire to help more students, Adrianne returned to school and earned a master’s degree in special education from the University of Southern California. She later taught special education at Luther Burbank Middle School in Highland Park, Calif., winning an Educator of the Year award from the California League of Educators.

In addition to their new acting school business in Gig Harbor, the couple continues to work in their professional communities. Adrianne is a special education teacher in Bremerton. Jeremy has taken a position with Seattle’s ACT Contemporary Theatre and continues working in the entertainment industry virtually.

Why Gig Harbor?

In 2020, the Jacksons traveled to Seattle for the first time on a vacation with their extended family. Despite the fact that it was the dead of winter and they all got sick (just days before COVID-19 shut the world down), the experience of visiting the land of trees and water was memorable.

Two years passed before their next visit to the Seattle area, this time with a stay on Fox Island. As the world began to readjust to its new normal, so did the Jackson family. Their eldest was happy and settled at Berkeley.

Working remotely was here to stay. The couple began to wonder: “What could life look like?” Freedom is what they saw. “L.A. is a sprint,” Jeremy said. “That’s kind of why we departed.”

After 25 years in Los Angeles, Jeremy and Adrianne reached a life moment that offered an opportunity to change course.

“All of sudden we had a lot more flexibility and found ourselves open to a change,” Jeremy said. And when their youngest, a middle schooler, found the readjustment to the brick-and-mortar academic setting challenging, the family knew it was time to change the view. They needed to find a place that would light up their son’s passion for learning once again.

After visits to Camano Island, Whidbey Island, and other locations, Jeremy and Adrianne felt at home in Gig Harbor. Gone were the palm trees; in were the cedars and fir with a house “in the woods.” They found a new school for their son to flourish. They were excited to “build communities and tell stories.”

Jeremy Kent Jackson with NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers in a Pizza Hut commercial.

Finding stories and giving voice

“p2s” is what they call it, their philosophy behind Actorcraft’s curriculum. It means page, stage, and screen.

Jeremy and Adrianne hope to provide actors with a toolkit to help students “analyze, invent, express, and refine.” As an educator in drama and special ed, Adrianne has learned that it’s impactful to “give a voice.” “Encouraging them to say their stories” has value.

Actorcraft plans to stage eight-week “actor labs,” which Jeremy and Adrianne hope allow them to “get to know actors better in the community.” Classes and labs are developed in a progressive, skill-building curriculum. The first round of classes will focus on the fundamentals to acquire the “basic language to get them from page to stage.”

Summer camps will be announced later in the spring, along with a 10-week online audition class this summer. In the fall, a “devised theater piece” will be introduced. The collaborative theater piece is born from shared stories provided by local community members. The project concludes with a production of the woven stories.

“This is my dream job. Actorcraft is my dream job,” Jeremy concluded.

Actorcraft

Website: actorcraftp2s.com

Address: The Kindship Studio in Uptown Gig Harbor. 4793 Point Fosdick Dr. NW #200, Gig Harbor

Phone: (253) 313.5927

Email: [email protected]  [email protected]

Events

• • Gig Harbor Chamber of Commerce Actorcraft ribbon cutting, March 4. Register here.
  • Launch party for teens and adults, 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Monday, March 4. Free introductory class,  6:30 to 7:30 p.m. (students only); meet and greet, 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. (families welcome)
  • Actorcraft launch party for kids and teens, 10:15 a.m. to 1:45 p.m. Saturday, March 9. Free introductory class, 10:15 to 11:15 a.m. (students only); meet and greet, 11:15 a.m. to 1:45 p.m. (families welcome)