D.O.C. Studios makes acting an active community experience in Cleveland

On a warm night in late fall at the Rainey Institute on East 55^th Street in Cleveland, Ananias Dixon leads a group of roughly 35 acting students mostly in their 20s and 30s through a fun, high-energy warm-up exercise. It’s another free Community Mode Monday for D.O.C. Studios, and Dixon, co-director and an acclaimed Cleveland actor and theatre teacher, dives into this movement activity known as the Golden Light ritual. 

Eyes flashing, arms stretching and students shouting and laughing as each reaches for the skies to pull everything they hold dear down from the heavens and then up from the earth; they next shake off everything that’s bad. The goal is to leave the young, eager-to-learn students unencumbered by their daily work and family concerns and primed to focus on acting for the next two hours. Other theatre and improvisation games follow.

“A lot of times, when you graduate from high school or college, you end up in this limbo of not knowing what to do but feeling like you’re supposed to have it all together,” explains Dixon, who works in the Education Department at Playhouse Square by day but also teaches masters classes at Cleveland School of the Arts (CSA). “You feel this pressure from life, and sometimes you forget how to enjoy life, so my goal is to create a safe space for everybody, no matter what walk of life, that you can come here and have fun.” 

That’s what Mode Monday night is all about, having fun and using tools of theatre to create a free-flowing, creative space to empower young actors to advance in their careers or make acting an important part of their lives. All of the exercises are means for adults to tap into that inner child that might have died along their journey. Several seasoned actors also participate and are members of D.O.C Studio’s teaching team.

“We tapped into a demographic that isn’t always tapped into, primarily the young age from 19 to 26,” says Dixon’s fellow co-director and CSA alum Carl Walton. “This is a place you can come, whether you want to take it to the next level in the industry for acting or you just want to find a sense of community or family where there’s no criticism.”

Open to anyone in the community, D.O.C. Studios’ students can participate in the Mode Mondays workouts for free. For a small, reasonable fee they can sign up for a variety of acting for theatre or film classes at beginner or intermediate levels, writing classes taught by playwright and actor Amy Schwabauer, or a variety of advanced master classes that Dixon and Walton continue to add.

“I have a thirst for knowledge, and every experience here is an opportunity to learn,” says T.J. Clark, 23, a Solon resident who has attended Mode Mondays for a year and is studying to become a plumber. “Even if it’s not the biggest or grandest nugget of information, you can learn something about yourself or about the craft of acting.”

How D.O.C. Studios got started

In March 2023, a group of actors had finished shooting “Figure It Out,” a pilot TV series created by Walton. They agreed they wanted to keep training together to improve their craft. Walton reached out to Dixon, one of the actors, his friend and former teacher at Cleveland School of the Arts, to lead them in their training. 

“I just wanted to find someone who could teach us,” Walton says. “Ananias was the first person that came into my head, because he was someone I trusted, and he had taught us at CSA when we were younger.”

In April 2023, they started meeting Monday nights from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Human HeART Studios on St. Clair Ave. at East 18^th Street downtown. They did acting exercises, learned monologues and workshopped scenes from plays. The first class started with five people and quickly grew to 10, five men and five women.

The goal evolved from training and acting together to sharing their work with the community, from which they had received a lot of interest and comments on social media. In October 2023, they held a public showcase at their alma mater, CSA, in what had become known as The Doc Miller Black Box in honor of Scott Miller, Ph.D. Miller had taught at CSA for more than 20 years and was affectionately known by many as ‘Doc.’ He died in July that year.

“We figured everything we were doing was similar to what Doc would teach us at CSA,” Walton says. “What better way to carry on his legacy than through this art form where we created all of these different theatre and improv pieces.”

The original name of the group was One Percent Acting Studios. “I don’t know what we were thinking,” Dixon says with a laugh. “But it was our way to support each other, and then we saw ourselves losing our dad, our mentor, so once Doc passed, we knew that was what we wanted to call it.”

Dixon attended CSA from 2000 to 2004, later taught there and then ran the theatre program after Miller’s death. He considers his relationship with Doc Miller a vital part of his journey as an actor, theatre artist and teacher. 

“We actually started the group a little bit before he passed, and Doc knew we were starting a group, but I don’t think he knew it was going to be this,” Dixon recalls. “I don’t think we knew it was going to turn into this.”

Dixon and Walton approached Miller’s wife, Barbara Lowe, to head the 501c3’s board and enlisted Dixon’s mother Tanya, executive director of Learning for Life Youth Program, to help run the daily operations because of her experience working with Cleveland youth through her nonprofit.

The D stands for development, the O for opportunity and the C for community. The showcases are part of the “O” because they allow students to showcase their talent in front of diverse theatre and film directors, enhance their public performance skills and experience, and network with different people in the community. 

The program relocated to Rainey Institute earlier this year, and they produced a second well-received showcase at Cain Park on August 9^th that also generated a significant number of calls from people who wanted to join or help out.

“The showcases are an exciting opportunity for D.O.C. Studios to invite professional directors and companies to see the talent that is being fostered through the work the students have been doing,” observes Treva Offutt, director of education, Playhouse Square. “Maybe you’re acting in one piece but you’re directing another. Maybe you haven’t directed before. Maybe you haven’t acted before, but D.O.C Studios provides a space for you to grow”

What’s next for D.O.C. Studios?

Commenting on all of the success D.O.C. Studios has experienced in its first year and a half, Dixon says while it’s all been very exciting and exactly what they wanted to provide as a hub for young people and for the community, he’d like to keep building their programs slowly.

“Our board members are so ambitious, and a lot of times we just want to do everything all at once,” Dixon says. “But let’s do our Mode Mondays great, and then let’s do our Showcases great, then once we have that formula down, we’ll add more classes and then more classes.” 

For Walton, it’s important that they stay true to their mission of creating an incubator where students can nurture their abilities as they grow as actors and as people. If they go on to professional successes in New York, Chicago or LA, they can come back and share that with the students at D.O.C. Studios.

“We have people who this is their first time acting, and they’re talented, but they need somewhere to mold their talent and skills or find that community of people who are passionate and likeminded in the same craft,” he says. “That’s why it’s so important for us to create that safe space that also gives you the honest and authentic tools to make it to the next level, if that’s what you want to do, whether it’s in theater or film.” 

They like holding all of their classes at Rainey, Dixon says, because they have a theater and classrooms. Additionally, Ensemble Theatre and Talespinners Children’s Theatre occasionally use Rainey for rehearsals, adding to the professional cache. Having access to an actual stage makes such a difference when trying to teach somebody theatre, too. He anticipates that D.O.C. Studios will be there for at least another year.

“I’m not sure exactly where our program is going to go, but I do feel like I’m in the right place, and I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing,” Dixon concludes. “I want everybody to feel welcome to come. So that’s my thing. I just want a safe place for everybody.”