Based in downtown Toronto, Showoffs offers affordable private vocal instruction/singing lessons to kids
and adults as well as group performance workshops to improve confidence and stage presence.
The
Guardian
Art Nefsky has made a career as a Showoff. by Gil Kezwer Art Nefsky has probably been "killed'' more times than any other professional actor in Canada. And that experience has enabled him to run Showoffs Studio, a Wednesday night singing performance class for those scared to death by stage fright. He regularly schmaltzes it up in dinner-theatre murder mysteries conducted on a train rolling down the track out of Gowanda, N.Y. near Buffalo. "I once died 10 times in one evening, 11 if you count my actual performance," Nefsky says with a self-deprecating laugh. The 4-hour who-done-its are staged by his Ava Road neighbour and friend Larry Zaidlin, producer of Larry Zaidlin Productions. The troupe improvises from a basic script, interacting with the audience between courses as corpses begin to pile up. For a quick-witted kibitzer like Nefsky, it's a natural role. The
Toronto-born Nefsky, fresh out of his third year of the Ryerson Theatre
School program in 1975 became Igor, a lovable rhinestone clad, humpbacked
and fanged raconteur crooning love songs to the ladies in CITY-TV's wacky
movie of the week, Monsters We Know And Love.
Nefsky and his Igor alter ego were among the original performers at Yuk Yuk's Komedy Kabaret when it first started in a community centre basement on Church Street in 1977. (audio clip) Sans fangs, Nefsky also acts in television commercials. But it's as a vocal coach for those suffering from acute performance anxiety that he's become a real star. Catherine O'Hara of CBC Radio's Later The Same Day did a show on Showoffs earlier this year, featuring his unique technique of singing away the jitters and overcoming shyness. Nefsky offers group lessons in self confidence building and stress relief, all done to the beat of karaoke. Nefsky opened his Showoffs Studio at Yonge and Wellesley in June 1987. He relocated to Bathurst and Eglinton August, 1992. ''People are more comfortable out of my home when I ask them to sing off key,'' he notes. ''In order to improve, you have to give yourself permission to be bad. I call it a 'sneaking a cigarette in the bathroom' exercise. If you allow yourself to make mistakes, you'll progress faster. So I set them up to purposely butcher the song. That breaks the conditioning of song. That breaks the conditioning of always having to be right.'' His basement studio, equipped with a stage, microphone and audio equipment, is lined with publicity photos of some of his 500 former students, a few of whom. having conquered their fear of performing in public, have gone on to become professional entertainers. One of Nefsky's current students was so shy it took him two years to call after seeing a Showoffs ad. Nefsky says that's not unusual. Most students take a series of ten classes, though some come repeatedly for the ego boost of performing live in front of a non-threatening crowd of their peers. "The first class people are nervous because they don't know what's going on" he explains. "The second class they're even more nervous because they know what's going on. In the third class they finally start seeing where they are. The communication starts. And that's scary too. By the fourth class they can't wait to get up and sing.'' Showoffs Studio can be reached at (416) 781-4044. And you don't have to wait two years before picking up the telephone.
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