In the fall of 1989, Edward Claudio co-founded (with Michelle Barnett) the Actor's Workshop of Sacramento, a place for actors of all levels of experience to develop their craft. Over the years, the Actor’s Workshop has taught a wide range of classes, including Directing, Play Analysis, Acting Theory, Speech for the Theater, Theater History, Great Plays of the Western Theater, Improvisation, Scene Work, Technique, and private acting classes.  In 1992, the Actor’s Workshop added the Teen Actor's Workshop and the Children's Actor's Workshop.

The Workshop offers private lessons, as well as group classes for children, teens, and adults. Many students have continued to develop their craft at prestigious training programs such as Julliard, Cal Arts, and Mike Nichols's New Actor's Workshop in New York City. Students have gone on to work at Regional Theaters including The Actor's Theatre of Louisville, ACT in San Francisco, The Milwaukee Repertory Company, The B Street Theatre, Sacramento Theatre Company, The California Music Theatre and The American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass.  Others have gone on to appear in television and film and have appeared in plays both on and Off-Broadway.

In order to give workshop members the opportunity to put into practice what they learn in classes, the Actor's Workshop Theatre of Sacramento, the theater arm of the Actor’s Workshop of Sacramento, has staged more than 200 plays, including plays by Shakespeare (Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, A Midsummer Night's Dream), Henrik Ibsen (Hedda Gabler - “Four Stars” from the Sacramento Bee), Anton Chekhov (Three Sisters, The Seagull), Edward Albee (The Zoo Story, A Delicate Balance, Finding the Sun), Tennessee Williams (Sun and Smoke, I Can't Imagine Tomorrow), Eugene O'Neill (Long Day's Journey Into Night, Hughie), Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman), and John Steinbeck (Of Mice and Men).   In addition to the classics, the theater stages modern plays, including productions of Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa, Michael Weller's Loose Ends, and Athol Fugard's Valley Song (“Four Stars” from the Sacramento Bee), and has given full-scale productions to more than a dozen new works by local playwrights. For more than a decade, the Actor’s Workshop Theater has also produced annual one-act play festivals, teen shows, and children's shows.

In 1997, after two years of hard work, the Actor's Workshop finally built its own theater space and, in keeping with its long tradition of producing classic theater, opened The Actor's Workshop Theatre of Sacramento on Del Paso Blvd. in Sacramento with a critically acclaimed production of Long Day's Journey Into Night. After producing more than 100 plays at the Del Paso Blvd. location, in early 2007 the curtain came down on that theater and the Actor’s Workshop Theatre of Sacramento once again became itinerant. The Workshop, however, continued to be taught in downtown Sacramento.

In 1999, The Sacramento News & Review included the Actor’s Workshop Theatre in its Best of Sacramento issue as the Best Place to get down with the Classics. In 2000, the same newspaper stated, "Better than any other local company, the Actor’s Workshop stages top-shelf classics and mixes them with cutting edge avant-garde works, sometimes by local playwrights."