Review: Acting Class - Take A Seat by Milton Katselas

November 12, 2008 by dennisbaker 

“The study of acting is the study of life,” Milton Katselas states in his book, Acting Class: Take a Seat. He expounds on this thought with a quote from Stella Adler: “I’m not teaching acting… I’m teaching actors to be people.”

Previously only available to his students at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, this book presents the knowledge and tools that have impacted actors, including George Clooney, Michelle Pfeiffer, Alec Baldwin, Blythe Danner, and Bette Davis.

He wants actors to be able to do anything that is required and go after the roles that would be the best fit of who they are as actors and people. He understands that type casting happens but you can break out of that if you work hard enough. It all comes down to business.

Actors have to believe in themselves before they can get anywhere. They also have to prepare for any situation and script. There is a time and place for improvisation but not in the preparation of one’s acting career. An actor has to get along with others as well as to cut out the gossip. Readers will feel as if they are sitting in Katselas’ classroom, mainly because much of the book is taken from transcripts of his classes. Broken down into three sections, Acting Class addresses everything an actor needs to perfect his craft.

Section one is on acting and begins with lessons on “The Checklist,” what every actor needs to prepare for a scene, including evaluating the character, specific choices that define a character, and how to make the character believable. This section also includes class exercises in song and dance, improv, monologue, audition, relaxation, and the shoot exercise which allows the actors to feel what it would be like to be part of a film or television scene, with little or no rehearsal.

Section two looks at attitude and what it takes to be an actor who others like to be around and directors will want to work with again. Katselas claims that this not only makes the actor a nicer person, but it also actually increases his or her art, as they are willing to take critique and to grow as a person and an artist.

Section three is on administration, which the author defines as the choices an actor makes regarding his career and life, and determination to follow through on these choices. The choices Katselas speaks about in this section are less artistic and relate more to the business aspect of acting, including: networking, developing relationships with people in the industry, practicing old fashioned courtesy, appearance, promotional tools, and continuing to study.

Acting Class is easy to read, approachable, at times funny, at times earthy, and loaded with practical and helpful ideas. The exercises and tools will help actors at all levels of experience improve their craft.

(This review was originally published on Blogcritics.)

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Abolish Undergraduate Art Majors

November 3, 2008 by dennisbaker 

Article Review
“A Modest Proposal” by Tony Kushner, American Theatre, January 1998
Keynote address to Association of Theatre of Higher Education Conference

I don’t think you earn your income as an artist to be an artist. But if you are an artist, the artist is what you do, whether or not you’re paid for doing it; it is what you do, not what you are. I regard artist not as a description of temperament but as a category of profession, of vocation. What we call education in the arts is mostly training; it is, in fact vocational training.

This being the year of my ten-year high school reunion I could not help but look back to see what has become of my twenty-eight years of living. While the creation of social media outlets like facebook and myspace allows one to easily connect with people from the past, one’s ideals, hopes and goals of days gone might not so easily within reach.

The summer before my senior year in high school I just had been through a “mountain-top” experience at the two-week seminar for high school juniors at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. With all the passion and drive of a hormonal seventeen year old, I was ready to enter my senior year and begin my life devotion to the theater. I quit the basketball team to assistant direct the one play that was produced that year and pursued acting and auditioning outside of school.

That January I read the article “A Modest Proposal” by Tony Kushner published in the American Theatre magazine. I was floored by his premise to abolish all undergraduate art majors. Being from a small town in central California, where the cows at times out numbered the people and my total graduation class was a couple of hundred students, I thought maybe this was crazy east coast, liberal arts ideals rearing its ugly head. As I read the article I grew to appreciate the ideas Kushner proposed, specifically the desire for young artists to receive an education and not merely vocational training. I wished I could say I followed his advice, but I fell into the trap of training. I moved to Los Angeles so I could get an undergraduate degree in communication and theater. Like many students I thought it was the best situation. I was able to get a degree, study theater and pursue acting in Los Angeles. Many good things came from that decision, a beautiful wife, life long friends and studying with some great mentors, but looking back I wonder if I sacrificed formative years of education at the alter of vocational training. As I pursue a graduate degree in theater education I decided to re-read Kushner’s article to see what has changed, if anything. Undergraduate art majors are growing more than ever so what can be taken away from the article now?

Kushner’s proposal is simple: abolish all undergraduate art majors. His thesis is wrapped in the idea that the institutions have exchanged education for vocational training, “since the undergraduate arts majors mill is almost as profitable for cash-strapped institutions of higher learning as pesticide development and biochemical warfare research, certainly considerably more profitable than liberal arts departments”. Colleges and universities main goal is to make money and with so many people wanting to pursue the arts, the schools are going to go where the money is flowing. What college would deny eighteen year old students the “right” to pursue a major in theater, visual arts, writing, filmmaking, photography or musical composition? According to Kusher, schools that elevated education over training. “Education, as opposed to training, I think, addresses not what you do, or will do, or will be able to do in the world. Education addresses who you are, or will be, or will be able to be.”

How is one supposed to study to be an artist? Vocational training in of itself is not bad. The article points out there are many graduate programs, conservatories and private schools in all major cities that will be happy to take your money for exchange in how to make it in the profession. Seventeen through twenty-one year old undergraduate students don’t need vocational arts training, they need an education. “Think of the liberal arts, in other words, as meta-Acting Training for Life.”

Kusher continues, “The vocalization of the liberal arts undergraduate education echoes the loss in the world at large of interest in the grand dialectic of life, in all dialectics, in breadth, in depth, in thinking as a necessary luxury, in the Utopian.” Jill Dolan in her book Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theatre and in her speech to the Association for Theatre in Higher Education entitled “Unhappy Thespians: A Manifesto on Training Theatre Students” continues where Kushner left off. She is a practioner of the idea that education should be the focus and models this at Princeton University where the school’s motto of arts education seems to echo what Kushner recommends.

Believing that the best training for a career in the theater is a broad-based liberal arts education, Princeton does not have a concentration in Theater. Instead, we offer a certificate in Theater and encourage students, should they have the inclination, to make connections in their artistic work between their fields of concentration and their love of the theater. The program offers the kinds of courses and co-curricular activities that will allow the student, upon graduation, to move into the best graduate conservatories to pursue advanced training in playwriting, acting, directing, design, stage management, and dramaturgy. But most students who take courses in the program do not elect to enter the certificate program; they simply enroll in the courses that interest them. Students with a particular interest in and commitment to the arts, however, may want to obtain the program certificate.

This mindset seems to be echoed in the work of Dr. Scott Walters in the writings of his blog Theatre Ideas and his work at University of North Carolina-Asheville. In a recent post he describes the sympathy for the students in trying to embrace this type of arts education.

And so when they arrive in a class like Dolan’s, or in my own, they revolt against the attempt [from teachers] to encourage them to think, to develop their own ideas, their own beliefs, and develop them as part of a rich conversation that has been ongoing for 2500 years — because they know that it is a lie; that once they leave that particular classroom, they will once again be forced to erase themselves. Why go through the pain of developing as a unique individual when one must rejoin the masses again in order to survive, to be cast? I have sympathy for them, because they have been told that there are no alternatives, and those who have revolted against those limited opportunities by college have self-selected themselves into other departments, other field of endeavor.

In a undergraduate performing arts program the mentality is to shape the curriculum based on the industry. The problem is that colleges and universities are not supposed to be extensions of the entertainment industry, but rather they are to produce what Dolan calls artist-citizen-scholars. Artists that question society and through their art speak for those that do not have a voice. Instead performing art students are trained to accept the fact that they are viewed by all in the industry as an equivalent of a coke can, a product that is to make money for agents, managers, producers, advertising firms and production companies and if they are lucky have some money left over for themselves.

As Kushner pointed out ten years ago, “I can say let’s get rid of it and we don’t have to worry that anything will actually happen.” The same holds true now. As long as it makes money the schools will not get rid of undergraduate art majors or offer sufficent alternatives. As an educator what can I hope for is that there will be more teachers like Dolan and Walters who try to change the system from within. Teachers who show the students an alternative so that one or two might see the current form of arts education as a facade and that an education that can truly benefit an artist is much bigger and broader than what is currently being offered. How is this specifically to be done? Kushner’s suggests, “What I would hope you might consider doing is tricking your undergraduate art major students. Let them think they’ve arrived for a vocational training and then pull a switcheroo. Instead of doing improv rehearsals, make them read The Death of Ivan Illych and find some reason why this was necessary in learning improv.”

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Win Copies of Milton Katselas’ “Acting Class: Take a Seat”

October 17, 2008 by dennisbaker 

We know you just love the chance to win something, so here at DENNIS BAKER LLC we want to start rewarding our loyal readers.
milton katselas acting class
The first giveaway is of Milton Katselas new book Acting Class: Take a Seat. I try to only giveaway books that I’ve read and would actually recommend. I have began to read it and do enjoy it, a full review will be coming soon.

“Previously only available to Katselas’ students at the prestigious Beverly Hills Playhouse, Acting Class presents the concepts and methods that have helped lead a generation of actors to success on stage, in cinema, and on television. Now for the first time, this all-encompassing book is available to the general public, taking readers and sitting them in the legendary acting class of Milton Katselas, where he not only covers techniques and methods, but also includes valuable discussions on the attitude any artist needs to fulfill his or her dream.”

Now you know you want to win it, right? Good, because we have 2 copies to give away!

How to enter this contest? Simply leave a comment below and we’ll randomly pick 2 winners (deadline for entry is 6pm ET Friday, Oct. 24th).

That’s all you need to do! And, if you’re not a lucky winner, you can be a winner anyway by picking up a copy of Acting Class: Take a Seat for yourself.

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Theaters To Do List

October 10, 2008 by dennisbaker 

Brendan Kiley wrote an article for Seattle’s The Stranger entitled Ten Things Theaters Need to Do Right Now to Save Themselves: In No Particular Order. Below is the top ten with my reactions. Th article focuses on the fringe as the main type of theater that should implement these changes. What do you thing?

1. Enough with the goddamned Shakespeare already. The greatest playwright in history has become your enabler and your crutch, the man you call when you’re timid and out of ideas. It’s time for a five-year moratorium—no more high schoolers pecking at Romeo and Juliet, no more NEA funding for Shakespeare in the heartland, and no more fringe companies trying to ennoble themselves with Hamlet. (Or with anything. Fringe theater shouldn’t be in the game of ennobling, it should be in the game of debasement.) Stretch yourself. Live a little. Find new, good, weird plays nobody has heard of. Teach your audiences to want surprises, not pacifiers.

Goes big right off the bat. I am torn by this one as I both agree and disagree. I am sure we have all seen one too many shows of Midsummers or Romeo and Juliet. But when Shakespeare is done well it is it amazing. There are also so many students every year that see a production and then are turned on to the work. Maybe we modify this recommendation that we put a cap on the amount of Shakespeare a theater company can do. One show per year?  One every other year?

2. Tell us something we don’t know. Every play in your season should be a premiere—a world premiere, an American premiere, or at least a regional premiere. Everybody has to help. Directors: Find a new play to help develop in the next 12 months. Actors: Ditto. Playwrights: Quit developing your plays into the ground with workshop after workshop after workshop—get them out there. Critics: Reward theaters that risk new work by making a special effort to review them. Unions, especially Actors’ Equity: You are a problem. Fringe theaters are the research-and-development wing of the theater world, the place where new work happens—but most of them can’t afford to go union, so union actors are stuck in the regional theaters, which are skittish about new work and early-career playwrights. You must break this deadlock by giving a pass to union actors to work in nonunion houses, if they are working on new plays.

New works are a must! I love when I see a play that I don’t know and it takes on me on a ride of discovery. I think this can also go for published work as well. Maybe poll the audience of what plays they have seen so a theater knows which ones to avoid.

I think the union/non-union issue is the bigger issue. Just coming back from a theater conference in San Francisco this is a major issue for the actors in the Bay area. Most theaters there are non-union which leaves the union actors with little opportunity to work on new works or anything at all for that matter. There is a 99-seat code in Los Angeles and a workshop code in New York. Why can’t we get a code across the board or at least in all the major theater cities?

3. Produce dirty, fast, and often. Fringe theaters: Recall that 20 years ago, in 1988, a fringe company called Annex produced 27 plays, 16 of them world premieres—and hang your heads in shame. This season, Annex will produce 10 plays, 4 of them world premieres, which is still pretty good. Washington Ensemble Theatre will only produce three plays, one of them a world premiere. (An adaptation of… Shakespeare!) What else happened in 1988? Nirvana began recording Bleach—and played a concert at Annex Theatre. By the next year, Nirvana was on their first world tour. The lesson: Produce enough new plays and Kurt Cobain will come back from the grave and play your theater.

I am not 100% sold on producing that many shows in a season. I worked with a theater company in Los Angeles that prided itself on performing two shows in repertory.  I think for the smaller theaters it can stretch its already limited personal and budget. While it might be great for all the actors who want to work, the quality pf the show can suffer, which then effects the perception of the work being done for future shows. Also these artists also have full time jobs and other major responsibilities so while I agree maybe more than three shows per season I think twenty-seven is a bit much.

4. Get them young. Seattle playwright Paul Mullin said it best in an e-mail last week: “Bring in people under 60. Do whatever it takes. If you have to break your theater to get young butts in seats, then do it. Because if you don’t, your theater’s already broke—the snapping sound just hasn’t reached your ears yet.”

I think all theater companies should have some education ties to it. That does not mean that they have this education department that creates a touring show, but they should have a connection with a local English teacher where they can come into the class and present scenes and work with the students. Most kids think Shakespeare is boring until they experience how active the text is and then kids begin to love it. If the kids connect with the visiting actors they will ask the parents to go to that theater. There is you under 60 audience members. Then it is also the theaters responsibility to do work that appeals to both young adults and their parents at the same time. That does not mean you have to produce a fairytale, but you can’t have your whole season be crazy, sexual, avant-guard theater either.

5. Offer child care. Sunday school is the most successful guerrilla education program in American history. Steal it. People with young children should be able to show up and drop their kids off with some young actors in a rehearsal room for two hours of theater games. The benefits: First, it will be easier to convince the nouveau riche (many of whom have young children) to commit to season tickets. Second, it will satisfy your education mission (and will be more fun, and therefore more effective, for the kids). Third, it will teach children to go to the theater regularly. And they’ll look forward to the day they graduate to sitting with the grown-ups. Getting dragged to the theater will shift from punishment to reward.

But when you do produce your avant-guard play that is not appropriate for children, in stead of alienating the parents give them the option of childcare so they can still come see the show. Yes, there are legal issues here that will need to be worked out, but it could be well worth it. How many theaters are offering childcare? Imagine if you were the first. You would be the talk of the PTA and the buzz around all the playgrounds. Get those soccer moms to work for you!

6. Fight for real estate. In 1999, musician Neko Case broke up with Seattle, leaving us for Chicago. (It still hurts, Neko.) When asked why in an interview, she explained, “Chicago is a lot friendlier, especially toward its artists. Seattle is very unfriendly toward artists. There’s no artists’ housing—they really like to use the arts community, but they don’t like to put anything back into the arts community.” Our failure abides. Push government for cheap artists’ housing and hook up with CODAC, a committee that wants developers on Capitol Hill—and, eventually, everywhere—to build affordable arts spaces into their new condos. (CODAC’s tools of persuasion: tax, zoning, and business incentives.) Development smothers artists, who can’t afford the rising property values that they—by turning cheap neighborhoods into trendy arts districts—helped create. To get involved with CODAC, e-mail frank.video@seattle.gov.

A definite must. Lean on the government to recognize artists as important and worth the time and money.

7. Build bars. Alcohol is the only liquid on earth that functions as both lubricant and bonding agent. Exploit it. Treat your plays like parties and your audience like guests. Encourage them to come early, drink lots, and stay late. Even the meanest fringe company can afford a tub full of ice and beer, and the state of regional- theater bars is deplorable: long lines, overpriced drinks, and a famine of comfortable chairs. Theaters try to “build community” with postplay talkbacks and lectures and other versions of you’ve spent two hours watching my play, now look at me some more! You want community? Give people a place to sit, something to talk about (the play they just saw), and a bottle. As a gesture of hospitality, offer people who want to quit at intermission a free drink, so they can wait for their companions who are watching act two. Just take care of people. They get drinks, you get money, everybody wins. Tax, zoning, and liquor laws in your way? Change them or ignore them. Do what it takes.

Embrace the idea of third space that made Starbucks what it is today. Third space is that place that is not work or home where people come together to talk, socialize and share ideas. The theater is a perfect place to do that. Make the lobby a third space. If that is not an option work with a local bar that you can encourage your audience to attend after the show. Theater is meant to create ideas and dialogue so lets give people that place to have that dialogue.

8. Boors’ night out. You know what else builds community? Audience participation, on the audience’s terms. For one performance of each show, invite the crowd to behave like an Elizabethan or vaudeville audience: Sell cheap tickets, serve popcorn, encourage people to boo, heckle, and shout out their favorite lines. (”Stella!”) The sucky, facile Rocky Horror Picture Show only survives because it’s the only play people are encouraged to mess with. Steal the gimmick.

I am hesitant to agree with this. I think there are some great shows that this can work and if a theater wants to explore melodrama (maybe Greek plays) than this might be suitable. I am not sure beyond that.

9. Expect poverty. Theater is a drowning man, and its unions—in their current state—are anvils disguised as life preservers. Theater might drown without its unions, but it will certainly drown with them. And actors have to jettison the living-wage argument. Nobody deserves a living wage for having talent and a mountain of grad-school debt. Sorry.

When referring to fringe theaters I agree there is no money to be had for any of the artists there. Work done is for the love of the art and to grow as artists. I do not think this comment should apply to the bigger regional theaters.

10. Drop out of graduate school. Most of you students in MFA programs don’t belong there—your two or three years would be more profitable, financially and artistically, out in the world, making theater. Drama departments are staffed by has-beens and never-weres, artists who might be able to tell you something worthwhile about the past, but not about the present, and certainly not about the future. Historians excepted—art historians are great. If things don’t turn around, they may be the only ones left.

Interesting comment in light of what I have been writing about the Rutgers MFA acting program. I do think more artists are going into financial debt over education which will catch up to them much like the sub-prime loans and housing bubble. Those artists will have to work more to pay off those debts and that means less time creating art. I think all artists need some education how to live financially simple.  And also be encouraged that doing the work is very important.

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Citizen-Scholar-Artist

September 30, 2008 by dennisbaker 

Dr. Scott Walters writes an excellent post entitled Teaching Alternatives around an excerpt from Jill Dolan’s Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theatre.

Walters goes on to describe theater schools as “the place where actors had their individuality erased, where they were beaten down and taunted and diminished as part of a ‘reshaping’ process that is called ‘training’”. The excuse is that the world and the industry will be even worse so the schools have to act in the same manner. Through Walters and Dolan’s classes hopefully students will be able to recognize and desire alternative ways of exploring what it means to train as an artist.

The summary on Amazon states:

What is it about performance that draws people to sit and listen attentively in a theater, hoping to be moved and provoked, challenged and comforted? In Utopia in Performance, Jill Dolan traces the sense of visceral, emotional, and social connection that we experience at such times, connections that allow us to feel for a moment not what a better world might look like, but what it might feel like, and how that hopeful utopic sentiment might become motivation for social change.

She traces these “utopian performatives” in a range of performances, including the solo performances of feminist artists Holly Hughes, Deb Margolin, and Peggy Shaw; multicharacter solo performances by Lily Tomlin, Danny Hoch, and Anna Deavere Smith; the slam poetry event Def Poetry Jam; The Laramie Project; Blanket, a performance by postmodern choreographer Ann Carlson; Metamorphoses by Mary Zimmerman; and Deborah Warner’s production of Medea starring Fiona Shaw. While the book richly captures moments of “feeling utopia” found within specific performances, it also celebrates the broad potential that performance has to provide a forum for being human together; for feeling love, hope, and commonality in particular and historical (rather than universal and transcendent) ways.

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No Audition Class for Rutgers Graduate Acting Students

September 24, 2008 by dennisbaker 

The Rutgers graduate acting program is not supplying its third year students with an auditioning teacher.  The teacher for the course went on sabbatical and the administration decided not to pay for a replacement. A student brings in audition material to perform and the other classmates critique it.  Most of these classmates have no professional acting or audition experience. And they are paying for this?

How can this be okay in an MFA acting program. The big sell of these programs is that they will prepare you for the professional life of an actor. Last time I checked the major component of an actor’s life is auditioning. Actors audition far more than they are actually hired to perform. This is completely baffling. How is Rutgers expected to be taken seriously as an graduate MFA acting program when the administration is not willing to pay for a teacher to help in such an essential component of an actor’s career? As prospective students begin to research acting programs for auditions at the end of the year/beginning of next year I hope they highly question attending (and paying) an institution who is not willing to put resources into such an important aspect of an actors training.

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Free Acting Seminar in Los Angeles

August 22, 2008 by dennisbaker 

Friend and teacher Mick Montgomery is holding a free acting seminar on Saturday, August 30th from 2-6pm at the Actors Workout Studio in North Hollywood.  If you are reading this from Los Angeles, I highly recommend it!  You can click on the image to enlarge it or read the details below.

The title of the seminar is “Discover the Actor You’ve always wanted to be!”

The class will include a discussion on discovering who your inner actor is and will feature an introduction to the Meisner Acting Technique as taught @ the Actors Workout Studio. This is not a sit down and listen to someone talk for four hours seminar. It’s an active and fun class designed to get you rooted in your body.

Space is limited so sign up today! You can call 310.754.9121 for any questions about the seminar. Also, feel free to send this to any acting friends who may be interested in attending.

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One Man’s Method for Better Acting: Just Stop Doing It

August 7, 2008 by dennisbaker 

The title of this blog comes from a New York Times article written back at the end of last year about the actor Bill Camp.  I have been thinking about this article for a while.  There is a lot in the story that I feel connected to in my current season of life.  In it James C. Nicola, artistic director of New York Theater Workshop, is quoted describing Camp as a sterotype New Englander, stoic, decent.  “I think he’s like like Jimmy Stewart: warm, decent guy, with a lot of stuff going on inside.  But he’s not going to trouble you with his drama.”

In 2002 the talent agency that represented him suddenly went under, and he was asked to come and pick up his headshots. Other agents expressed an interest in taking him on, but he declined. “I needed to stop,” he recalled. “I wasn’t enjoying acting the way I do now. It became about getting the next job, thinking too much about that. It’s hard to stay away from that as an actor. The vitality of striving, the joy of making something was starting to wane. I needed to know that I can do other stuff, that I can live not being an actor.”

At the time he and Ms. Marvel were in California, where she was acting in the television series “The District.” Mr. Camp took a series of nontheater jobs. He cooked in a restaurant, worked as a landscaper and a night watchman; he repaired cars.

Ms. Marvel, who met Mr. Camp at Juilliard in the late 1980s, supported her husband’s decision. “It’s always up for debate whether we should keep doing this or not,” she said. “You’re really in a boxing ring taking blow after blow, and it’s really a matter of whether you can keep standing. Also, I think it’s important for an artist to live in the world.”

My life feels the same way.  I am currently working full time in New Jersey and starting in September will commute to NYU three times a week for classes at night.  This leaves no room for auditions or acting.  The pros of working full time and still being able to go to school are obvious.  My family is able to save money to move back to Los Angeles, save for retirement and begin to pay back school loans.  Also the skills I am learning at this job can be done on a freelance level, which is good for the life of an actor.  I could do this job anywhere, all I would need is a laptop and a internet connection.  Pretty amazing if you think about it.

There is still something that plagues me.  Since the debacle I have not been consistently auditioning for a couple of years and I feel rusty.  More than that I feel I need to get out there and prove that all the negative things said about me as an actor in the last couple of years are not true and that the negativity can be overcome.  With all this recent negative input into my art I have had  very little positive to counterbalance it.  That leaves me to question will I go back to pursuing acting as a career? Am I good enough? What expectations are lost and what need to be adjusted or regained?

I am always reminded of what the prof says, only 13% of equity actors are working at any given time.  That is a lot of actors not working as actors. A veteran actor of twelve years is having the same doubts and wrote into Backstage asking, “Should I just face the fact that I’m not going to “make it”? If after all this time I can’t support myself, should I quit?” Jackie Apodaca’s answer was what has been said many times in the past. Do what you love and if it is acting, “Take this minor setback in stride, and try to look at your new job as research for all those working folks you’ve yet to play. With your track record, the drought is not likely to last long.” There are low points in everyone’s acting career.  Points where they are not auditioning and wondering if they should quit it all together.  Moving forward in one’s acting career does not mean he/she is always auditioning or acting.

Mr. Camp’s life has completely changed since his two-year, self-imposed exile, and not only in career terms. After many years of dating, he and Ms. Marvel finally married on Sept. 5, 2004. Shortly before the ceremony his father died. And in June 2006 Ms. Marvel gave birth to a son, Silas. That too has fed Mr. Camp’s acting, his wife said. “It makes you a better human being, doesn’t it?” she said. “Anytime we can make ourselves and our art less precious, it improves.”

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Burbank students protest to perform Laramie Project

July 1, 2008 by dennisbaker 

About a month ago students from John Burroghs High School in Burbank performed The Laramie Project off campus at the near by professional Colony theater after the principal prohibited them from performing the play at school. As reported by the Los Angeles Times, the students did not take no for an answer and begin to rehearse the play at a student’s backyard. “They dubbed themselves the Don’t Tell Bailey Theatre Company in honor of their drama teacher — who could not be involved because it wasn’t school-sanctioned — and started to advertise the play via e-mail and a MySpace site. That brought an unexpected bonus: Leigh Fondakowski and Kelli Simpkins, two of the creators of “The Laramie Project” as members of the Tectonic Theater Project, decided to join the 23 cast members for three days of rehearsals this week, flying in from New York City and Chicago.” The students asked the Colony theater if they can perform on their stage and the theater not only allowed it but provided them with costumes, props, programs and help with sound and lighting.

This feels like a small world as I substitute taught for four years in Burbank and subbed specifically for Scott Bailey’s drama class. As an actor and teacher his class was one I always enjoyed having the opportunity to teach. The students were excited and serious about theater. They had fun and enjoyed the class. This was all a reflection on the good job Bailey was doing.

With al these thoughts I was shocked by the lat paragraph of the article. Principal Emilio Urioste Jr. took away Bailey’s drama assignment for next year, although Bailey will remain on the faculty teaching English. The article states that Bailey is challenging the decision with a union grievance. I hope this is continued to be reported on because I feel this news to be just as shocking as the students’ story. The only details given about the reassignment was that Urioste “noted that he and Bailey have disagreed over the direction of Burroughs’ drama program — Urioste hoping for big musicals that can merge talents from the drama, music and dance departments, while Bailey has stuck to his preference for more intimate and adventurous plays.” Something more had to happen for Bailey to be reassigned or was media scrutiny enough for Urioste to not only recount his decision regarding the play, but to also remove Bailey as some sort of threat. Hopefully the decision will be reversed.

UPDATE: Scott Bailey He has taken a post at Charter High School of the Arts — Multimedia and Performing, which is also known as CHAMPS, where he’ll teach English and be involved in the theater program this fall as reported by the Burbank Leader.

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Small is Beautiful

July 1, 2008 by dennisbaker 

The Odds Are As Big As Their DreamsThis is what happens when I email Scott Walters a story. He beats me to writing about it! All the same he writes a good post entitled Be Quiet! We’re Making Progress! about the New York Times article, The Odds Are As Big As Their Dreams. A group of actors from Los Angeles desire to gain “credibility” and strike it big by putting on an Off-Off-Broadway production John Osborne’s Epitaph for George Dillon. He goes on to question what it means to have credibility as an artist in theater and asks can that only be found in New York. Crosby highlights how deep this addiction runs when saying, “I can say now that I’ve done theater in New York,” because she and her friends uprooted and bought a production for $20,000, “which gives you some credibility.”

I look at the numbers of what these actors did to produce 12 performances of this show and I question if it is worth it. I understand the desire to try and hit it big in New York. To gamble in hope you might just be the one show that is loved and transfered to a bigger house. But at the expense to sell all you own? Why not try it out in LA first to see if there is an audience for this play? Just because you want to put on the production does not mean you should do it. Larry Moss read this play thirty years ago. What is the life of the play? How has it been received over all? It is something a current audience is going to connect with? These are all questions that can be explored in a smaller venue. I question why it had to be New York or nothing? I realize the the fact that New York is the hub of theater will not go away anytime soon, but why kill yourself?

I think it comes down to an American set of standards that has forgotten that Small is Beautiful. Yea it might be cliche, but it does not make it less true. In this group’s desire to gain “credibility” in New York they forgot about all the other possibilities. LA has a big enough theater scene where if this play is good it could have gotten some recognition. I say LA (also a huge market) because the idea of producing this show in some theaters across the U.S. is probably not even on these actors radar and in today’s market can not be compared to the desire to hit it big in New York. Even the phrase, “hit it big” is so common in the theater world it runs opposite to the small is beautiful mentality. But that mentality is not what people want to hear or read about.

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