ERIC MAISEL
My good friend Eric Maisel is a most talented shaman. He is a creative coach, psychologist and author of upwards of twenty books. He's the perfect dinner guest, and I'm certain that his latest book will be immensely popular. It is entitled "The Atheist's Way", and it is about what you think it is about. Check it out: The Atheist's Way, http://www.theatheistsway.com. For information on Eric Maisel's other books and services, http://www.ericmaisel.com.

BASIL HOFFMAN
Another long time friend is LA-based actor/teacher/author Basil Hoffman. His excellent book, "Acting and How to be Good at It" has just come out in a second edition. Highly recommended. The site for the book is http://www.begoodatit.com. Basil's personal website is http://www.basilhoffman.com.

UPDATE ON SCREEN ACTORS GUILD THEATRICAL CONTRACT
Having been without a contract for seven months, and facing the prospect of a bitter strike against movie and television producers, a sizable percentage of SAG members balked and forced out of office the Guild's head negotiating team. Now a more moderate faction is handling the negotiations, and it is expected they will quickly settle. Talks are scheduled to resume February 17th.

Although I'm glad a contract is within sight, it is my opinion that the theatrical contract negotiations have been handled inefficiently from the start. Doug Allen, the lead negotiator that SAG will now have to give half a million dollars severance pay, never should have been in charge in the first place. His background was with the National Football League, and he had no first hand knowledge of acting. What he did was come in and try to muscle through a contract as if he was a Pittsburgh Steeler or something. Bad idea. The producers predictably ate his breakfast.

Post-Allen, the Guild has installed John McGuire to be head negotiator. John is a good union man who has a lot of past experience with SAG contract negotiations, but I fear he is rooted in the past. This is a person who has led SAG through over thirty previous contracts. Now more than ever, actors need some labor negotiator equivalent of Bill Gates to head up contract negotiation, somebody with both feet planted in the digital age. We need a negotiator who truly understands the sea change that is facing performers in an Internet environment. I contend that pay- for-play compensation is outdated. We need a new paradigm. Actors must look at the elephant from the other side.

WHERE'S WALDO?
In January I taught Acting for Animators at the National Animation and Design Centre in Montreal. Take a look, and find Waldo: http://www.nadcentre.com/regular/showcase/events

CHICAGO SCENE STUDY
The scene study workshop meets at The Acting Studio, 10 West Hubbard Street #2E, in the Loop. That is located half a block west of Hubbard and State streets. Hours are 7-10:30 on Thursday nights. It is free to audit once, and you can start at any time. Tuition is $135 per 4-week month.

ACTING FOR ANIMATORS WORKSHOP SCHEDULE
Jan 19-21, Montreal, Canada -- National Animation and Design Centre
Feb 2-6, Teesside, England - Animex International Festival
Mar 14, North Carolina - Epic Games
May 5-8, Stuttgart, Germany - FMX International Conference on Animation, Effects, Games and Digital Media
May 14-17, Kalamazoo, Michigan - Kalamazoo Animation Festival International
Nov 23-27, Swansea, South Wales - SAND Festival

CRAFT NOTES
“Darwin, Super-Objective and Acting”

If Constantin Stanislavsky held an opinion about the work of Charles Darwin, whose 200th birthday we are celebrating this month, he kept it to himself. This is according to Stanislavsky scholar and University of Southern California drama professor Sharon M. Carnicke. Her book "Stanislavsky in Focus: An Acting Master for the Twenty-First Century" is, in my view, the final word on the great man. If Ms. Carnicke says he did not talk about Darwin, that is good enough for me.

Still, it is hard to fathom how he avoided it. After all, "The Origin of the Species" was published in 1859, just four years before Stanislavsky was born, and the book was translated into Russian in 1864. Moscow is home to the world's first Darwin museum, opened in 1907, and Stanislavsky's work at the Moscow Art Theatre was guided by Shakespeare's dictum, "Hold the mirror up to nature." Darwin was all about nature. I can't imagine why Stanislavsky was silent on this incredibly relevant topic, but I will accept that he was.

Evolutionary theory underpins all of my work as an acting teacher, particularly when it comes to discovering a character's super-objective. I teach that life is one big mating dance and that we humans act to survive, which seems self-evident on the surface. But in order to create compelling drama, an actor or writer needs to have a primal understanding of the struggle. Survival strategies are not always pretty. Indeed, they are often savage and bloody. The amazing thing is that, after such a hard fought battle, we emerge with something as beautiful as what we call life. But the stuff of drama and comedy are for sure in the battle, not in the peaceful sunrise that follows.

A super-objective is something that drives a person on his or her life's trajectory. At the risk of psychologizing, I might suggest - just as an example - that our most recent president, George W. Bush, was and is guided by an intense desire to please his father. Toppling Saddam was an objective. Calling out the armed forces was an action. Conflict was with the situation. But toppling Saddam in the first place could well have been driven by a desire to balance the books with Bush Sr's old nemesis.

Super-objective helps explain the seeming contradictions in a character's behavior. Aristotle taught us that contradictions do not in fact exist. If you find yourself looking at one of them, check your premises. Human behavior is a messy affair. We are the only animal that can know a thing is bad for us, and yet still do it. We, unlike animals lower on the food chain, are perfectly capable of operating against our own self-interest.

How could Macbeth have been convinced to commit murder? He was not a bad fellow. He was not a killer. On one level, his behavior was irrational. But on another, the potential for murder was there all along. Find his super-objective, and you will find that potential for murder.

Another real-life example: How could Bill Clinton have risked his entire presidency for a cheap sexual tryst? It doesn't make sense, does it? But if you were cast to portray the ex-president, it would be necessary for you to justify what he did. The answer, I propose, is in finding his super-objective. For some reason, the presidency itself did not make him feel powerful enough. He needed the attention of a White House intern. Such behavior is Shakespearean - and Darwinian.

We will go see twenty or thirty productions of "Hamlet" in a lifetime. But surely we know the plot after the first production or two. Why keep on attending? The answer - again - is in super-objective. Every actor who portrays Hamlet is going to deal with the same words and will have to discover the same actions and objectives. The big question is "why"? What we in the audience want to know is what this actor thinks make Hamlet tick - in other words, what is his super-objective - and what that actor thinks makes Hamlet tick. The majesty in the role as Shakespeare conceived and wrote him is that he will tolerate different interpretations.

Again, we act to survive. If you position a man at the edge of a cliff and slowly drive a car toward him, he is going to do absolutely anything he can in order to live, even if he must kill the driver of the car. He's going to do that even if he is a priest. We are hard wired by nature to act to survive.

Medea killed her children for evolutionary motives. Her husband betrayed her. Kill a man, and you kill him once; kill his children, and you kill him again and again and again. Super-objective is the key for the actress who would portray Medea.

One really interesting aspect of super-objective is that the character - as in life -- most often is unaware of it. This is the kind of thing we attempt to discover in psychotherapy. George Bush would probably deny he has any father issues. Bill Clinton would probably explain Monica Lewinsky as a "man thing". Macbeth would be unaware that he could be manipulated by a strong woman.

What I would give to have a conversation with Stanislavsky about Darwin and evolutionary theory! Come to think of it, a two-character play about a meeting between those particular two men has the ingredients of a hit play or novel. Maybe it is consistent with my super-objective to write one some day.

Until Next Month.... Be Safe!