I will be teaching on Thursday night only at the new location! The hours of the new class will be 7-10:30. Tuition remains the same as it has been, $135 per month. All other policies remain the same.

TRANSITIONAL SCHEDULE:
**** Monday and Wednesday night classes will continue at the Broadway location through Wednesday, April 23rd.
**** Ed will be in Europe April 27-May 12, teaching at Filmakademie Baden-Wurttemberg and visiting Barcelona.
**** Ed will be in Kalamazoo, Michigan May 15-18 to teach and speak at the Kalamazoo Animation Festival.
**** The first class at The Audition Studio will be Thursday, May 22nd, 7pm.

A NEW FILM DEMO CLASS BEGINS TUESDAY MAY 20TH
I have decided that, since the film demo class involves only four actors, and we will be videotaping scenes, I will use my own apartment as a location. (Frankly, the resulting scenes will probably have a higher production value this way anyway.) My apartment is located at 600 West Surf #3 in Chicago. It is a half block south of the current Broadway acting studio. Here is a map.

NEWS REGARDING ED HOOKS COMMERCIAL WORKSHOP TO FOLLOW. STAY TUNED.

RICHARD SEYD ANNOUNCES SEDWAYS ACTING STUDIO IN LA AND SF
I have been recommending Richard Seyd's San Francisco classes for years. He's a very good teacher as well as an experienced director. He works with what he calls "the trigger method". His new Sedways Acting Studio is offering weekly classes (scene study, voice, audition technique) in both San Francisco and Los Angeles. For more info, send e-mail to studio@seydways.com or call (415) 626-0453. http://www.seydways.com/

MIDWAY SPORTS GAMES CHEERLEADER CONTEST
One of my Chicago students walked into class last week and told me she had entered the Midway Sports Nationwide Cheerleader Search contest. Her name is SIA, and she has put together a little digital QuickTime cheerleading clip to show what she can do with a pom pom. Check her out, and then cast a vote. Do it quick. The contest ends tomorrow April 11th, midnight. " Gimme a Vote! Gimme a Vote! Gimme a Vote, Vote, Vote! Yaaaay Midway!!" http://www.midwaysports.net

FUN AND UNUSUAL ACTING GIG IN SAN FRANCISCO
The Standardized Patient Program at UCSF School of Medicine is looking for actors to role- play as patients for medical students. Pay is approximately $20.00/hour. I know many actors who have done this gig, and they all say it is fun. Send headshot and resume to:

UCSF School of Medicine
Bernie Miller
513 Parnassus Ave.
Box 0410
San Francisco, CA 94143-0410

Bernie is presently looking for the following:

Caucasian males - 28 - 38 years old.
Caucasian males - 50 - 60 years old.
Caucasian males - 35 - 45 years old
Asian males 55 - 65 years old
Asian males 20 - 35 years old
African American males - 35 - 45 years old
Hispanic females - (to play a 16 year old) can be older but able to look 16.
Caucasian females - (to play 72 year old)

CONGRATS TO VAL AND BAIRD TINKEY (s.stdy '00)!
They welcomed a son, Aiden Cameron, on April 6th. Mom and baby are healthy and happy. Dad is a basket case of course.

HOOKS ACTORS WORKING
DAN NURCZYK (s.stdy '02) is directing "Tell Tale Heart" for a showcase at Chicago Shakespeare April 22nd. His lead performer is MARY CAMPBELL (s.stdy '01-'02). Dan is also directing "Sister Mary Ignatious..." and "The Actor's Nightmare" for the Stage Two theater in Lincolnshire. JAXY BOYD (all classes '94-'96) booked a national spot for Kia Motors. (DavidandGoliath Advertising). JOHN SCHUMACHER (all classes '96-'97) appears at LA's Open Fist Theatre in William Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying". DANIELLE ZEGHBIB (all classes '99-'00) is directed a one-woman play called "Taking Care" at the Workshop Theater Company in NYC. She also performs weekly with the troupe "Bowling for Krumbein" at the long-form improv and sketch comedy theater Above Kleptomania in NYC. KIRSTIN TEGTMEIER (comml '95) has the lead in an industrial film for Highway Video. MARY JO MROCHINSKI (all classes '96-'97)is doing some sketch improv Wednesday, April 9th, 8pm The Fake Gallery,4319 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles (near Vermont). Cheap, only $5. For a good time, call Mary Jo at 323-428-3362.

CRAFT NOTES
"Emotions Revealed" (Paul Ekman's new book)
"Thinking tends to lead to conclusions; emotion tends to lead to action." This is acting lesson number one in each of my acting workshops. The first thing to understand about audiences is that they empathize with a character's emotion, not with her thinking. When your character feels something (an automatic value response), she tends to do something about it, and that is what draws the audience in emotionally.

Paul Ekman (http://www.paulekman.com/) is a professor of psychology in the department of psychiatry at the University of California Medical School, San Francisco. He is an expert on the expression of emotion in the human face and, as such, anything that he writes is automatically going to be of interest and value to actors. He is the author of thirteen previous titles, including "Telling Lies", and his newest is "Emotions Revealed (Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life)" (Times Books, 2003, US$25). I just yesterday completed reading it and want to recommend it to you.

"Emotions Revealed" is a scholarly and serious examination of emotion, but it is also a kind of fun Activity Book for actors. The text contains over one hundred photo illustrations of various emotional expressions, along with specific instructions about how to mechanically, in front of a mirror, achieve some of them. (I am not suggesting in any way that actors start playing results. It is an acting error to indicate results!) The facial movement of fear, for example: "Raise your upper eyelids as high as you can, and if you are able, also slightly tense your lower eyelids. If tensing your lower eyelids interferes with raising your upper eyelids, then just focus on raising your upper eyelids. (Then) let your jaw drop open, and stretch your lips horizontally back toward your ears; .... (Then) with your upper eyelids raised as high as they can go, staring straight ahead, raise your eyebrows as high as you can; try to see if you can also pull your eyebrows together while you keep your brows raised; if you can't do both, then just keep the eyebrows raised with your upper eyelids raised." Ekman includes this kind of thing for many emotional expressions, so you can sit in front of a mirror and make faces at yourself for hours on end. This alone is worth the price of the book.

To me, however, the real value of "Emotions Revealed" is Professor Ekman's insightful exploration of why we experience the emotions we do, and what we can and should do about it. In this regard, the book is a self-help text, one of the best I've seen. The three or four (okay, maybe five) psychologically dysfunctional actors out there will find this to be a very helpful roadsign pointing toward mental health. Paul Ekman first teaches you, for example, what the expression of sadness looks like in terms of micro-expression, and then he suggests various reasons why a person might have such an expression and offers ideas about how to approach someone with that particular display.

In no particular order, here are some gems I pulled from "Emotions Revealed":
*A false expression can be betrayed. It is slightly asymmetrical and lacks smoothness.
*Emotions are primarily about how we deal with other people.
*One of the most distinctive features of emotion is that the events that trigger emotions are influenced not just by our individual experience, but also by our ancestral past.
*It is hard not to behave emotionally when the stakes are high.
*The emotional signals given off by another person ...triggers our own emotional response, and that in turn colors our interpretation of what the person is saying, what we think are that person's motives, attitudes and intentions.
*There are no external signals that tell people we are thinking.
*It is part of our evolutionary heritage that we signal when each emotion begins.
*In anger, the emotional impulse is to move closer to the emotional trigger.
*Two emotions can occur in rapid sequence, again and again. Two emotions also can merge together into a blend. This happens far less than the rapid-succession process though.
*The eyebrows are more difficult to manage than the lower face.

I could go on and on and on with this, but you get the idea. Paul Ekman's book is chock full of good things to think about and study and learn about the process of human emotion. He is a Grand Master of emotional expression.. His book looks inside the human mind and correlates the emotional results with external expression. Every actor will want to have this title on her shelf.

"Emotions Revealed" at Amazon.com

Also, Professor Ekman has made available CD-ROM's for those people who want to get really serious about the study of micro-emotion. Yes, I'm buying 'em. <g> Here's the link: http://www.emotionsrevealed.com/

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