TELEVISION PROGRAM ALERT
The PBS series "American Masters" will feature a profile on the Juillard School of the Arts in New York this coming Wednesday (Jan.29th). Juillard is arguably the finest acting conservatory in the country, and I recommend that you tune in.

HOOKS ACTORS WORKING
SABRINA SCHLUMBERGER (s.stdy '01) has been cast in an improv production of "How We First Met" at the Actor's theatre on Sutter Street in SF. It runs until the end of February. NICOLE PITMAN (F/TV '02) appears in "Precious Stones", a world premier play by Jamil Khoury at the Silk Road Theatre Project in Chicago, through March 2nd. LISA WISEMAN (s.stdy '95) appears in "Grace & Glorie" at the Bus Barn Stage Company through February 15th. For info: http://www.busbarn.org. SEAN KRANZ (pvt coaching) will portray the Captain in Peninsula Youth Theater's "The Sound of Music" at Mountain View Center for Performing Arts, March 8-16. JENNIFER KRANZ (pvt coaching) will appear in the TheatreWorks Production of "Jane Eyre" (the musical), April 12-May 4. DARA RICHTER (s.stdy -'98) has been cast in an indie entitled "Love Bombay Style".

DRAGON PRODUCTIONS, founded by Meredith Hagedorn (f/tv '00), will present a slate of plays in Palo Alto, Ca in the Palo Alto Art Center, 1313 Newell Road, Palo Alto. The first show, "Assorted Flavors", will run Feb. 13-March 1. For tickets, go here: http://www.dragonproductions.net/.

CHICAGO CLASS SCHEDULE

ONGOING SCENE STUDY
We have two classes of scene study, which is where we work on acting as an art form. Monday night or Wednesday night, 7-10:30. On-going, start at any time, free audit, 16-week commitment. $135 per month.

COMMERCIALS WORKSHOP MARCH 8-9
Excellent and fun on-camera class for anybody that wants to get into commercials or to improve their batting averages. 9-4 Saturday and 10-5 Sunday. $250 ($175 for current scene study students)

FILM DEMO WORKSHOP STARTS MARCH 11TH
Tuesday nights, 7-10:30, four-week session, work on your own demo scene. Shoot and edit digital video. Intended for experienced actors. $250

PRIVATE COACHING
$75 per hour

CRAFT NOTES
"MATURITY IN AN ARTIST"

The New York Times recently ran an insightful analysis about Michelle Kwan's victory at the United States Figure Skating Championships. (NY Times, "A Performance Beyond Youth's Flights of Fancy" by Selena Roberts, Jan. 20, 2003) The writer compared Ms. Kwan's performance to those of her closest rivals, Sarah Hughes and Sasha Cohen, concluding that the winning difference was a measure of maturity. At twenty-two years old, with a lifetime of competition and significant Olympic losses behind her already, Michelle Kwan has developed a perspective on things that cannot yet be expected of young Hughes and Cohen. She has become a woman, and they are still girls, and the difference is evident in their respective performances on ice.

As Selena Roberts observes in her article: "...Every arch of the back, each wave of the arms, all the staccato steps, they went beyond the one-two-three, one-two-three of choreography. Kwan was living through Rodrigo's "Concierto de Aranjuez," letting the joy and the pain of the composer's honeymoon haunt flow through her bones. Her heart beat with each note. Teenagers don't pull this off. It's akin to Britney Spears singing a love ballad. There is a voice to the tearful lyrics, but teenage heartache is often cured with a trip to the mall."

And so, too, is it with all artists. I remember being similarly struck by the maturity of novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez after reading his "Love in the Time of Cholera" as compared to his first big success, "A Hundred Years of Solitude". When he was a young writer, his prose had a "Look at me, Ma! No hands!" quality. By the time he wrote "Cholera", he didn't need to do that any more. His words had strength and the maturity of an artist that did not need to over sell or show off.

Opera diva Beverly Sills to this day wears a fine gold necklace around her neck, which proclaims, "Been there, Done that."

Picasso's earliest work, brilliant and prodigous though it was, nonetheless reflected the strong and obvious influence of Monet, Van Gogh,Toulouse-Lautrec and others. It was not until he hit cubism that he began to find his own voice and maturity.

A few months ago in these Craft Notes, I wrote about being impressed by Al Pacino's mature work in the movie "Insomnia". If you compare his performance in that film to what he did in, say, "Dog Day Afternoon", you can see the development of an artist. He was marvelous in "Dog Day" of course but, in "Insomnia", he is mature. You can see it immediately in his eyes and general demeanor. That opening shot of him in the small airplane, as he glanced out the window at the tundra below, spoke volumes. He could not have done that in 1969.

Maturity as an artist is more than a reflection of the aging process. I can think of a number of older performers who remain artistically static. Can anybody spell Shatner? How about Hawn?

The best artists are the most shamanistic, and it is not simply a factor of age. An artist of maturity seems to possess insight, a feel for the Big Picture of humanity. In the presence of a shamanistic actor, you feel comforted and inspired. She seems able to imagine life outside the tribal encampment and to point the direction from here to there. You feel embraced by such a performer.

Irene Worth and Geraldine Page both had this quality, even when they were young. Duvall has had it since he was in his thirties. They say Duse had it. Nicholson has had it all along but is only now, in his sixties, starting to display it. Same with Pacino. Sammy Davis, Jr. had it by his middle years. The jazz singer Jimmy Scott has it in spades. Ella and Frank had it. Willy Nelson has it, as did Billie Holiday and Tony Bennett.

Is it possible for a new artist to develop this shamanistic quality? Yes, I think so. You do it by focusing on more than just the craft. Any novice can learn the difference between stage left and stage right and can master a Meisner repetition exercise. You grow as an artist by paying attention to what is happening in the world and being willing to form opinions about it. Read deeply in history, philosophy and literature. Read The New York Times and Hemingway and The Economist as well as Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams. Stand before Jackson Pollack as well as Michelangelo and Massacio. Consider life. Consider death. Try to understand love and war. And then make it your business to communicate what you know.

Meaningful acting, like maturity, requires courage. It is not a process of hiding, but one of exposing. And more to the point of this essay, there is no age minimum or limit on the willingness to understand and tell the truth. Michelle Kwan is there at twenty-two apparently. Willa Cather wrote the following when she was forty-four:

"Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is." (Willa Cather, "The Song of the Lark")