NEW START DATE FOR CHICAGO FILM DEMO CLASS
I will teach a nine-week Film Demo class beginning on Tuesday, April 23rd, in Chicago. Tuesday nights, 7-10:30pm. Learn the differences between acting on stage and acting in film while producing your own two-scene demo tape.

ED'S HOME ADDRESS UPDATE
I moved from one apartment to another in Chicago. Please make a note of my new address:
600 W. Surf #3
Chicago, IL 60657
My new home phone is 773-477-9155, but you can also call me now in my acting studio. The number at the studio is 773-929-1667.

SAG HEALTH INSURANCE COSTS GOING UP, UP, UP...
Here's a quite good LA Times article about increasing premiums for SAG members. http://www.latimes.com/la-000017159mar08.story

CASTING CALL -- SAN FRANCISCO INDIE FILM
Aparna Malladi (s.stdy-'98-'99) is a hot film director now and is working on her next indie film project, "Mitsein". To see a cast list, go to this web site: http://www.geocities.com/aparnamalladi/mcasting.html

If you feel you fit any part and are interested in auditioning please send a photograph / head shot / jpg. and a short bio to Apu (that is her nickname) at the following address.
Aparna Malladi
1461 Alice Street # 409
Oakland, CA 94612
aparnamalladi@yahoo.com

For even more info about her project, go to:
http://www.mitsein.com

HOOKS ACTORS WORKING

ANDREA MICHAELS (s.stdy '-01) shot an indie short called "The Connie Letters". SARA BETTS (f/tv-'00) is playing Giuletta in the Palo Alto Players production of "Aspects of Love". LE ANNE RUMBEL (s.stdy & f/tv - '01) recently appeared in "Hay Fever" for the Ross Valley Players. SANDRA ADELL (comml -'01) is understudying Rose in the Madison Repertory theater's production of August Wilson's "Fences". SONJA SORIANO (f/tv-'01) completed two infomercials for a new exercise machine called "Total Slide". They were produced by Inn-finn-ity Group in L.A. GREG FORTSON (s.stdy -01) landed his first commercial, a v/o for Wachovia Bank. MEREDITH HAGEDORN (F/TV-'01) is appearing in "All in the Timing" by David Ives. Her own company, Dragon Productions, is producing. CHRISTINE SCHNEIDER (comml-'97) appears this June in an original play entitled "Deadline" at Hollywood's Jewel Box Theater on Cahuenga. ANNIE SCOTT ROGERS (s.stdy-'95) appears in indie films "The Film Teacher" and "The Roman Trilogy". DEEANN WEIR (f/TV & comml - '98) is appearing in The Queen's Company (all female) production of "The Feign'd
Courtesans" at the Tribeca Playhouse in NYC. For info, visit their web site. http://www.queenscompany.org/. MARY JO MROCHINSKI (all classes - '96-'97) landed a gig on the TV show "CSI". LARRY GULLI (F/TV '02) was cast as the lead in the Indy Film "Small Jobs"

HOOKS CHICAGO CLASS SCHEDULE
SCENE STUDY -- Monday or Wednesday, 7-10:30, on-going. Free audit, start any time.
COMMERCIALS WORKSHOP -- April 13-14. 9-4 Saturday and 10-5 Sunday.
FILM DEMO WORKSHOP -- Develop your own demo reel while working the differences between acting on stage and acting in movies. Next start date: Tuesday, April 23rd. Nine-week class.
PRIVATE COACHING -- Any time. $75 per hour. Work on monologues, career strategies, whatever.

CRAFT NOTES
"A (very !) Brief History of Acting and Acting Training"

Yesterday, a new actor walked into my office and said he was confused. "I've visited several acting schools, and they are all telling me something different. I don't know what to think or believe. "Let me try to un-ravel this for you. It isn't very complicated if you go through it step by step.

1) ACTING BEGAN IN RELIGION
Back then -- seven thousand years ago -- they didn't call it acting though. The actors were shamans, and the audience was the tribe. There would be a harsh winter or a flood, and the tribe would call out its shaman to talk, on behalf of the tribe, to the weather gods or the animal gods. This was the tribal way of banding together, of finding hope and inspiration so they could get through another season.

2) ANCIENT GREEK THEATRE STARTED AS RELIGION
In western cultures, we usually date the origins of acting and theatre back to ancient Greece. I personally date it back several thousand years before that, to the first shamans, but Greece is where the Dionysian ceremonies shifted away from man's relationship to the gods and onto man's relationship to man. Ancient Greece is where Thespis, the very first actor, started playing a character and talking back to the chorus.

The important thing for you to keep in mind as I abbreviate this history is that acting and theatre were still basically shamanistic activities, even in ancient Greece. The shamans were organized into choruses, that's all, and they chanted sophisticated verse. But the point was still the same: To help the tribe get through life successfully. It is what we did then, and it is what actor/shamans
still do today.

3) STANISLAVSKY MARKED A TURNING POINT
Constantin Stanislavsky is generally recognized as the father of modern, naturalistic psychologically based acting. He is the one that re-focused the actor's craft away from poses and indication and onto the stimulation of emotion. Early in his evolution of acting theory, Stanislavsky hit on the idea that actors ought to be able to do like the dogs in Pavlov's experiments. Remember those? Pavlov would feed the dog and ring a bell. The dog would associate the food with the sound of the bell. After a while Pavlov would ring the bell and withhold the food, and the dog would salivate anyway. Stanislavsky figured actors ought to be able to find "triggers" that would stimulate a similar organic response that would, in turn, lead to natural and honest acting.

4) STANISLAVSKY INFLUENCES LEE STRASBERG IN THE U.S.
Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theatre made a trip to the U.S. and performed in New York. Among the excited audience members was Lee Strasberg, of the Group Theatre. Strasberg adopted Stanislavsky's work and began to teach in a similar way at the Group Theatre, starting workshops that were devoted to the stimulating of emotional triggers.

5) "METHOD ACTING" BECOMES FAMOUS
Lee Strasberg's work became known in America as "The Method", and actors from the Group Theatre were the primary beneficiaries of the training. They matured as performers at roughly the same time that Hollywood started hitting its stride (1940's) and many of them became movie stars. The press generally credited Lee Strasberg and the Method with their success and appeal.

6) NOT EVERYBODY LOVED STRASBERG'S METHOD
Method acting was not for everybody. Some performers actively hated it in fact. And some thought the ideas behind it were good, but they couldn't stand Lee Strasberg, a very self-centered and controlling man. A division happened. The popular histories will tell you that Stella Adler, a member of Strasberg's group, went to Paris and met up with Stanislavsky who was doing some work there. The great man learned from Adler what it was that Strasberg was teaching, and he said he had changed his mind about the best way to approach acting. Stanislavsky had shifted away from finding emotional triggers and onto a search for commitment and physical action. Stella Adler went
back to New York and told Lee Strasberg what Stanislavsky said, and Strasberg said he didn't care. He was going to keep teaching what he was teaching because, after all, he was famous and it must be working. Adler left and started her own school, teaching the principles espoused by Stanislavsky in his later years. So did Group Theatre member named Sanford Meisner. He wound up later at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse and created what we now know is the Meisner Technique.

7)MEISNER TECHNIQUE BECOMES POPULAR
Today, Meisner Technique is the most widely taught approach to acting. It is rooted in the Repetition Exercise, which is designed to help new actors learn how to truthfully listen and respond.

8) THE HOOKS ALTERNATIVE TO MEISNER TECHNIQUE
This is where I come in. I do not teach Meisner Technique, but I occasionally use a few of the Meisner exercises to make a particular point. I think Meisner Technique is good as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough, and I disagree with its basic paradigm. Director and author Peter Brook, one of our few legitimate theatrical geniuses, explains that an actor in performance must maintain three simultaneous "tension lines" -- one between himself and himself (emotional connection); one between himself and his scene partner and one between himself and the audience. If any one of those tension lines goes slack for even a moment, the theatrical illusion is
broken. The problem I have with Meisner Technique is that it focuses on the first two of those tension lines and almost totally ignores the audience. The audience, in other words, is put in the position of a lurker to what is happening on stage. In my view, the audience is why the actor is acting in the first place because, as I have explained, acting is a shamanistic activity. We act for the tribe. An audience should not be a lurker in the theatre any more than a tribe should be a lurker to a shaman's chants.

9) SO WHAT IS A NEW ACTOR TO BELIEVE?
Every acting teacher will tell you that his way is the best, and Meisner teachers tend to be particularly pushy about it. My advice is that you audit as many classes as you can. If a teacher will not allow an audit, consider that to be a red flag. Acting is something that happens in front of an audience. If whatever they are doing in the classroom is so private that an audience can't watch it, there is a pretty good chance you do not want to learn whatever it is that they are teaching.

When you audit, try to determine if the acting class you are watching is a substitute for psychotherapy. Are the acting students getting up in front of the class and sobbing about past traumas in their lives? Beware. Acting is an art and a craft. It has therapeutic side-benefits, but it is not therapy. Acting is an art the same as music and painting and sculpture.

Talk to the students in the class as well as the teacher. If you are not comfortable with the teacher and the class room environment, don't sign up. Do not let yourself be intimidated.

10) A FINAL PERSONAL NOTE: ACTORS ARE SHAMANS
Especially since the awful events of September 11th, the world (tribe) has been in turmoil. We need shamans now more than ever. Acting is an honorable thing to do with your life, a way of making a
difference. It is a rough way to make a living mainly because the U.S. government does not support the arts very enthusiastically. But there are precious few people in the world that can get up in the
morning and say with confidence that they are speaking to what it means to live successfully in a complex world. To be an actor is worth the effort.

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