PRIVATE COACHING
If you are in the Bay Area and would like to have a private coaching session with me while I'm there, now would be a good time to schedule it. I'll be staying in an apartment in Menlo Park so you may have to travel there, but we will have room to work on monologues and /or cold readings and to consider career strategies. My local contact number during that period will be 650-325-1614. Private session rate is $75/hour.

DECEMBER/JANUARY CHICAGO CLASS SCHEDULE
The final scene study class of the year will be Monday Dec. 17th.
We'll resume on Monday, January 7th.

A new film class is scheduled to begin on January 8th. Nine weeks, Tuesday evening, 7-10:30. In this class, we shoot and edit demo scenes on digital video, and we work on cold reading/audition skills for movies and TV.

The next commercials workshop will be January 26-27. Fun, high energy, lots of time on camera.

TEEN IMPROV CLASS COMING UP IN CHICAGO!
Marianna Runge will teach an improv class for teens in my Chicago studio on Saturday mornings, beginning January 19th. Drop me an e-mail for info.

ED'S REVIEW OF SINGER JIMMY SCOTT...
He was welcomed to the stage at Chicago's Old Town School November 9th as "a man of grace", and I say amen to that. It was a rare privilege for me to see this spindly matchstick of a man with a heart as big as the sky and as deep as the sea cast his loving spell on a sold-out audience. From the opening lines of "Blue Skies" to the final fade on "Everybody's Somebody's Fool", his hauntingly feminine voice and personal jazz interpretations were nothing less than magical. Jimmy Scott is a singer's singer, a stylist par excellent, and he can do things with a lyric that are worthy of the finest
actor, which is why he thrills me so. It's just great acting. Jimmy Scott is seventy-five years old now, so if you get the chance, don't pass him up. After the show, I milled toward the Lincoln Blvd exit with the rest of the mesmerized crowd, and I heard one man observe wonderingly to another, "Reminds me a lot of Billie Holliday." And amen to that, too. For my money, his best album is "All The Way". An excellent feature profile on Jimmy Scott ran recently in the New York Times Magazine. Here's a link. You may have to register with the Times in order to read it, but it's free.
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20000827mag-jimmyscott.html

MELISSA GILBERT ELECTED PRESIDENT OF SCREEN ACTORS GUILD...
SAG members have elected a scab to be the new national SAG president. Melissa Gilbert violated Rule One in 1986 after being a SAG member for maybe twenty years. "Nobody told me not to", she says, an explanation I would not accept from my own daughter. Even worse, she produced the scab movie she starred in! At this very moment SAG is publicly kicking out of the union members that did non-union work during the last year's commercials strike as well as extending Rule One to cover overseas runaway productions. Given her transgression, Ms. Gilbert's election is a slap in the face of every actor that honors the Guild. I would support an amendment to SAG rules that would prohibit violators of Rule One from ever holding SAG office of any kind. And that includes the presidency.

HOOKS ACTORS WORKING
KATHLEEN PARK (comml -'99) appears in "Snake in Fridge" at the Actors Theatre of San Francisco, thru Dec 14. For reservations, call 415-296-9179. She also shot an industrial for SBC Communications / Pacific Bell recruitment and did an indie film entitled "Leila". Busy girl.<g> JENNY GARCIA (s.stdy & f/tv - '91) appeared in "Conduct of Life" at Durham Studio Theatre in Berkeley last month. KIER BEADLING (comml + s.stdy -01) shot a spec commercial about dental services for Tom Donald Films. He also did a music video for a local san francisco band called downstroke and (as if all that was not enough!) a 7-11 targeted spec commercial for walkumentary
productions. RASSHEEDAH NASHEED (comml-'01)landed a principal role in a KGO tv promo for Dr. Dean Edell. RAY RENATI (all classes - '99-'00) was in "The Herbal Bed" for Palo Alto Players last month. JANET JOHNSTON (f/tv'98) appeared in "Why We Have a Body" at Theatre Rhinoceros last month. ALAN QUISMORIO (s.stdy-'01) and VICKY WANG (s.stdy-'01) appeared in "Table 5 at the Empire Sechuan" last month at the Canvas Cafe and Gallery in SF. BILL HAMLIN (all classes
-'01)appeared in a David Mamet double bill in November at The Randall Museum in SF. He did "The Water Engine" and "Mr. Happiness." ARTHUR LIFAN TAO (f/TV -'01) has been cast in the lead of indie film "The Gargoyle." JOE HERRINGTON (s.stdy-current/chicago) landed a role in an indie entitled "Cast of Thousands", produced by Angry Baby Monkey Films. ANDREA MICHAELS (s.stdy -'01) appears in "Radio TBS" with the Santa Clara Players.

CRAFT NOTES
"A FEW NOTES FROM SOME OF ED'S RECENT ACTING CLASSES"

"You're making all of your characters like you in your everyday life. The names are changing, but they are all behaving the same way. This is a kind of personality acting as opposed to character acting. Your characters have different rhythms than you do, different values, different imperatives."

"Speak up."

"Make the theatrical moment more important! We don't want to see a guy and girl who are sort of hot for one another. We want to see the defining moment in your lives."

"You are far too cerebral. Your head is disconnected from the lower part of your body. Act with your groin. Our life source is down there."

"If you feel like you should do a thing on stage, there is a very good likelihood that you should. You get into trouble when you censor and edit yourself."

"Make yelling a rare choice in acting. If there is any other way to express something, choose that. Use yelling as sparingly as you would an exclamation point when you write a letter."

"Keep physical distance between yourself and your scene partner. There is power on stage in that distance. If we were shooting movies, it would be okay to get real close because the camera would
compensate, but not on stage in the live theatre."

"Find the humor in the scene, even if it is a knock-down drag-out fight."

"Smile! The human smile says, 'I won't hurt you.' It is a valuable tool regardless of the content of the scene. You too often want to make your scenes grim."

"You are not really acting. You are acting like you are acting. Big difference."

"Read Keith Johnstone's book Impro. In it, he talks at length about the value in status negotiation."

"Tighten up your ass cheeks when you deliver that speech. It will cause the whole thing to seem more important."

"Put your knees together and sit up in the chair. You are a diplomat, not a lounge lizard!"

"Deal with the reality of your scene partner. When you look at her, you will not see a character, you will see her! Acting is not about hallucinating a character."

"A scene is a negotiation. That means there must be a way you can win and a way you can lose. The problem you are having is that you are positioning your character above the fray. You are lecturing your scene partner rather than negotiating."

"Always make acting choices that invite the most conflict and get you into the most trouble. I notice that you keep physically turning away from your scene partner. Do you feel how the tension in the
scene melts when you do that?"

"It is okay for you to lust after your scene partner if the script calls for lust. In the first place, there is nothing in the scene that says you have to have actual sexual relations with her, so she is perfectly safe regardless of how much you lust. And in the second place, unless she feels that you are actually coming on, she won't feel threatened enough to respond, which is the requirement of the
scene. Don't worry about offending her. She can take care of herself."

"You learn acting through feeling, like learning how it feels to ride a bicycle. You don't learn it in a cerebral way. We can sit here and talk acting theory all night long and nobody in the room will be
a much better actor than he was when he arrived."

"Go ahead and gesture! Use your hands and arms. They are extremely graceful and expressive. In evolution, humans gestured before they spoke words after all."

"When you are presenting a monologue, it is usually better to stand than to sit if you can justify it. That way the auditors can see your body."

"Why do you keep hiding from the audience? Do you realize you are doing that? Notice how much time you spend facing upstage. We want to see you! The reason you act is to communicate with an audience."

"You can't be an actor if you do not want to be seen and heard. I notice that you hardly open your mouth when you speak. Be bold! Speak up! The world wants to hear from you!"

"Acting is about reaching out and touching somebody. It's not about diddling with yourself. Put your focus on the other guy in the scene."

"Thinking tends to lead to conclusions. Emotion tends to lead to action."

"The audience doesn't much care about the information in a scene. It puts up with the information in order to get to the emotion. We empathize with emotion."

"Are you angry with me for pushing you too hard? That's okay, I can take it. Use that anger to propel yourself in the scene."

"Stop pawing her. Try to attract her. Get her to walk into your arms."

"Take the stage the way a priest takes the pulpit. Think of the audience as a congregation."

"Good grief! What do you have on that sandwich? You're going to choke during the scene! Take smaller bites."

"Acting is doing something. The thing you seem to be doing is trying to remember your lines. An audience doesn't much care about watching you do that."

"Why do you want to be an actor? How much are you willing to risk in order to achieve that goal? You'll get nowhere by telling me that you can't do what I am asking you to do in the scene. Try! I'm not going to hurt you, and I'm not going to let you hurt yourself. If it doesn't work, we can try something else, but don't just stand there and balk."

"Acting is a process of exposing, not a process of hiding. It requires a lot of courage to be a good actor."

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