COMMERCIALS WORKSHOP MOVED TO JUNE 1-2
The commercials workshop scheduled for this coming weekend May 18-19 has been moved two weeks later, to June 1-2 because of the conflict with my Germany trip.

FILM DEMO CLASS BEGINS TUESDAY JUNE 18TH. Nine-week workshop, shoot and edit two demo scenes. Learn differences between acting on film and acting on stage. Also work on audition technique/cold reading for movies and TV.

SCENE STUDY ON-GOING
Monday and Wednesday night classes, both open. 7-10:30. Free audit, start any time. Sixteen-week commitment.

STAGE DIRECT.COM --EXCELLENT NEW SITE!
Check out this web site: http://www.stagedirect.com. Some very enterprising theatre people in Portland started this site where you can preview and purchase videos of fringe plays shot on digital video. It's a great idea, and the site is well designed. Gary Cole is the CEO of StageDirect, and he had this to say in response to my interest in the site: "What we feel that many people overlook is that it is possible to be smart, challenging, provocative AND entertaining at the same time. There tends to be an assumption that if a play is being staged by no-name actors in a small theater it must be esoteric and inaccessible. We're out to prove that wrong...." I applaud this sentiment. With gusto!

NEW BABY FOR THE LASIT FAMILY
Congrats to Mel and Kevin Lasit (f/tv -'91) and their new daughter McKenna, born May 8th at 8:09pm after a lo-o-o-n-g labor. Mom and baby are healthy and thriving.<g>

HOOKS ACTORS WORKING
ROBERT GEROVSKI, CINDY LORUSSO, MARY CAMPBELL and DAN ROCHA (all current in Chicago scene study) have been cast in "The Layman's Guide to Safe Sex", playing for one night only at the Bailiwick, June 19th. PAUL McKINNEY (s.stdy & f/tv - '96-'99), living and working in La-La Land now, booked a national spot for Budweiser. Paul is also getting married in August! Congrats, Big Guy.<g> LARRY LAVERTY shot an episode of "The Practice". JAXY BOYD (s.stdy & f/tv '-94-'95) shot an industrial for Kaiser/Bayer Aspirin. Jaxy is also the interim president of the San Francisco local of Screen Actors Guild. Thanks for the hard work, Jaxy! LE ANNE RUMBEL (s.stdy & f/tv '-01) has been cast as Ursula in "Much Ado About Nothing" at the Marin Shakespeare Festival. KEIR BEADLING shot an indie short entitled "Man in a White Linen Suit. He also shot a Docudrama for the Discovery Channel entitled "Trailside Killer" and an industrial for Dey Labs Pharmaceuticals. Congrats on all the activity, Keir! PAT TYLER (s.stdy - '01) has been cast as the Nurse in "Scapino!" for Palo Alto Players. It will run at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto June 15-30. LISA WISEMAN (s.stdy - '94) appears in "The Diary of Ann Frank" at the Western Stage in Salinas, California through the end of June. SONJA SORIANO (s.stdy -'01) booked a lead role in a promo spot for "Animal Planet", to run on their Internet site within the next few weeks. WALTER BARRY (s.stdy - '99) shot a commercial for The State Bank of Nevada. LEN SCHAFFER (s.stdy '93) joins the cast of "Are We Almost There?" on Friday, 5/24. It's playing at the Jean Shelton Theatre in SF. Call 415-345-7575.

CRAFT NOTES
ACTING INSANE

I recently saw a production of "Death and the Maiden" by Ariel Dorfman at Chicago's TimeLine Theatre, and it set me to thinking about insanity and obsession. The lead and meaty role of Paulina Salas contains a substantial trap for actresses that would portray her, and I think the talented actress Mary O'Dowd got at least partially ensnared by it.

The set up is this: Paulina Salas and her diplomat husband, Gerardo, are living in a post-junta Chile. It is established in the opening moments of the play that Paulina is not a happy woman, but we don't initially know why. She appears tense, withdrawn, wary, quiet. Enter her husband who handles her with kid gloves and sensitivity. Clearly she has been in this mental state for a while, and he has had to deal with it. After some give and take between them, a third character enters, Roberto Miranda, who had met up with Gerado while on the road fixing a flat tire. Sounds innocent enough, right? Well, Paulina goes directly off the deep end with the man. She finds a pistol, takes him captive, ties him to a chair, gags him and proceeds to torment him. The reason is that she believes he is one that tortured and repeatedly raped her some years earlier during Pinochet's junta. During that ordeal she had been blindfolded, so she cannot be absolutely certain of the man's identity, but she has circumstantial evidence. She recognizes his smell and the sound of his voice and is struck by his preference for Shubert's haunting "Death and the Maiden", which she recalls was always playing in the background whenever she was raped.

The primary action of the play involves Paulina's attempts to get a confession from Roberto. How certain can she be that this is the man? What will she do if he confesses? Can his confession be believed if it is made under threat of violence? I'll let you see the play to learn how all of this evolves and, yes, I do recommend the production. Go to http://www.TimeLineTheatre.com for info about tickets and dates.

But here's the acting issue: How does the actor justify all of this violence against a total stranger that enters her house if she cannot be absolutely certain that he is who she thinks he is? Mary O'Dowd chose to position her Paulina on the edge of insanity. In my opinion, she went just a bit too far over the edge. It is totally understandable and even justifiable that she would position the character where she did but, in doing so, she robbed the audience of the opportunity to empathize. What we feel for Paulina is sympathy, not empathy. Ms. O'Dowd plays the character as a victim rather than as a survivor that has been victimized. And the error is clear in the opening moments of the play, when we see Paulina crouching and peering around in the shadows of her own home, alone and afraid.

Of course any person that had been tortured as much as Paulina was would be forever scarred by the experience. Her agony was not unlike that of many Nazi concentration camp survivors in fact. But here is the acting challenge: What we in the audience want to see is the survival mechanism in the character. We don't need to be told that rape and torture was bad. By tilting her character into a state of agitation and obsession over unresolved pain, Mary O'Dowd elicits from us a nod of sad acknowledgement and nothing more.

Actors are shamans. We talk to the tribe about how to get through life successfully. What are we to make of Paulina Salas and her entrapment of Roberto Miranda? We feel awful for the woman, and we are relieved that we have not ourselves had to endure such horrors. But at the end of this production, we are left with the suggestion that the events of the play will not lead to any particular satisfactory resolution for Paulina. She was tormented, disturbed and afraid at the beginning when we first met her, and she seems to be headed for more of the same after we leave the theatre. We have spent an hour and a half with a disturbed person in the midst of extraordinary behavior, examined her situation, shook our respective heads in pity and walked back out into the sunshine.

ACTING NOTE

When you must justify extreme behavior for a character, think twice before you use the insanity defense. We want to know that a character is choosing her actions and is responsible for them. If she is merely mentally ill, we can only feel pity.

If you absolutely must use insanity as a justification, then keep at least a small window of sanity open. Anthony Hopkins in "Silence of the Lambs" shows the way with his Hannibal Lector. Here was a serial killer that literally ate his victims, and yet we felt empathy for him instead of sympathy. We actually rooted for him to survive. If he had played that role as obsessive and wild-eyed, he would have lost us. Yes, he was crazy, but he was still human enough to feel empathy for the detective Starling, played by Jodie Foster, and so we in the audience could empathize with him. We in the audience were able to keep Lector within the family of man because he was trying to survive and was in control of his actions. And therein we could find a lesson in life, making for a satisfactory theatrical experience.

One other good example: "Nuts" by Tom Topor. The female lead in that play has killed a man that abused her. The action takes place during her subsequent sanity hearing. The play works because she insists she was sane when she did what she did. If she had claimed insanity, we would have had no play at all!

I applaud Mary O'Dowd for her work in this production of "Death and the Maiden". I think she made an intelligent and powerful attempt to unravel a difficult and trap-filled character. She came very close to getting it right, and I appreciate the opportunity to examine the acting issues involved.

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