CALIFORNIA LABOR COMMISSION RELEASES REPORT ON SAN FRANCISCO'S MITCHELL AGENCY DEBACLE...
SAG-franchised Mitchell Agency went out of business last year owing hundreds of thousands of dollars to San Francisco performers, mainly print models. One of the Mitchell Agency owners, John Erlendson, claims he was only an innocent by-stander and has opened a new agency (JE Talent Agency) on the ashes of Mitchell. I have written an analysis of the final - and very damning - California Labor Commission report for the on-line industry publication "Casting Connection" http://www.castingconnection.com. It will be posted to publication's web site after Nov. 5th. I hope all Bay Area actors, agents and union officials will read it.

MARE'S IMPROV CLASS (CHICAGO)....
I'm going to play host to a new Improv class for teens in my Chicago studio. It is for kids 13-17who want to learn performance skills, explore their own creativity or just have fun. The teacher is Marianna Runge, an experienced and dynamic Chicago Improv person who is currently appearing at ImprovOlympic and The Playground. An introductory class will be held on Saturday November 3, 10 a.m - noon. ($10 for intro class) A six-week session begins November 10, 10 a.m. - noon. For more information, call 312-458-9922, or send Mare an e-mail at heresmare@yahoo.com.

THEATRE BAY AREA (SAN FRANCISCO)
is sponsoring a one-time Audition Tune-Up workshop in November. The class will be held in Belmont at Notre Dame de Namur University. Guest instructor will be actor/teacher MEREDITH HAGEDORN (f/tv-'00). For info, contact Theatre Bay Area at (415) 430-1140.

ACTING FOR ANIMATORS AT CHICAGO'S COLUMBIA COLLEGE ...
I have accepted an offer to teach an Acting for Animators workshop at Columbia College in Chicago next summer.

ED'S EXPERIENCES WITH THE CHICAGO COLD WEATHER...
I went down to the Timberland company on Michigan Avenue the other day and bought a coat I'm not supposed to put on until the temperature drops below forty degrees, plus a pair of Gore Tex boots that are guaranteed to keep my toes toasty in the Chicago slush. I haven't owned this kind of outerwear since 1976 when I departed New York for LA. Chicago is already getting 25-degree wind gusts off of Lake Michigan. You can see and hear them coming from a block away when the tree tops start whipping this way and that and a WOOOOSH sound gets closer. When one of those blasts slams into you, the experience is like being in the front car of a thrill ride at a winter amusement park. Friends assure me that the Chi Town cold will wipe that silly smile off my face soon enough but, for now anyway, I'm enjoying the seasonal change.

SAW TWO PLAYS RECENTLY ...
Harold Pinter's 1975 play "No Man's Land" is in a marvelous revival at Victory Garden's Theatre, produced by the Reme Bumppo theatre group. The acting in it is top notch, a real master's class. Runs through Nov. 11th. I also saw John Patrick Shanley's "The Grand Funk" at a small house on Division Street. It's a pass. The production is too self-aware for my taste. For example, in an effort
to communicate that we are all one big family of man, the cast got naked and held mirrors up to the audience. From my front row seat, I got not only a glimpse of myself in the mirror but of too-close-proximity body parts. I felt like DeNiro in "Taxi Driver." "You talkin' to me?...."

A FOOTNOTE TO THE U.S. WAR AGAINST EVIL-DOERS ...
I found a significant United Press International article on page forty-four of the Oct. 28th Chicago Sun-Times. Evidently there is a behind-the-scenes tussle going on between Russia, the U.S. and
Pakistan about which country is going to control the oil in Afghanistan once the evildoers are properly dispatched. Pakistan's Gen. Pervez Musharraf has asked the Bush administration to help
U.S.-based oil company Unocal build an $8 billion pipeline across Afghanistan. "Earnings from pipeline fees will be essential to the finances of any post-war Afghan government", the General explains. With no disrespect intended for the many Americans who have suffered from the attacks of September 11th, it nevertheless seems to me this kind of stuff should be on page one, not page forty-four. Oil and access to it is obviously part of the backdrop against which the United States is waging this war with the evildoers. It may not be patriotic to talk about it right now, but it is a fact.

I WAS TEACHING MY CHICAGO SCENE STUDY WORKSHOP...
..when in walked my old actor-friend Nick Angotti. Hadn't seen him in twelve years at least, when we were both working the episodics and commercials in La La Land. "I've been living in Chicago for five years, and I've become a minister," he explained. "A what?!", I queried diplomatically. "A minister. Church of Religious Science", he grinned contentedly. "Well, that's swell, Nick. Let's do coffee or something!" And so we did, turning a single coffee into a regular Thursday morning ritual in the Seattle's Best cafe up the street from my Lakeview studio. Nick is an uncommonly bright and talented man, and I'm delighted to have run into him here in the Windy City. His new vocation is a good fit for him. You can read all about (ahem..) Reverend Nick and his actor-to-minister journey on his web site: http://www.newthoughtcsa.org/Bionick.htm.

ED'S UPCOMING CALIFORNIA VISITS...
I will be in San Francisco for Thanksgiving and for Christmas. To be precise, I'll be there Nov. 21-25 and Dec. 15-Jan. 1. My telephone number in Menlo Park during that time is 650-325-1614. I'll be
available for private coaching. $75 per hour. We can work on whatever you want - monologues or cold reading (if you want to do that, let me know in advance, so I can bring proper material with me)
or career strategies. Or all of the above.

THE HOOKS-PEOPLE LA-ACTOR LIST ...
has been compiled and sent out via e-mail. If you didn't receive one and would like to have it, let me know. It is a list of actors who either are in LA now or are heading that direction soon and who have
studied with me at one time or another. It's a networking thing.

CLASS SCHEDULE (CHICAGO)
SCENE STUDY - Monday night, on-going, 7-10:30. New Wednesday night
class begins November 7th, same hours. Free audit, start any time.
COMMERCIALS WORKSHOP -- Nov 17-18 and, after that, Jan 13-14
FILM CLASS - The next 9-week session begins Tuesday night, Jan. 8th, 7-10:30.
PRIVATE COACHING - Any time. $75/hr.

HOOKS ACTORS WORKING...
PAT KAPOWICH (s.stdy - '01) completed an indie entitled "The Sale". KEIR BEADLING (s.stdy & comml - 01) shot his first commercial, for the Reno Sparks Convention and Visitors Association (RSCVA).. PAUL MCKINNEY (f/tv-'97) will be playing a pizza man on "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch" on Friday, November 9th on the WB. DIANE TASCA (s.stdy-'01) has been cast as Sister Mary Ignatius at Foothill College. T.J. PIERCE (s.stdy & f/tv - '99-'00) opening November 8 as Mike Maffucci in "No Place to Be Somebody" by Charles Gordone. Multi Ethnic Theater at The Next Stage, San Francisco. For details, go to http://www.wehavemet.org. LA-based SONJA SORIANO (f/tv-'01) recently shot "Of All the Luck", an indie film by Isolated Pictures. SHIRLEY SMALLWOOD (f/tv & comml '00) worked on both the radio and TV commercials for Proposition F, an initiative for public transportation that concerns the elderly and disabled. Busy lady that she is, Shirley is also starring in a musical-comedy entitled "The Last Session" at the New Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Running through Dec. 9th. For reservations: (415) 861-8972. TOM HANCOCK (comml & f/tv-'00) did an industrial for the Pacific Retirement Home. RAY RENATI (s.stdy - '99) has been cast in "The Herbal Bed" for the Palo Alto Players. He also appears in two new indie films, "Whiskey Blue" and "The Last Millenium", and he recently shot a commercial for KPIX Channel 5 in San Francisco. BILL HAMLIN (all classes - 01) is playing five characters in David Mamet's "The Water Engine", going up November 14-17 for the San Francisco Free Community Theatre. DANA LEWENTHAL (comml-'01) appears in "'tis the Season" at Oregon Cabaret Theatre in Ashland, Oregon, through January 1st. REBECCA HAUGH (s.stdy & comml'-'1) appeared last month in
"Bleacher Bums" at Walnut Creek Dean Lescher Center for the Performing Arts. DIAHANN REYES (all classes - 01) landed a role in an indie film entitled "6-Shot". SARA BETTS (f/tv -'00) will portray Susanna Hall (Shakespeare's daughter)in "The Herbal Bed" with Palo Alto Players, Nov 2 - 4, 7 - 10, 14 - 18 at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto.

CRAFT NOTES - "Nudity on stage"
Not to pick on the good-intentioned cast of "The Grand Funk", which I saw recently, but the production got me to thinking again about nudity. It's difficult, in fact, to think of much else when a guy's unit is positioned two feet from your face. And that is the point. Nudity, no matter how motivated it may be in the context of the play, totally destroys the fourth wall and demolishes the audience's ability to suspend its disbelief.

Samuel Coleridge was the 19th century fellow who came up with that term, "willing suspension of disbelief". What it means is that, even though the audience knows full well that the activities on stage are pretend, it decides to pretend that this is not the case. In other words, the audience knows that the actor playing Julius Caesar is not really getting murdered on stage, and the actress playing Juliette is not really drinking poison. But in order to empathize and get the most mileage out of the theatrical experience, the audience pretends that it doesn't know about the reality of the pretend situation. You see what I mean? It's a tricky concept, but once you get it, it's with you forever. You're pretending to pretend, in a manner of speaking.

Well, when an actor on stage takes off her clothes, the reality of her body makes it impossible to pretend. Suddenly, the audience is aware of the actress and her thighs, not the character. You sit
there and try to figure out where you ought to be looking. If you look at her breasts, you feel like a lurker. You begin to wonder how other people in the audience are responding to the nudity, and
you furtively glance around the theatre. Meanwhile, the play on stage goes on without you. Until the actors puts her clothes back on, there is just no sense in continuing.

Acting involves an implied contract between the actors on stage and the audience. Everybody agrees to pretend together. But the implied contract is fragile. If an actor on stage becomes flustered and forgets his lines, for example, the contract is broken. If an actor gets nervous, and the teacup in his hands begins trembling on the saucer, the contract is broken. If an actor falls and hurts himself on stage, the contract is broken. And, to the immediate point, if an actor takes off his clothes during the performance, the contract is broken.

I am not anti-nudity by any means. Bodies are marvelous. I particularly like them in art galleries and have a true appreciation of what can be done with them. (Highly recommended: "Van Gogh and
Gaugin: Studio of the South", now at Chicago's Art Institute). However, the naked human body is just too, well, real for presentation on the stage during a play. I have acted in several plays with naked people, and I found it distracting from that perspective, too.

Nudity in a movie creates a different reaction in the audience because there is already an inherent suspension of disbelief happening. The audience is watching serial photographs of real life, after all, not real life itself. Nudity on screen is not real in the same way nudity on stage in a theatre is. In a theatre, the audience is breathing the same air as the naked actor, and that makes all the difference.

To be sure, nudity can be justified artistically, but that fact doesn't much impress me. A recent play I heard about featured the angst of a portrait artist, for example, as he tried to capture the beauty of a nude model in front of him. She was undressed for most of the play according to the reviews, and I could see how that definitely made sense. But for me, it's a deal killer. Even if justified, I would rather not be confronted with nudity in a play. I like to pretend, which is why I go to the theatre in the first place.

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