Mother of Invention Acting School — Los Angeles — Blog

I am excited about the talented people who have joined the cast of the new Uranium Madhouse show, A Man’s A Man, to date. To wit:



Ian Forester (Uriah) Ian Forester was raised by two poets in Reading, Pennsylvania in a house where every wall was filled with books.

Wanting some peace and quiet, his mother noticed her son’s fascination with the one wall reserved for plays and took him to a local audition to begin his career in the theater. After his junior year at The Hill School Ian was accepted to the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Arts, where his teachers encouraged him to head west to Northwestern University.

After graduating with a degree in Performance Studies Ian moved south into the city and entrenched himself in the Chicago theater scene. There he worked on countless plays and projects, often wearing multiple hats, while supporting himself with a freelance production career. Highlights include acting in and producing General Desdemona for the Edinburgh Fringe, developing and directing new work as the Associate Artistic Director of Collaboraction Theater Company, and receiving critical praise for his performances in several notable Chicago premieres, including The Last Days of Judas Iscariot by Stephen Adly Guirgis and The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow by Rolin Jones. He also co-created, produced, and starred in the independent pilot The Reynolds Influence, and worked in the production design department of The Oprah Winfrey Show. Recently Ian returned to Chicago to lead the independent feature In Memoriam.

Upon his arrival to LA, Ian broke into the theater scene by winning the LA Weekly’s Best Director/Comedy Award for his work on the west coast premiere of Fatboy, by John Clancy. In 2011 Ian became an Artistic Director of needtheater, a company “at the tip of the spear,” according to the LA Weekly, where he oversees all of the company’s production. He also independently produces and directs commercials, music videos, and short films through his production company, Stolen Shot Productions.


Terence Leclere (Galy Gay) — Terence Leclere is proud to be making his debut with Uranium Madhouse. Last year he played the lead in a Hot House workshop of Kyle Jarrow and Nathan Leigh’s new musical Big Money at the Pasadena Playhouse, got great reviews as Eytan in needtheater’s “Guided Consideration of a Lamentable Deed” and completed a year and a half run of a weekly live comedy show at the Lost Souls/Harlem Place Cafe in downtown LA. Select credits include “Silver Lake”, “Hollywood Je T’Aime”, “Land of the Lost”, “Finding Emo”, “Electric Spoofaloo” on Take180.com, NT workshops of “Look At The Trees” (Izzy) and “tempodyssey” (Dead Body Boy), and “Push” at Theater 40. Originally from Paris, France and New York, TL studied at the SUNY Purchase Acting Conservatory, and is a graduate of William Esper Studios in NY and The Second City Conservatory in LA.

Andrew Perez (Jesse)– Andrew Perez most recently played Lee Harvey Oswald in the West Coast premiere of Oswald at Write Act Rep in Hollywood. Other L.A. theatre credits include Darren in Mercury Fur at needtheater (Ovation nomination – ensemble acting). He spent six years in Chicago, where his favorite theatre credits include Zak/Jose in Sonia Flew at Steppenwolf and Curley in Of Mice and Men at Steep Theatre.
He recently played Henry in the suspense feature film Engagement, released by FilmBuff Summer 2012. He is a graduate of Northwestern University and the School at Steppenwolf. Thank you to his amazing parents & family, girlfriend Taylor and his agent Sid Levin.



Yolanda Seabourne (Widow Begbick) — Formerly with the Business and Legal Affairs Department at Vin Di Bona Productions, Yolanda Seabourne facilitated the launch of the licensing division for one of primetime’s longest running entertainment programs. Currently Director of Licensing for FishBowl Worldwide Media, Yolanda is responsible for licensing and strategic repurposing of television’s largest library of user-generated content for use across various platforms, including feature films, national commercials and new media. A graduate of the Theater Arts program at California State University, Fullerton, Yolanda currently studies with Andrew Utter at The Mother of Invention Acting School.

A founding member of Uranium Madhouse, Yolanda appeared in the company’s inaugural production in Charles Mee’s one-person show The House of Cards. Madhouse audiences will next see Yolanda as the lusty, entrepreneurial widow Leucadia Begbick in Uranium Madhouse’s sophomore presentation, A Man’s a Man.

Alex Sell (Polly)– Alex Sell is a native of Northern California where he has done a lot of regional theater. Favorite roles include Student 2 in Shakespeare’s R and J, Mundo in Eddie Mundo Edmundo, and Shep in the Chemistry of Change. Film work includes The Caller and Wolf Moon. You can see Alex in the online webisode series Looking for Grace. Alex is very pleased to be in his first Uranium Madhouse production.



Chris Wallinger (Jeriah Jip) – — Hailing from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, Christopher began acting at a young age on any stage that he could convince someone to put him in his small town. Performing in school plays and musicals as well as a Shakespearean touring company and community theaters, Christopher still wanted more. He decided to attend a performing arts high school in a small town in northern Michigan called Interlochen. From there he began moving around the country, and world, gathering as many varied styles of acting as he could while studying at such schools as Stella Adler Studios in New York; Northern Illinois University under Katherine Gately (who was trained by Sandy Meisner himself); and even at the Moscow Art Theatre, where he performed a lead role in Aristophanes’ “The Birds.” From there, Christopher moved to Chicago and contributed to the re-emergence of the venerated Organic Theater Company in 2006 as a Company Member. He performed with other companies as well, and could be seen in multiple commercials and print ads. Escaping the frigid winters, Christopher made the long trek out to the west coast. Since arriving in Los Angeles, he has expanded his credentials with national commercials and numerous short films.

More radioactive talent to follow! Stay tuned!

From an enlightening piece in the New York Times:

Brain scans are revealing what happens in our heads when we read a detailed description, an evocative metaphor or an emotional exchange between characters. Stories, this research is showing, stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life.

Researchers have long known that the “classical” language regions, like Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area, are involved in how the brain interprets written words. What scientists have come to realize in the last few years is that narratives activate many other parts of our brains as well, suggesting why the experience of reading can feel so alive. Words like “lavender,” “cinnamon” and “soap,” for example, elicit a response not only from the language-processing areas of our brains, but also those devoted to dealing with smells.

Stanislavsky famously defined acting as “the life of the human soul receiving its birth through technique.” More basically, acting is bringing a kind of life into a being, it is coming alive. The above excerpt from the Times article is highly suggestive of the profound importance for acting. The actor wants to come fully alive, and reading provides a way of coming alive not only to actualities, but to fictional things as well, to a land of make-believe. We tend to think of acting as a physical activity, as something that we “do”: speak, move, gesture, grimace, etc. But all of those things are of interest largely because they illuminate inner movements: movements of thought and feeling.

In some sense, the actor works to allow these mental activities to manifest themselves physically, in movement, in speech, in expressiveness. However, if there are no mental activities to manifest, nothing much is going to happen in the physiognomy of the actor. Receptiveness and sensitivity to the power of words (scripts are written in words, after all) is an absolutely critical skill for any actor, and there is no better way to develop this receptiveness and sensitivity than reading.

We are prone to think of acting as a fundamentally extroverted activity: actors express things, we are told. And there is truth to this: acting is nothing if not manifesting some inner life. But much depends on the richness of that inner life, and that points to the “introverted” side of acting. Actors must possess a kind of practical psychological insight, in order to get at what “makes someone tick”, they must possess richly the sensitivity to language that I previously described, and they must be comfortable in trafficing with the unreal, with the imaginary. In that it depends on both extroversion and introversion, acting is a very special, if not totally unique practice.

Congratulations to Mother of Inventioner Ari Kanamori, who played the lead role in the film Falling Uphill, which will be screening at the United Film Festival, Los Angeles this year. Way to go Ari! Looking forward to seeing it!

I really enjoyed this interview with Bette Davis. The youtube title notwithstanding, there is great wisdom and insight in this piece.