Some gems:

Frank Capra said: Film is a disease.

(LAUGHTER)

SCORSESE: He went on, but that’s enough for now.

(LAUGHTER)

SCORSESE: I caught the disease early on, you know. I used to feel it. And they used to take me to the movies all the time. I used to feel it whenever we walked up to the ticket booth with my mother or my father or my brother. You’d go through the doors, and the thick carpet, to – past the popcorn stand that had that wonderful smell – then to the ticket taker, and then sometimes they’d get – these doors would open in the back and there were little windows in it in some of the old theaters and I could see something magical happening up there on the screen, something special. And as we entered, for me I think now, it was like entering a sacred space, a kind of a sanctuary where the living world around me seemed to be recreated and played out.

And:

First of all, there’s light. Light is at the beginning of cinema, of course. It’s fundamental – because it’s created with light, and it’s still best seen projected in dark rooms, where it’s the only source of light. But light is also at the beginning of everything. Most creation myths start with darkness, and then the real beginning comes with light – which means the creation of forms. Which leads to distinguishing one thing from another, and ourselves from the rest of the world. Recognizing patterns, similarities, differences, naming things – interpreting the world. Metaphors – seeing one thing – in light of something else. Becoming – enlightened. So light is at the core of who we are and how we understand ourselves.

WTWT.

But that’s only one aspect of what actors do. When we live our lives, moment to emerging moment, there is no story yet. No arc. Was it Kierkegaard who said that lives have to be lived forwards, but can only be understood backwards? I believe it was. In those moments that we live through, one after the other, there is no shape yet, no arc, just an array of facts, and another array, this one of possibilities.

We meet each moment, as best we can. And how do we do it? We are prompted, by something inside. A hunger: for wholeness, belonging, accord with the world, something. Try to name it and it slips through your fingers.

That’s what the now is like: there’s the world, there’s this inner prompting, and then there is our action, our response. Later, much later, we arrange these prompts and responses into stories, which we tell for an array of reasons, as responses to prompts we encounter further down the road.

When we act, we try to touch our own promptings, our own hunger for belonging, for accord with our world, our own hunger to be enfolded in a harmonious whole the way we were once enfolded in the womb, and bring these promptings from this dark engine inside us to bear on someone else’s circumstances, someone else’s situation, someone else’s life, someone else’s story. Stories are great to watch, but a great actor invites us into that space of flux and danger, between prompt and world, where the story has not yet become a story; it is still a great question, a test of some kind. An actor who does this makes the oldest story fresh, and in her mouth the stalest of speeches becomes a song of arresting beauty and mystery.

A tall order. Acquiring the ability to do this at will, to repeat it as needed, within a broad range of narratives and situations, is earned only with extraordinary patience, dedication, and implacable resolve to keep moving forward. When I see a student take a step closer towards acquiring this facility, I am deeply, passionately gratified

The contest:

The UCLA Screenwriters Showcase is a feature and teleplay competition for the MFA Screenwriting candidates, celebrating the work of entertainment’s newest crop of screenwriting talent. Student work is read by over 200 top industry judges (including agents, managers, producers and development executives), and the competition culminates in a gala event during the UCLA Film Festival in late spring.

At the event, the work of eight winning students is celebrated with a staged reading, along with presentations from faculty, prominent alumni and an annual honoree, who is presented with the Excellence in Screenwriting Award.

Past showcase winners have gone on to be represented by major agencies, and many have had their work optioned by production companies or studios. The UCLA Screenwriters Showcase is the best way for the industry to be introduced to the brightest new talent in screenwriting.

The winning script, in Tessa’s own words:

It’s called “Anita” and VERY loosely based of the dancer Anita Berber. It takes placed between 1916-1929 Berlin and tracks her life from when she was discovered at Maria Mossi’s acting/dancing school and began touring with Rita Sacchetto to her death from tuberculosis in 1929. She had a serious drug an alcohol problem as well…she was a morphine, cocaine and alcohol addict (happy lady ). After her death she was sort of forgotten but then some dance historians have tried to bring back awareness to her as she was influential on the expressionist/nude dance movement.

Heartfelt congratulations Tessa! This is wonderful!

Patti SmithAdvice to the young
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“Build a good name”, rock poet Patti Smith advises the young. “Life is like a roller coaster, it is going to have beautiful moments but it is going to be real fucked up, too”, she says.

The American singer, poet and photographer Patti Smith (b. 1946) is a living punk rock legend. In this video she gives advice to the young:

“Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t make compromises, don’t worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned about doing good work. Protect your work and if you build a good name, eventually that name will be its own currency. Life is like a roller coaster ride, it is never going to be perfect. It is going to have perfect moments and rough spots, but it’s all worth it”, Patti Smith says.

Interview by Christian Lund, the Louisiana Literature festival August 24, 2012, at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.

Produced by Honey Biba Beckerlee.

Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.

Supported by Nordea-fonden.

Many films diminish us. They cheapen us, masturbate our senses, hammer us with shabby thrills, diminish the value of life. Some few films evoke the wonderment of life’s experience, and those I consider a form of prayer. Not prayer “to” anyone or anything, but prayer “about” everyone and everything. I believe prayer that makes requests is pointless. What will be, will be. But I value the kind of prayer when you stand at the edge of the sea, or beneath a tree, or smell a flower, or love someone, or do a good thing. Those prayers validate existence and snatch it away from meaningless routine.
–Roger Ebert

One of the things that we do in class is inspired by a process called The Booth, which I encountered when I took some great writing classes at the Gotham Writer’s Workshop in New York some years ago. A writer would distribute work to the class to be read ahead of time. Everyone would read the work, and identify something that was working well about the piece of writing, and something that could be improved. We were asked to pick just one of each, which forced us to make decisions about what cried out most urgently for discussion. In class, everyone would be invited to share the thing they had identified that worked, and the thing they thought should be worked on. But as they did that, we were told to imagine that the writer of the piece was inside a glass booth. The writer could hear everything that was being said, but she could not say anything herself. This forestalled any inclination to defend what she had written, which actually made it easier, I found, when I was in the booth, to listen to. After the class and participants had completed their observations, the teacher would then weigh in with a longer review of the work. It was a very illuminating and satisfying process, whether you were in the booth or not.

We do something like this with our 5 Questions document, aka “The Who-am-I”. This document is a kind of blueprint for the role, an attempt to capture and organize the information provided by the writer about the character, and then to expand upon and imaginatively develop that material. It is not a free-ranging character bio; there is a complex set of strictures involved in answering the questions posed by the framework. Developing a Who-am-I is an art in itself, and an indispensable one, as it helps the actor to become oriented towards his world and the other people in it.

My twist on the booth is that as students share their Strong Point on Point for Improvement on the Who-am-I document at hand, I write these points up on the board, for all to see. Then, once each participant has weighed in, I go over each of the observations offered, both the Strong Points and the Points for Improvement, and I respond to each, essentially either agreeing and amplifying a point offered by the student, or invalidating it, and explaining why. In each case, my response is based not on my subjective response to the observation offered about the Who-am-I, but on whether the observation in question was a constructive and useful application of the principles of Who-am-I building. So the student is being given feedback on whether their commentary demonstrates a full understanding of the criteria that make up a strong, functional Who-am-I. They also receive such feedback when I comment directly on their own Who-am-I, but in that context, they are focused on the practical problem of how to make the Who-am-I that they are working on better. In the situation where I am responding to their commentary, they are not so focused on a practical problem they need to solve to be able to do their work well, so they are more able to absorb the principle in question. Or so it seems to me. They seem to find it very rewarding as well.

A couple of themes that came up in discussion of Who-am-I’s recently:

story vs background: Both are important. In the Astrov-Sonya scene in Uncle Vanya, you will not find something to pursue as Astrov unless you recognize that (1) Sonya has been in love with you for a while, (2) she has hoped to become your wife for a while (3) she has burdened you with these expectations, silently. (1) and (2) are made clear in the unfolding of the story, but (3) only becomes clear with some work. We see how later in the play, when Astrov is asked to stop coming to the house, because Sonya is suffering, he readily acquiesces. There is no surprise or discussion, in spite of the fact that he says the nanny, Marina, is the only person he loves, and he clearly has a deep bond with Vanya, and a fondness for Sonya, for that matter (he just doesn’t want her for a wife). But he is willing to give them all up to alleviate Sonya’s suffering. He knows this is the decent thing to do. This means that the suffering is evident to him. So that in turn means that he knows it, and has lived with it, with her expectations which he cannot possibly meet, for some time. This recognition gives the actor a compelling thing to pursue in the scene: he must get Sonya to prove her love for him by setting him free, which includes apologizing for imposing on him with her expectations. However, we have not had any evidence in the story prior to this point that Sonya is behaving in this way. There is no plot point that displays it. It is a part of the background up to this point: a part of the experience of the character, but not on display in any particular plot point. This demonstrates the need for the actor to imaginatively project himself into the routine life of the character, what I am calling the background, or what some screenwriting books call the stasis that exists prior to the inciting incident of the story, as well as to explore the events that appear as past plot points in the story.

the lives of others: Things that happen to people you know are things that happen to you, and belong in your Who-am-I. In Vanya, prior to the start of the play, Sonya’s mother has died, and her father marries Yelena. Since we know that Astrov has been visiting for eleven years, he was aware of these events, and he certainly would remember the first time he saw Yelena. So even though these events don’t involve him as a principle player, they still belong in his Who-am-I as events he witnessed or was aware of at some level. The same with the marriage of Andre to Natasha in The Three Sisters: Masha is not getting married herself, but her brother got married, and his wife has moved into the house, between Act I and Act II of the play. These events belong in the Who-am-I of the actor playing Masha.

Will share some more insights as they emerge. Having a wonderful time. Can you tell?

Mother Of Invention Teaching Associates



Kevin Bortolin is a Zen teacher, having received Dharma Transmission in Tokyo from Gudo Nishijima Roshi, a Soto Zen monk and author. Each month Kevin leads classes in Zen meditation in Ventura and Santa Monica, and is a regular guest teacher at Noah Levine’s Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society in Los Angeles.




Chris Lang holds a BFA in Acting from the University of Wyoming and an MFA from the American
Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.)/Moscow Art theatre School (MXAT) Institute for Advanced Theatre Training
at Harvard University. Mr. Lang has taught at Harvard University, Harvard Summer and Extensions Schools, the University
of Wyoming, the ART Institute, and the Moscow Art Theatre School. Chris is a teacher of Fitzmaurice
Voicework, and plans to attend the program in Fitzmaurice teacher certification in the near future..


Ben Miller is an Alexander Technique professional who encourages ease, efficiency, direction and clarity in all things. He has the soul of an actor, the hands of an Alexander Technique teacher and a passionate heart that delights in introducing people to themselves. He is based in Hollywood and his website address is www.aperio-solutions.com.






Leah Zhang is a Nationally Certified Teacher of the Alexander Technique. She specializes in teaching actors a practical approach to not only become more comfortable in auditions, but also learn how to alleviate performance anxiety once they’ve booked the job so that they naturally experience more authenticity in their work. Leah received her Masters of Fine Arts in Acting from the prestigious Old Globe Professional Actor Training Program and draws from her acting and movement experience to help actors become fully alive in the body of their characters. More information at her website.


I also periodically invite working actors to the class to talk with students about what steps to take to advance professionally.

So those are some more great reasons for starting class at Mother of Invention! There is an Essentials class starting May 14. Returning Student Discount available. Enrollment as early as possible is recommended to be able to gather and read assigned readings for first class.



10 weeks. $500.


May 14
May 21
May 28
June 4
June 11
June 18
June 25
July 2
July 9
July 16


There is a 10% discount for registering by April 10. Contact me now to enroll and receive this discount.

The Advanced class is gearing up to start on Monday. All students participating have taken at least two Essentials classes, and are ready to engage with the methodology at a deeper level. We will be working on scenes from Chekhov’s plays. Chekhov’s plays are wonderful challenges for actors, as he was a past master of character-driven dramatic narrative. He could be said to have invented it. That’s why working on Chekhov’s plays is such wonderful preparation for working on the best dramatic writing happening today. There will be another Advanced Class later this year. Keep an eye on this spot for the dates!

So I guess the big question here is why guys like me even bother to attend theater when free time is such a rare commodity. Do I go because I love a good play? Or do I go because I’m looking for new clients? The answer is both. The theater scene in L.A. has been very good to me. It’s provided hours of entertainment and new clients who ended up making me a lot of money. So what’s not to like?

HT Yolanda Seabourne

I recently reconnected with my colleague from the Yale School of Drama, CS “Charlie” Lee, who graduated from the acting program in 1998. I completed the directing program in 1997, so he was a year behind me. After we had both graduated, I directed a one act play called Nooner in New York for a theater company called Emerging Artists, and Charlie played the leading man.


Charlie went on to have an impressive acting career, appearing on Law and Order, The Sopranos, and many other TV shows, as his IMDb page reveals.

But he is best known for his work on Dexter, where he plays Dexter’s partner, Vince Masuka.

The master acting teacher we both studied with at Yale, Earle Gister, passed away in the last few years. Charlie appreciates that I am keeping Earle’s flame alive at Mother of Invention, and he graciously offered me the following endorsement:

“From working with Andrew and seeing his work, I can say that he has a deep love for the craft of acting, and he is extremely skilled at transmitting his formidable understanding to actors in ways that empower and inspire actors to do their best work.”–CS Lee of Showtime’s Dexter

So find out what Charlie and I encountered in acting class at Yale. There is an Essentials class at Mother of Invention starting February 28, this coming Thursday. Contact me now at actbetter@utteracting.com to register!