Alexander Technique Teachers in Los Angeles

UPDATE: The list of teachers became inordinately long, I'm now just posting links to other resources.

One of my classmates was interested in studying Alexander Technique but he didn't know where to find any teachers in the LA area. After some research I generated a good-sized list of teachers.

Alexander technique, if you're not familiar with it, is a really wonderful tool if you have any postural or vocal production problems. From wikipedia:

The Alexander Technique is a way of working for the self-prevention of unhelpful or harmful habits that interfere with the mental and physical conditions best-suited for the health and functioning of the "self" as a whole.

In other words, people carry a lot of unnecessary tension and often do things in completely inefficient ways that do far more harm than good. By putting a little mental focus on such matters you can drastically improve you posture, ease your breathing, and bring an aliveness to your body and movements that you haven't experienced since you were a small child.

Enough stalling, below you can find a whole host of teachers trained in the technique:

AlexanderTechnique.com
http://www.alexandertechnique.com/teacher/northamerica/#California

American Society for the Alexander Technique
http://www.alexandertech.org/teachers/CA.html#LosAngelesCounty

Book Recommendation: The Great Acting Teachers

I have started and stopped reading more books on the craft of acting than I care to recount. I made it through one of Stanislavski's, halfway through Uta's, a few pages into The Actor and the Target, but for the most part it is a struggle. Not that I don't want to learn more about my craft, I do, it's just that acting teachers don't all make for great writers, nor are the minutia of their techniques compelling to read about. That's why Richard Brestoff's The Great Acting Teachers: and Their Methods was something of a revelation for me. I finished it in less than 2 days, and given it took me nigh on 8 months to read Middlesex that is no small feat.

In this book Brestoff takes the reader on a personal journey through the history of acting from Thespis to Stanislavski to Suzuki. At times the book reads like a history, at others it takes us on a fanciful journey through time and space, and it also includes passages that give you a sense of what it is to learn acting in each of these great teachers' studios.

If you're interested in studying acting at a studio whose work is based on one of the greats but have no idea where to start The Great Acting Teachers will give you a great overview of the guiding principles behind each of the teachers. I for example learned that Strasberg's affective memory is great for film work, but that if I want to improve my script analysis I should study Adler. The book includes wonderful insights into the work of: Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, Sanford Meisner, Viola Spolin, Bertold Brecht, Jerzy Grotowski, Tadashi Suzuki, and Stanislavski.

If you, like me, have a fairly eclectic training, this book will help give you a sense of history and where you fit in it.

Dashed Hopes OR Always Get It In Writing

This morning I woke up earlier than I am typically inclined to. I showered, shaved, picked out a cute outfit, packed a lunch and drove down to Melrose and Vine. Today, you see, was the first day of my Groundlings Level II class. I've been looking forward to this class for some time now, especially after I had to drop last session due to conflicts with the shooting schedule for "Manual of a Weedkiller".

When I got to The Groundlings and examined the class roster I noticed that my name was conspicuously absent. When I checked with the gals at the office, they too discovered that I was in fact not registered for the class.

"What?! I registered the day that registration opened."

It appears that the day I registered they were encountering some serious database problems, and their server crashed just as my registration was being processed. I never received a confirmation email, but I took the confirmation page to be enough.

The moral of the story is: Get it in writing. If there's a confirmation page, print it out. Make sure you get the email, and if you have to, call to confirm. 'Cause at the moment I neglected to do any of those things and now have to wait for the next session to roll around. Thankfully the folks at the Groundlings were understanding of my plight and have given me priority registration and put my name at the top of the wait list for this session.

The other important lesson is that if you're frustrated with a situation and remain polite to those people who can fix your problem, there is some hope of resolution.

Unexpected Income - Editing Demo Reels

I received a call last night from an actress I met through the Sage Creative Career Co-Op who needed help cutting down her demo reel. She knew that I could edit video because I announced it on our first day of class. This makes the third demo reel I've cut in as many months. While it's certainly not enough income to live on, I appreciate that I'm able to help out other actors with their work.

Newcomer’s Orientation

This evening I shared a meal with a gentleman named Gabriel. We met in an on camera acting workshop taught by Bobby Weinapple, a man who exemplifies the best parts of bay area crunchy liberalism. In a hole-in-the-wall Thai noodle shack in San Francisco Gabe and I shared our visions of coming down to LA to live the dream. We kept in the lightest of touch through Facebook. As things would have it, I made my trek down to La La Land about 10 months before him. So it was me who got to play the role of wizened sage when we met up today at Thai Patio at the intersection of Thai Town and Little Armenia in Hollywood.

Our conversation wound through geography, up to work, finding comfort at craft, climbing to relationships, falling to raunch, and oscillating to a delightful hum in the realization that we shared similar ideas about how it was we wanted to find success in this town. We agreed that it was a bad idea to sell our souls, but that there might come a time when we would have to; just not yet. The key, we discovered, is that no matter what you do in this town or what this town does to you – you have to live your life. So it might as well be the life you want to live.

I will share with you, faithful reader, the one piece of advice from our dinner that I feel genuinely qualified to give. It will come to you by way of anecdote.

When I first moved to LA there were only two things that I truly could not stand about the town: traffic, and parking. Every night I'd drive home sighing my frustrations at the cars streaming before me in an endless parade of red brake lights. When I got to my apartment, my supposed sanctuary, I found no place where my Mitsubishi Galant could rest it's weary tires. I would circle, and circle, and circle in search of parking. 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 23 minutes and not one fucking space in this block?! Eventually I reached a point of such extreme frustration that I would park five or six blocks away because, well, spaces were available. As this became routine, I stopped searching for parking near my home. What used to be a 20 minute quest became a ten minute walk home and a ten minute walk out to my car. A curious thing happened because of this new strategy, a certain buoyancy entered my step, the stresses of the day rolled off my shoulders and by the time I joined apartment key with apartment lock I was happy, renewed, and refreshed. What once felt like a punishment, exacted upon me by the forgotten Gods of Olympus, was now an expected pleasant part of my day. My time commitment hadn't changed, searching for parking and walking both ways averaged to the same 20 minutes. But I had shifted my mindset.

A Joke:
A man walks down the street and sees another man lying in the street. The standing man asks the supine man "What on earth are you doing lying in the street? You're going to get yourself killed!" The horizontal man replied "I'm saving this parking space! I was so excited to find it I sent my wife out to buy a car."

Don't be the man in the road. Leave early, park where there are spaces, and enjoy the walk to your destination.

Cold Reading Tips

Cold reading is for the most part dead. What most actors call cold reading today is actually a prepared read or at least a lukewarm read. For most auditions you've got the sides at least 24hrs in advance and by all rights you should be off-book and at performance level when you enter the room. Granted, I make a gallant effort towards this end, but usually end up half-memorized and half-committed to my choices; not an enviable position. Last night I picked up some wonderful tips on how to approach a cold read – and I can already see applications in the realm of prepared reads. Richard Seyd is the man responsible for this little bit of genius. The following is a paraphrasing of his lecture:

When an actor is given a script and only given a little bit of time to prepare all of the blood drains from his brain and floods his major muscle groups. Yep, fight or flight. So when you feel stupid in an audition, it's because you actually are stupid. That being said, if you create and practice a preparation for cold reads and auditions you'll be much more able to effectively wrangle your grey matter (it's had more practice).

When actors are given a script on short notice they often fall into the trap of immediately building a character and back-story without taking the time to fully understand the text. This is stupid. The text will inform your character choices, and will allow you to be more specific and accurate. A couple very good choices will serve you far better than a dozen ungrounded and unclear choices. In order to arrive at a clearer understanding of the text in a short period of time, you should read it in a series of passes, making a conscious effort not to think just about your character but to take in the totality of the scene.

1. Read the first few lines and a the last few lines of the script. It's entirely possible to read a script and have no idea what you just read, reading the beginning and end gives you context as you read through the whole script. Remember, time is precious.
   
2. Read the script as a WRITER. Ask yourself these questions:
   
   1. Why is this scene in the script?
      
   2. What page number is this? Are we still in exposition-land?
      
   3. How is the scene written?
      
      1. Short sentences?
         
      2. Long sentences?
         
      3. What is the significance of the style of the writing.
         
3. Read the script as a DIRECTOR. If you were to direct the actors in the scene, how would you tell the other actor to play their part? This will help you to generate lively responses when you are working with a CD or actor who is giving you a flat read (DO NOT take this as license to actually direct the other actor, that's a big no-sirreee JimBob).
   
4. Read the script as an EDITOR. Ask yourself these questions:
   
   1. Where are the close ups?
      
   2. Is there a turning point in the scene? Find It!
      
      1. This is where the character shifts their psychological state.
         
      2. It can be the last moment of the scene.
         
   3. Control the time.
      
      1. Where can you place a moment within YOUR lines that directs all of the focus to you?
         
         1. Put a marker in the first 4 lines of the scene. CDs make snap judgments; make sure they've had a chance to really take you in.
            
   4. Finally, read the script as an ACTOR. Make the strongest possible choice that the text of the scene will hold.
      
      1. Even if it's "wrong" it's far better to make a strong choice supported by the text and get a redirect than to make a middling choice and get dismissed.
         
      2. How can you raise the stakes in the scene?
         
5. Read the scene for CLARIFICATION. If there are any lingering questions you have (e.g. What is my relationship to this other character?) read the text with only that question in mind. You'll likely find the answer, if you don't just pick something.
   

While this post has grown into something of a tome, it's all really good stuff and definitely worth giving a shot the next time you're playing around with a script with some actor buddies. If it works for you, then make a habit of doing it every time you get sides, a habit of preparation is what will allow you to excel in a cold-read situation.

Preparing for a Commercial Agent Interview

In preparing for my commercial agent interview, I realized there's quite a bit to do.

1. Assemble a solid reel representing your work.
   
   1. Be sure to emphasize any strong comedic work that you've done.
      
2. Bone up on your commercial audition technique.
   
   1. Agents want to believe that you can wow casting directors and give a great audition. So practice reading commercial copy.
      
   2. Work in front of a camera – it's the best feedback you'll ever get.
      
3. Prepare a monologue.
   
   1. In about 75% of the agent interviews I've attended they've asked me if I had a monologue I wanted to perform.
      
   2. In 100% of the interviews where a monologue was needed, I didn't have one at performance quality. Of course Murphey's law dictates that at the interview where I had a monologue prepared, I wasn't asked for one.
      
4. Prepare your questions
   
   1. Remember you are interviewing the agent as well.
      
5. Headshot/Resume
   
   1. This should go without saying, but bring a headshot and resume (multiple copies is always a good idea).
      
   2. Know your measurements: height, weight, shoe size, chest, waist, inseam, etc.
      
6. Dress for success
   
   1. Wear clothes that you like, you'll feel better and the agent will get a better sense of who you are.
      
   2. Iron your shirt/slacks/dress, and make sure that your socks match.
      
7. Relax
   
   1. As much as possible try to be the charming lovable you that all of your friends enjoy hanging out with.
      
   2. Remember, this is one of many agents you will have in your career – so no need to have a kitten, no matter how badly you want an agent.
      
   3. The agent wants you to succeed just as much as you want to.