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1 Don't wait for interruptions. Scripts frequently contain dashes or ellipses that the writer has placed at the end of a line of dialogue, indicating that a character's statement is [...]

TO GET A SENSE OF THE QUIRKY AND EXISTENTIAL wit of Bay Area-based clown/actor Ron Campbell, consider his outgoing voicemail message: 'Please listen to the entire menu, as some of [...]

'AS A 70-YEAR-OLD AFRICAN AMERICAN ARTIST, I'm not interested in art for art's sake,' declares Rhodessa Jones, the acclaimed San Francisco-based performer, teacher, writer, and social activist. 'It has to [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Just as every actor has pre-acting rituals and every director has a rehearsal trick or two, every acting teacher seems to have an unusual technique, exercise, or theory--some [...]

[ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] Ashley Avis got the sides for a feature film two days before her audition. She memorized the six or seven pages, only to be told when she arrived [...]

WHEN NEW YORK actor Peter Levine took a class in commercial acting, the teacher told him he had too many wrinkles. Levine dropped the class the next day 'That's who [...]

If you've taken more than one acting class, you know there's no one-size-fits-all rule of etiquette any more than there's one method of acting that works for everyone. But certain [...]

[ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] If you've taken more than one acting class, you know there's no one-size-fits-all rule of etiquette any more than there's one method of acting that works for everyone. [...]

THE EPHEMERAL ART OF ACTING IS CONSTANTLY IN FLUX. Professional teachers and theorists--from the father of modern acting, Konstantin Stanislavsky, through today's most influential gurus--are continually inventing and disseminating new [...]

BEAUTIFUL beaches may beckon when the thermometer starts to spike, and summer relaxation may be a natural part of the rhythm of the year. But before buying that new bottle [...]

She has been called--by legions of devoted friends, students, and colleagues--a tough broad, an anti-hypocrite (Edward Albee's label), a workhorse, a perfectionist, a spectacular cook, demanding, kind. She could be [...]

When David Dower, founder and artistic director of San Francisco's Z Space Studio, offered Tectonic Theater Project writer and director Leigh Fondakowski a commission to create a docudrama based on [...]

LAST SPRING, WHEN SAN Francisco's American Conservatory Theater announced the formation of a core acting company of four for the coming season, local audiences responded with a burst of enthusiasm [...]

Here we are in the second decade of the new millennium--one or two generations removed from the seminal American acting teachers of the previous century. Those icons, mostly Group Theatre [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Like many actors, Carolyn Power gets private coaching. For an audition for Sarah Ruhl's play The Clean House, she's preparing a stitched-together monologue from August: Osage County, but [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Remember the old Scouts motto 'Be prepared'? Well, actors need to be prepared for auditions. And according to several casting directors and acting coaches, very often they're not. [...]

In the beginning, there was Stanislavsky. Not really, of course. Acting teachers were teaching, and actors were following their instructions, long before the Russian actor-director-teacher Constantin Stanislavsky, began to experiment [...]

Lola Davidson, a Second City grad who also studied for four years at Playhouse West, always thought coaches were for untrained, lazy, or just plain bad actors. In casting director [...]

Two apes are sitting in a tree. One says to the other, 'We have to believe we're not endangered or we'd all go mad.' New York experimental playwright Liz Duffy [...]

Two students were matched up in Michael Carroll's class at American Conservatory Theater to work on a scene from John Patrick Shanley's Four Dogs and a Bone. As it turned [...]

If ever a dramatist represented the conscience of a country, that person is Athol Fugard. During South Africa's decades of apartheid and right up to, well, today, when Exits and [...]

What makes a child succeed in a show business career? For every Dakota Fanning, Haley Joel Osment, and Jonathan Lipnicki, there is a talented youngster longing to be a star. [...]

JESSE J. SANCHEZ MAY NOT LOOK LIKE YOUR TYPICAL serious musician. Never has. As a kid in San Jose, he'd walk into a rehearsal room with his trumpet, and the [...]

Three's Company A rare collaboration brings Sisters Matsumoto to the stage Philip Kan Gotanda is having his first espresso of the morning in his racially mixed, working-class San Francisco neighborhood. [...]

Arts administration, as an academic discipline, is still in its youth, but there are about arts administration degree programs in the US. Few of those programs offer significant summer activity, however. San Francisco's Golden Gate University has a summer semester offering five courses, at $1,350 per course. Other institutions' summer offerings for arts administration students are described., Nonprofits are hungry for good management. Arts administration training programs offer a structured approach to running the show. If you're thinking of making the transition, as many of us do, [...]

Extensive travelling from one place to another has been a part of the lives of some regional theater actors, such as Kandis Chappell, Michelle Morain and David Drummond. These actors have had to adjust to new surroundings and apartments on a continual basis. In the face of rigid schedules, these actors have abandoned their dreams of entering the Hollywood movie industry and have barely sought romantic relationships. Although they admit that they receive less income than what they desrve, these actors claim that they enjoy their profession.

I'm just trying not to draw the gods' attention,' jokes Kate Edmunds, who is in the enviable position - for a set designer - of being able to settle down [...]

Can you imagine it? You're out on a bus-and-truck tour and you get a phone call from the president of your board. 'We're declaring bankruptcy,' he says. 'Pull up your [...]

Gielgud: A Theatrical Life 1904-2000 by Jonathan Croall Several biographies of Sir John Gielgud came out last year, of which Jonathan Croall's, at a whopping 579 pages, is the longest. [...]

Playing Pinter means solving the mysteries of the precise text and letting other mysteries be. Those famous pauses; the mystery-and-menace quotient; the edgy, comic tone; the musical everyday language; the [...]

Truth is truth, but making the adjustment from stage to screen acting takes skill and concentration. 'I've never understood why there is such big a big deal made between acting [...]

SAN FRANCISCO--Three of my favorite small groups knocked my socks off recently with sharply etched ensemble productions that reminded me of the value of ensemble playing and passionate artistic vision. [...]

Speaking the speech of Shakespeare properly is no different -- and no easier -- for Brits than it is for Americans. The famously tactless John Gielgud once remarked in the [...]

Though fraught with obstacles, Haiku Tunnel finds the light of day. Move over, Ethan and Joel. The Kornbluth Brothers are here. The two San Francisco-based filmmakers, Josh and Jacob, made [...]

A young playwright dares to cast his net wide Abject terror, says San Francisco playwright Prince Gomolvilas, is part of his creative process. 'I always know I'm on the right [...]

Film directors, frustrated with their stunted communication with performers on-set, turn to acting teachers for help. If you've ever found yourself befuddled trying to take direction on the set, you'll [...]

Keith Johnstone's improvisation games focus on facing fear, not on being clever Before I ever had my first formal acting class, I took improvisation classes. San Francisco old-timers may remember [...]

SAN FRANCISC--Whatever happened to less is more? I can't help noticing lately that playwrights and directors and even actors seem to think that bigger--bigger emotions, more stage business, more words--is [...]

Successful fight choreography requires time, confidence, and attentive actors. At a recent small-theatre production of Romeo and Juliet by Subterranean Shakespeare in Berkeley, I was impressed by the particularly realistic [...]

Acting with non-professionals offers particular problems and pleasures. When Irish actor Stephen Rea was shooting The Crying Game, he played opposite non-actor Jaye Davidson. In a scene toward the end [...]

SAN FRANCISCO--Although Bill Irwin's brilliant rendition of Texts for Nothing at the Bay Area's biggest resident company, American Conservatory Theater, was surely the highlight of the early summer scene, several [...]

Notorious: The Life of Ingrid Bergman by Donald Spoto Reputable biographer Spoto's 436-page tome on the life of the late Swedish-born stage and screen star is an elegant, detailed read. [...]

Anthony Hopkins by Quentin Falk This authorized, artful biography of the Welsh stage-and-screen actor is consistently interesting. British author Falk got direct comments from the man himself, as well as [...]

Sadly, the craft takes a backseat to gossip in the majority of actors' biographies on the market. Angelina Jolie, Drew Barrymore, Donna Reed ... Is there any star, rising or [...]

Foster Child by Buddy Foster Less sophisticated is this bio of Hopkins' Lambs co-star Jodie Foster. Written by her brother, formerly a child actor on the TV show Mayberry R.F.D., [...]

The Life and Humor of Robin Williams by Jay David Equally unsophisticated--and equally unrevealing about the star himself--is this slim volume by an author whose only credentials seem to be [...]

Bill Irwin's careening career--through clown, comedy, and craft--lands him back with Beckett Actor and clown Bill Irwin arrives for an interview in American Conservatory Theater's conference room wearing a baseball [...]

Caring for your voice means taking the time and avoiding the vices. Mimes, read no further. As for the rest of us: For this special issue on vocal technique, let's [...]

Playing fear truthfully is not always easy. I recently watched a perfectly good stage actor indicate fear and horror by bugging out his eyes. I couldn't really blame him. Playing [...]