Monthly Archives: October 2016

It was so great to have a teacher surprise this week. Paddy Heusinger, one of my prized students from almost 20 years ago, has had a very successful path after leaving me. He went on to graduate from Juilliard and then on to numerous plays in NYC. Soon, this led him to his first Broadway lead in the drama, Next Fall. The momentum just kept building as he went from TV to stage to a character in a video game (don’t quite understand this one) to Los Angeles to an acclaimed production of Bent to now, his big movie break – – being cast as the principal villain in the new Tom Cruise movie, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back. He is indeed a shooting star moving at the speed of light; I couldn’t be more proud of him! Read more →

One truism about comedy that I have always held is that “offensiveness” is a necessary component to all comedy. Whether it is talking about a grandmother falling down the stairs, or a bird pooping on someone’s head or a full out roast on TV – offensiveness is just a requirement to break thru ice and get to the funny bone. Read more →

Today was a mess of testing. Testing marched into the school and demanded everyone’s attention. Whole large segments of school were trapped in classrooms with banks of laptops. And the others – those sophomores and juniors that were not testing – just for today – – they were rather locked up into classrooms for the “holding pen” experience. Read more →

Some days you plan for success and some days you don’t. To be honest, I was approaching the day from a bit of a negative position. In Company we had been working week after week on whole group projects where everyone was working as a team and creating as a group. We had been going over the fundamentals and drilling and drilling and drilling the Viewpoints. At times, I was wondering if I was moving too slowly through these steps. I knew that there was going to be a point in which we would be drilling so long that the actual GOAL for all the drilling would have disappeared. I was skeptical. Read more →

The one thing that drives me totally nuts in class is to reason with a student as to why they either didn’t get around to reading the play, don’t like plays, or are simply resigned to never reading plays. They claim there are an “actor” or a “technician” yet they are only interested in what goes on in rehearsals and performances. How can that be??? Read more →