Brianna asks how you know you are getting better when nobody hands you a grade, how to push through the days you want to sleep in, and which paid classes are worth it. Compare you to you, book it the night before, quadrant two and the audition that doesn’t exist, ten times the value, and the 6 a.m. call time you give yourself.
Jenna Del Pozo is graduating from ASU with a film degree, a new marketing job with a family of Phoenix restaurants, a food blog, and a fear about the future. Letting go of the timeline, the math I did when I left pre-med, combining the things you love into one profession, the pitch she prepared and never had to give, becoming a servant of all, and why she has to audition now, because she is afraid to.
Jada Warner asks whether she is doing enough and whether to study acting in college. Counterbalance instead of balance, the lie that you don’t have time, why nobody goes pro on two hours a day, college as a babysitter and as a business, the editor I paid to hold me accountable, and where God is pulling the studio.
Brad Sweeney, Brian and Joey’s father, joins the boys and me. The studio that started in a doctor’s office and then eight parking spots on McDowell Road in 2007, sign spinning with my new bride, the habits that go with you anywhere, why the television belongs out of the bedroom, Joey’s growth, and a thousand dollars in gift cards from two strangers.
My aunt, Vicki Sweeney, sat down with me a few days after I told her something hard: she is one of the most giving people I know, and she is not a positive person. This is the conversation that followed. The bunny question I ask every class, the sign on our barber’s wall, why bottling things up robs the people who love you, lunch at Zipps, the bike ride with my son that taught me what tough love is, and how to call someone you love so they want to pick up.
My son Jack hosts, with Brian and me as his acting coaches, and we teach him the first exercise every improv kid learns here: Yes Because. Why you say yes to your partner’s idea, why you repeat every word they said before you add your own, what a specific is, the difference between building up and building sideways, and two rounds you can hear us play, one of them as a boss and a grandma.
Shea was making slides for her first real speaking engagement and got stuck on one word: speaker. Yoga instructor, yes. Actress, yes. Speaker? She’d done it twice. This is about the two different I ams, the one you say to other people once you’ve earned it and the one you say to yourself before it’s true, plus Matt the friend versus Matt the coach, and Leeann coming back to teach the kids.
Joey fought through a day of roadblocks to get us live, and it turned into the best day he’d had in a while. That’s the episode: why finishing strong feels good whether or not you finish, Napoleon Hill on going the extra mile, a week of Valleywood, what Mercury in retrograde has to do with gratitude, why you choose what you spread, and two students who told strangers where they trained.
Two of our teen students behind a microphone for the first time, with Joey and me. Cardinals football and why Brian never knew where Kyler Murray was, the coach who told a nine-year-old she had to mature, the night the teen class sat in a circle and got real, a happy birthday sung to someone whose birthday it wasn’t, a freshman class of 600, deleting social media, and what makes this place special to them.
The Masterclass format was new when we recorded this, so Shea, Brian, Joey and I talked about what actually happens in that room: 20-minute scenes from Pulitzer and Tony winning plays, four days straight, and the year and a half of monthly failures it took to earn it. Then the rocks we hiked for yesterday, and the note Brian gave himself that changed his teaching: teach the person, not the piece.
Tony Calvis of Nextiva in the studio on a Saturday: why you make the next sales call when the clients are already rolling in, why conflict is the energy for growth, and what a producer is really looking for in an audition.
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