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.
The studio ran a week without me and two castings landed in the middle of it, one of them a national SAG job. Shea, Brian, Joey and me on what a casting week is really like from our side of the table, the local agents who pull over in the grocery aisle to get talent submitted, hurry up and wait, why an actor should audition for themselves on the day nothing is scheduled, and a Valentine’s Day at the studio.
Three days with mom away and two of my kids on the microphones. The ten-minute rule that got Rosalyn on a bike, why the big bike makes the little bike easy, how Jack’s drum kit and mom’s Disney World trip actually happened, and the goal I told my kids we’re chasing at the studio.
The first kids episode, twelve minutes, with my own two on the microphones. Rosalyn owns up to an episode she wasn’t supposed to watch, Jack explains how an older kid talked him out of a toy, and we run the scene twice, once giving in and once saying no, so he can feel the difference.
The week before Thanksgiving 2019. Brian lost his voice to six hours of Ninja Star, Shea asked for my mom’s deviled egg recipe, and we got into Black Friday, Santa, white elephant rules and the roofer who did his job like a craftsman. Then the real point: why people stop investing in themselves in December, and why the studio is the gym for your soul.
Hanna Spence-Schehr of The Phoenix Theatre Company on a company that opened in January 1920 and never shut its doors, the camps where four-year-olds with autism share the main stage with their peers, and what a ballet dancer learned about mastery.
Asher Angel trained here as a kid, and the week Shazam came out we went to see it at 10 in the morning. Brian and Joey Sweeney join Jason, John Luke and me on what Asher was doing in the early scenes, why the lead in the biggest movie in the country was still pushing himself, the 4 a.m. wrestling match in your own head, taking your goals as seriously as a plane ticket, and Will Smith’s brick wall.
Frank Caliendo walked into the studio already famous and asked to be treated like a beginner who knows nothing. An hour with Frank, John Luke and Jason on what three weeks of memorization taught him, why repetition in acting is not doing the same thing twice, the moment acting became listening, and a Jack Nicholson improv on a boat that breaks down what point of view does for a scene.
The Monday after Valleywood, with Shea and Joey at the table and Brian on the phone, on the mindset behind all of it. Kids love discipline and so do adults, the difference between get to and have to, how the three of us talked each other through a rough morning, Brené Brown on vulnerability, why Monday is no different from Saturday, and the routine you fall back on when the day goes sideways.
What the first night of an acting class is really like: the phone goes in a box, you’re on your feet in minutes, nobody gets the same note, and the parking lot is the hardest part. For the person who has been meaning to do this for years.
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