Spotlight on Acting Schools and Coaches
Teaching & Doing
Three veteran actor-teachers wax eloquent on the joy of learning through teaching others.

STORIES

Spotlight on Acting Schools and Coaches


September 11, 2008
By Paul Helou
"If I am not an actor, if I am not a singer, if I don't do what I teach, who am I?" Carol Fox Prescott recalls asking herself two years ago on her way to see a student perform. Though it was not the most comfortable query the veteran acting coach had ever asked herself, it certainly was an exciting one — inspiring her to explore a new relationship between her teaching and performing.

"If I wanted to continue to become a better teacher after all these years, it was time to get back on the stage," says the New York-based Prescott, a theatre actor for close to 40 years who transitioned from performing to teaching in the early 1980s. The result was her one-woman show, Some of These Days: A Jewish Woman's Journey Through Chutzpah, Passion and Pastry With Sophie Tucker. Though she performs the show in venues across the country, she says, "Teaching is still where I live, where I am the freest, where I am the clearest."

Suzanne Shepherd and Steven Anderson have also found a dynamic interplay between their teaching and performing. With these veteran instructors, the clichι "Those who can't, teach" transforms into the mantra "Those who can teach, do." The atmosphere they create in the classroom — of risk-taking and imagination — is now available to them when they step on the boards. "It is this atmosphere we must create for ourselves on the stage," says Prescott, who is featured as one of four master teachers in Larry Silverberg's book Act New York and profiled in the book Acting Teachers of America: A Vital Tradition, by Ronald Rand and Luigi Scorcia.

Prescott observes: "The most valuable acting lesson I've learned from teaching is that the audience is my best friend. Now when I make an entrance on the stage, I'm walking into the safest place that exists for me. Everything that happens is supposed to happen. Every moment is fully realized, and I am fully alive. It took me all these years of teaching this to others to learn it myself."

For Shepherd, teaching is an anchor amid a busy acting career. "If I am on the stage, I can teach," she says. "If I am on television, I can teach if it's in New York. I can do all of it. I have taught for 35 years and only took off one year to do two movies. I don't think I could endure without teaching. When I walk out of my six-hour class, I am exhilarated. It is not hard work. It is nutritional work."


From the Ground Up

Recalling her days as a young actor, Shepherd describes a life-changing moment: "I was working on stage with Alan Alda. During the curtain call of the final performance, I took my Equity card and tore it up. He said, 'What are you doing?' I said, 'I am doing exactly what I want to do,' and I never acted again for maybe 15 years." In the meantime, she did landscape design for Manhattan penthouses. "I drove a truck. I planted trees," she says. "My daughter's friends used to see me walk up Park Avenue with hip boots and a shovel, and they would say, 'What is your mother, a gravedigger?'"

Though Shepherd enjoyed and won awards for her landscaping work, which was featured in numerous upscale magazines, fate nudged her in another direction. As she recalls, "Everybody kept saying, 'You have to be an actor. Why aren't you an actor?' Finally I went to Sandy Meisner's class; that was very thrilling. When I finished, I didn't want to be an actor; I wanted to be a teacher. I started teaching after I studied with Sandy. That was 1973."

Prescott recalls a pivotal moment in her development as a teacher and performer: when she went to an evening lecture that featured actor Michael Moriarty. "That night he said the words that changed my life: 'It is all about the breath,' " she recalls. "I had no idea what he was talking about. [Yet] I knew that he was absolutely right, and I've spent the rest of my life learning about what that means. Everybody has to find his or her own way. We all have to search until we find a technique that electrifies our mind. For me, it's the breath."

Shepherd says her prowess as a landscaper, shaping natural beauty, transformed into cultivating the talents of her students and that she eventually was cured of what she describes as a lack of self-confidence. As an actor, she has played television and film mothers to characters played by Tracey Ullman, Mickey Rourke, Holly Hunter, Timothy Hutton, Adrien Brody, Lorraine Bracco, Bill Irwin, and, of course, Edie Falco; Shepherd had a recurring role on The Sopranos as Carmela's mother. She recently finished work on writer-director Nia Vardalos' new film, I Hate Valentine's Day.

"The atmosphere in my class is holy," Shepherd says. "As Mel Brooks said, 'Raise their hearts; lift their spirits.' Do I bring what I learn from working into the class? Of course I do. I also bring what I learn from teaching into my work. I have learned more from teaching than I have ever taught anyone. It has been the greatest nourishment that I can explain."

A Solid Foundation

The L.A.-based Anderson recalls how he was in dire need of such sustenance after his starring role on the 1990 TV series The Marshall Chronicles abruptly ended shortly after it began: "It was a marvelous show, very well written and very much respected, with a great cast. But it got canceled after only half a season on ABC. I was disillusioned with Hollywood. I had worked so long and hard to be involved with something of quality, only to discover that Hollywood didn't care. I thought it was about programming when really it was all about advertising." A successful working actor in television and on film and stage, Anderson says he felt he needed a fresh perspective to rejuvenate his approach to acting.

He headed to Telluride, Colo., where he partnered with Sandra and Keith Carradine to purchase the Sheridan Opera House, a turn-of-the-century theatre in bankruptcy. "We put together an acquisition team, worked with the bankruptcy court, and bought it," Anderson says. "But then it was like, 'We have a theatre. What are we going to do with it?' We came up with a nonprofit organization called the Sheridan Arts Foundation. The idea behind the foundation was to bring in high school students from across the country to work with well-known artists in an effort to promote performing arts in education. This was during a time when performing-arts programs were being cut wholesale from public-school budgets nationwide. It was here that I began to teach. Telluride was the turning point for me. I didn't say, 'Oh, let me contribute.' It was something to do that would take me away from Hollywood. But in the process, I found that I was helping make a difference in other people's lives — a difference based in the process of their artistic work, not in a final product."

After three years of heading the foundation, Anderson returned to Hollywood with a new perspective. "I still wanted to act but didn't want to have to re-establish myself in a new city. That meant returning to L.A.," he says. "I could go back, but it would have to be on my terms. I would no longer look to Hollywood for its approval or validation. My passion was now in exploring the process of acting — what was really at the core of the work. The creative process had to come first; the career would follow." He recalls a shift in his work: "One night on stage during a show, I was sitting on this couch, and I became aware of all the chatter in my head about how I was doing. I realized, as long as I was watching my performance, I wasn't experiencing it. Without thinking, I threw myself off the couch onto all fours and started crawling. I had no idea why I was crawling, but I kept speaking. The crawling itself began to alter and inform the dialogue as it came out of my body. I was experiencing the play. Following the show, people commented on how that moment had been so powerful for them."

As a result of that experience, Anderson invented a teaching tool called "a time bomb." He describes it as a physical action the actor plans to do during the scene but with no preconceived idea about when it will occur. "It is an example to me of how we can find ways to allow our intuitive nature to respond," Anderson says. "Our thinking mind is then free to be inspired by what is actually occurring in front of us. These are now true character thoughts. It's scary because we could look foolish. But as long as our thinking is concerned with ourselves, character thoughts are impossible."

Since then, for more than 15 years, he has been coaching actors privately and conducting workshops in the Los Angeles area. Some of his clients have included Angie Harmon, Shemar Moore, Halle Berry, Sean Patrick Flanery, Eva Longoria, Tracey Bregman, Sharon Gless, and Tanya Tucker. Not counting his Telluride sabbatical, he has been acting for more than 30 years, with guest-starring roles on Cold Case, Without a Trace, Boston Legal, The West Wing, Nip/Tuck, The Practice, ER, and NYPD Blue.

Impulsive Behavior

For Prescott, what it means to be fully human on the stage is rooted in three things: the breath, the joy in the act of acting, and a growing awareness of the character's authenticity as it merges with one's own reality. "As an actor, I follow my impulses as I purposefully and consciously seek to enjoy what it is I am doing, whether it is Medea killing her children or belting out a song," she says. "Teaching requires the same kind of spontaneity, courage to go from the gut, and the fierce concentration that allows me to stay in the moment."

To be fully human on stage, says Shepherd, an actor must tell the truth and inhabit a human being. "There are different vocabularies," she says. "What do you want? What do you wish for? What are you doing? What is your action? It is all the same. It is just different ways of saying the same thing, because acting is doing. It is not feeling. Most times before actors study with me, they say things like, 'Well, I am yelling at him.' That's a description of the words. 'I am criticizing him.' That's a description of the words. They were written already. Where's your job? You have got to be disciplined into how to name an action. I teach the difference between what is useless and what is useful and doable."

Adds Anderson, "I think that what we do as actors is improvise within the text, which is part of our framework, the container into which we release ourselves. I think the story line exists within the text; we draw our circumstances from the text, but the story that actually occurs for the audience lives within the energetic exchange that is taking place between the actors, the humans. For each performance, the text lives one time and one time only."

All three teachers have a strong connection to improvisation. Anderson began his relationship with improv in the 1970s, studying with Gary Austin at the Groundlings in Los Angeles. Prescott began teaching 14 years ago at a yearly summer improv retreat held by Artistic New Directions, an organization that works with actors and writers to hone their improv skills and develop new material. Shepherd was married to and worked with David Shepherd, who started the Compass Players in Chicago — the first improvisational company in the country.

"There is an improvisational exercise that I invented," says Suzanne Shepherd. "It filters immediately into your work in a text. It is not like I am going to pretend I am a mouse. No. It is totally relevant to your work in the text. Give me a character. Stanley Kowalski. He is the king. He is living in a world of servants. A lady comes along, and she wants to be queen. It is a Shakespearean play. If I am Stanley and you contradict me, I am going to respond accordingly because I am the king. Don't contradict me. It influences immediately your work in the part."

Shepherd is also able to use improvisation freely in her work. She recalls a learning experience with John Candy when they were filming a scene for Uncle Buck. "I had so much fun with him — you have no idea," she says. "We had such a good time because he improvised whole scenes. There wasn't a word on paper. He improvised my scene. I couldn't stand it. I started to laugh. At one point, I almost peed on the floor; he was so funny." She then returned the favor to another actor. "When I did Lolita with Jeremy Irons, I did the same thing to Jeremy. He said, 'Cut it out!' Because he kept laughing. I said, 'Jeremy, you are a professional; you can take it.'"

Likewise, Prescott is no stranger to improvisation. In 14 summers on the faculty of Artistic New Directions' improv retreats, she has been part of a teaching unit that includes some of the best improvisers in the country. "We sit in on each other's classes, we teach together, we practice each other's exercises, and we grow as we expand our artistic vision," she says. In addition to working with actors and improvisers in her weekly classes in New York, she welcomes performers of all disciplines — including standup comics, writers, dancers, musicians, and more. Although scene work is a requirement, she meets each student on his or her own terms, while introducing her breath techniques.

"I feel like I have been able to explore the link, through the breath, between improvisation and acting," she says. "I have seen improvisers who have never done a play before become free with written text and actors who have never done improv embrace a spontaneous energy whether they are doing Tennessee Williams or Neil Simon. If I'm game, I am willing to do whatever it takes to live and play in those wonderful circumstances, be they dark or funny or both.

"That's the glory of inhabiting a human soul in a situation that you never experienced before," adds Shepherd. "Great playwrights create great circumstances." And if the movie set and theatre are vehicles for learning and the classroom is a stage, then Prescott, Shepherd, and Anderson have blended both careers into valuable, highly artistic, and most welcome skill sets.