Doug Honorof, who does mostly production dialect coaching and lives back east, was out for his eighth yearly intensive through Elaine Clark's school, Voice One.

We started with articulatory flexibility, learning the international phonetic alphabet, exploring all contours and combinations of tongue, jaw, lips, nasal and oral cavities, larynx, pharynx, you name it.

Then we launched in to a survey of several accents, individual coaching with a variety of texts, a clear work flow for effective study, and finished with some in-accent improvisation.

Very productive three days and two nights.  Now the real work begins; picking the first one to study at length and master. 

I started taking a standup class at the San Francisco Comedy College.  Kurtis Matthews has built a pretty amazing institution, complete with a comedy club that's fourteen feet away from the classroom.  Really.  There's three open mics a week (Wednesday, Friday, Saturday) and, as a current student, you get stage time. 

Part of the training attitude here is, just get up there and feel comfortable with an audience.  Feel the silence.  Develop a relationship.  Go up without material.  Face the fear.  Here's a mic, stage, lights, audience, go!

What a rush.  I got on for maybe two minutes playing to a crowd of maybe ten, but I got some laughs and had some fun and took the first step toward having an act:  getting up on stage and trying it out.

More good times to come.  

I totally fooled you.  No, I am not on CSI: Miami.  But I did work on a scene from recent audition sides in Nancy Berwid's First Take class tonight.  A window opened into a possible world where I get trustworthy guy who turns out to be twisted and villainous niche casting action.  Challenging class.  Very exacting and specific work.  Lots of ground to cover. 

It was dead still at Fort Mason tonight.  Unusual as there's often wind.

Turns out I am spending at least some time at SFSDF every day this week.  Feels like being on some kind of studio contract.  Five shoots in one week, one cast last minute, plus rehearsal, a showcase session, and a graduation screening.  Great way to feel the rhythm of working daily as an actor.  It's been very challenging and extremely fun to prepare for what is about eight roles, including the class material, in the frame of a single week.

Kudos to new directors Make Fatum, Adrienne Garcia, Guy Shomron, Ian Ballantyne, and Lisa Ryers for bashing out of the gates in style!

Currently working out monologues and commercial audition pieces in an industry showcase at SFSDF coached by Celia Shuman, who I've been working with for about a year.

I've been singing for a few weeks with Shari Carlson, and will soon join one of her acting sessions, as well.

I'm continuing on to my second eight-week session of Nancy Berwid's First Take acting and audition program. 

Also coming up is an advanced narration voice-over series on three December Saturdays with Bob Wood at Voice One.  In January, I'm looking forward to a two-evening plus three-day series on articulatory flexibility and dialects with Doug Honorof, also at Voice One.  At the beginning of the month, I took a basic narration class with owner Elaine Clark and teacher Tom Chantler.

San Francisco is overflowing with excellent training opportunities.  Good stuff.

Film School isn't just a place to hone your craft and make connections, it's a transcendent musical experience.  Their show at San Francisco's  Bottom of the Hill last night was one of my year's big highlights, as was a recent Built to Spill show in L.A. at The Music Box.

I recently started with singing coaching at Shari Carlson Studio, and am working on Aimee Mann's "Wise Up" from the Magnolia soundtrack.  Music is one of the pillars of my experience as an actor and human, and working with a singing coach is one of the most powerful educations I've ever had.

While I can easily rock out on electric guitar into headphones at home, my drum kit remains disassembled in the garage.  For some reason, the neighbors I share very thin walls with aren't into my thump-thumpa rock antics, or even my tiss-tih-tah-tiss jazz stylings.  Got studio space?  Need an intermediate beginner to work out with?  Get in touch!