José Angel Santana, Ph.D. teaches a daily practice that significantly improves the quality of human interactions in life and art, to serve both the professional actor and non-actor needs for clear communication, high performance and personal effectiveness. This daily practice improves communication skills, self-confidence, personal initiative, and the quality of human interactions and relationships for the performing artist, in business, and in one's own personal life.
Friday, February 28, 2014
Friday, February 21, 2014
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Monday, February 17, 2014
José Angel Santana: Empathy and The Art of Connecting
"Acting should be terminal. That's what Stella told me; that's what Kazan also believed. If something big isn't at stake--if everything isn't at stake--why bother? Why show up? Why apply anything to it at all? Someone is out there dreaming and asking questions and wondering why he was born. Some guy is out there with a father who beats him and tells him he's a loser with a lousy dick and no chance in hell of amounting to anything. Well, what do I tell him? How do I reach out to him and tell him a story? There's a girl out there who doesn't have a mother to teach her how to take care of a house or a man or herself, and what do I tell her? What's the story for her? It's in the text somewhere; it's in my heart and my mind somewhere, and I spend all my time and energy and love trying to find it, trying to transmit it. That's what I think acting should be. You honor the playwright's words, and you find a character out of those words, and you marry the director in your heart and you follow him and pray he follows you." -- Marlon Brando/Interview with James Grissom/1990/ from James Grissom's Follies of God
