THE BASICS

Chapter Three

The Basics

    So, I say to you, learn how to focus your attention. Do exercises in attention and communication, because if you’re not communicating to someone you know, even if it’s only in your mind, then your attention will be dissipated, and you’ll be lost in the moment, because without an understanding of who you’re talking to, what you’re saying, and what the importance of the message is, what the point of what you’re communicating, no one will get what or why you’re saying it!

    Let’s clarify with some basic definitions:

Acting – Representing a unique character by assuming the point of view of that person to serve the character in the best, most positive light imaginable, understanding the exact situations a character is involved in. To serve an imaginary character as a spokesperson, believing all that he or she stands for.Attention- Mental concentration, looking toward someone or something, placing one’s mind and gaze on someone with an expectation of giving and receiving information, with the understanding that something will occur between two or more viewpoints.
Classify- The act of arranging things according to subject matter, putting them into a particular category.
Communication is the act of relaying information from one viewpoint to another viewpoint which includes the attention, intention and willingness to share data from all parties, originator and recipient.
Intention – Having one’s mind strengthened by a specific important purpose.
Objective- Something someone is trying to achieve or reach out for from a specific viewpoint.
Responsibility- Having to account for your actions and recognizing the validity of your character’s and your own choices. 
Specify- Isolating details which describe something to be done or made, clearly distinguishing a unique choice deemed to be important. Finding a special item which emerges significantly within a particular classification, defined exactly, which increases its value.
Note: Several schools of thought on the subject of performing encourage you to focus on objectives, the purposeful goal, but they don’t delve into the source of the attention, which is the imaginary character’s point of view. Ask yourself, “Do I ever focus on an objective?” Usually you focus on your thoughts, and the message you’re trying to communicate. The practice of focusing on objectives may work, if the character is doing that. Most of the time, characters and people are unaware of actual objectives, but they know what their attention is on, how they need to respond to the situation at hand. It is an immediate attraction which leads you to understand the nature of the viewpoint.
Classify/Specify
   The entire act of creation is two-fold. Initially, when developing a character you need to place him or her into a classification, a category which allows you to see clearly the details and boundaries of the viewpoint. Next, you need to discover something specific about the particular, unique viewpoint given to you by the thoughts and considerations of the character, expressed in the script or song.
You need to first CLASSIFY the situation, and then to SPECIFY something about it; that is, to “specify,” is to make something more important than anything else. By classifying and specifying, you open the door to creative endeavors. You may have to repeat this process until something emerges more important than others.    I would say the vital task is to expand your ability is to imagine things, imagine situations, imagine character traits, and imagine new thoughts and new ideas. One exercise I’ve found useful is to go to a large shopping mall, and watch people shopping, coming and going to and from stores, and imagine what’s on their minds, what they’re thinking about, what their attention is on, and take notes from you act of imagining what absorbs their attention. It doesn’t matter what you imagine, as long as you don’t fall into the traps of interpretation: This process helps the performer focus his/her attention on the possible negative traps that may come your way, and find out how to reverse them to positive items grasping your attention.
    There is a sequence, that if placed out of order or if the steps are ignored, will hinder the accurate interpretation of a song, and produce little or no effect. In turn, it will leave an audience without an opinion of why you sang the song at all. That’s where the traps come in. They take us away from positive choices, and we become cynical and doubting, rather than positive and reassuring.    You see, as people, we naturally look toward the hopeful, positive, and beneficial paths, those which lead us toward solutions, rather than into the mire of problems.
The Trap of Adopting Criticism
   Our world loves criticism as it pervades the media, our universities, our schools, and our workplace, as well as in our homes. In many ways, it is easier to be critical of someone or something, than it is to take a positive outlook. Performers, as James Earl Jones recently said, “Have the responsibility to breathe life into our characters.” It’s hard to breathe life into an imaginary person when you’re critical of him or her, just as it is hard to love someone when you criticize that person. Performers are challenged to find the most positive viewpoint of the characters they represent in a scene, a song or a movie. That’s why we always look at the good things we do, what we like about our work and our choices.    I found there are four “A”s which serve as traps, as they hinder our ability to imagine and interpret a viewpoint. 
Attitude: Is a pasted on group of thoughts or actions which we feel are part of a character’s viewpoint, but are not really, because a character’s attention is absorbed with the problem s/he faces, not by attitude arising out of the problem.
Attitudes are not real, but are nevertheless destructive to the process of assuming a viewpoint, as by striking an attitude, you lose the character’s genuine attention on what s/he is doing. It could also be the actor’s attitude toward the character.
By plastering ourselves in an attitude, we drive ourselves away from that viewpoint, because the character as an entity would reject that focus of attention. That creates distance from the location we need to be in, so that we can SEE what has our character’s attention. Assumption: This is the false act of assuming things are true when they are not, but imagined to be true out of an idea that you are obligated to make it true. If the character was aware of it s/he would separate him/herself from you to prevent being false. We are assuming that our character would react is a way that s/he may not.
The key to discovering if we are making assumptions is to:

• go over the text of the song, find out who the character is directing the message to
• imagine the person receiving the communication and viewpoint of your character
• what reaction would s/he have?
• Choose the most effective means to communicate your character’s viewpoint. Such means will be designed to get your character’s desired reaction from whomever s/he is talking to. 
• When that is done, no assumptions will be present.

Association: This is the false act of finding someone or something that is similar and adopting that in place of the true character, deciding that our character resembles “so and so.”It’s thinking “S/he reminds me of … and I know s/he is just like that person.” What effect will that have on our character? The result is alienation, the same thing happens when a person, attempting to create a bonding experience, uses an association to create familiarity, but it backfires because the other person is unique and special and s/he knows it’s not true. S/he wants to be seen as an unique individual, unlike any other person. Your attempt to pigeon hole them will only make them individuate from you, just like a real life friend. They know you’re not sincere if you make an associative comparison.
Arbitrary: This is the result of one’s spontaneous imagination and bringing in something out of the blue, without relevance or regard for the character’s true viewpoint. It often takes shape in emotions and actions you bring to the role. They are destructive to keeping the character’s attention on the actual reality of the situation. Arbitrary is something that comes out of the blue, without rhyme or reason, but just added as a substitute for communication, to make it “interesting or compelling”, but results in a showing that is neither.
Emotional outbreaks are among the arbitrary choices I’ve seen performers make. Excessive emotion has the ability to drown out the thoughts, which confuses audiences as they can’t understand why or how the emotion could fit in with the thought. Remember, performing is mostly thought-driven, and thoughts require accurate attention, from moment to moment.

    These are the Four A’s: Attitude (pasting on ideas to yourself, covering your identity or the character’s identity with fabricated ideas), Association (uniting the viewpoint with someone you know as in “you remind me of such and such”) Assumption (taking a thought that it should be for this purpose by assuming that it is true, when most likely it is not) and Arbitrary (coming from nowhere, from a wild tangent or a “fun idea”). If you fall into any of these traps, your proximity to the viewpoint will enlarge, because the character, the imaginary character will be offended and won’t have anything to do with you, especially since your job is to represent the viewpoint to the best of your knowledge and wisdom. And in summary, that is why you are a performer, so you can take on the viewpoint of an imaginary character, find what his/her attention is on, locate that focal point, speak with all the feeling you have inside you, letting it come out naturally, as the breath from your soul.
    Use the Four A’s to help you locate the trouble spots. Sometimes they are illusory and difficult to perceive. If you feel something is not effective in your communication, and you’re “Not in the zone” so to speak, check yourself by evaluating your thoughts about the character, the situation, other characters and the entire scene. You may have an unknown critical thought which propels you into a void, like falling into a deep hole. You need to isolate the origin of that thought and acknowledge its presence. Once that “A” has been identified, you can discard the critical thought by changing it to a positive choice, then rehearsing it over and over again to remove any residual negative effect.

Positive Choices Enhance Imagination
   I looked at assumptions that I had made and realized that it was a trap, one that drove me further from the viewpoint, rather than closer. It became apparent that these traps would hamper, if not kill the communication process, and would also reduce my ability to use my imagination, which I feel is the most valuable and important tool a performer has.    As children, we imagine everything, the Wild West, the presence of Indians, the battlefield with cannons and guns, the railroad trains and trucks; in short, our imaginations got us through childhood. So why as adults, do we lose the ability to develop our imaginations? 
   What is this process? I call it the SRS method, short for SEE, RELATE, & SIGNIFY. I have found this process to be very workable, and if used consistently, will produce great satisfaction and enjoyment in your performances. 

See
The first step is to SEE what is there.SEE what thoughts are there 
SEE the transitions between the thoughts
what brings on the change of thought
how that change from one thought to another is used to create a desired response?
What is actually happening in the music?
SEE the rhythm, tempo, and pacing of the piece, and any changes & transitions
SEE the instructions written on the music: dynamics markings, phrasing & articulation.
SEE how the composer integrated the text with the melody, and identified what kind of vocal line it is. Are there skips, scales, recitatives, etc?
Note what the accompaniment is doing in contrast to the vocal line.
SEE and hear the harmonies and dissonances.
Relate

The second step is to RELATE, that is, to: compare one thought to another 
compare how the thoughts are connected to an overall point of the communication.
Compare your thoughts to that of the character if you were in the same situation. Would you say or do the same thing? Why? Why not?
How do the character’s thoughts and works and actions originate from a positive place; where even an antagonist is making decisions because they feel it is the best path for them?
Often, this step is used extensively when a performer monologues the song, wherein the communication is enhanced, and discoveries about the character’s thought processes are revealed. With the monologue process, you , as the performer, understand how the “cycle of communication” is present.
Signify
  That leads to the third step, to SIGNIFY, to find something important in the communication that focuses your attention, that gives you purpose for the communication. The important thought that you choose as being significant can absorb you full attention and involvement, and will help bring in the emotional support for your communication.    The whole use of SRS is to take advantage of your creative abilities to classify and specify.

Being a performer is different from being a person. Performers must “step up to the plate,” in terms of their energy and communication. They must be like tigers ready to pounce, and must have an antenna out for opportunities to find significance.    The most successful auditions I’ve had happened when I found something significant in the song or scene, something I could rally behind, and something that put me into the viewpoint of the character instantly. Most of the unsuccessful auditions lacked that clarity of purpose, and therefore reduced my ability to energize from that specific viewpoint. 
    Performers must also be excellent perceivers of human thought and emotion. I recommend going to a shopping mall and watching people, SEEING, RELATING and finding SIGNIFICANCES. It is a good, worthwhile activity to prepare you for this work. Performers should be positive role models, people who are problem solvers, not problem makers. Most of our activity involves groups of people, and whenever one of us becomes a negative influence, the result is disastrous.
   Our lives will impact us, and we need to develop our techniques to survive as performers, to not dredge up bad times to artificially energize ourselves, but rather to use our imaginations to place us in the moment. 
    So, how do you get setup for a performance? You start by imagining what just happened five minutes earlier, and you place yourself in that viewpoint, so that when you begin singing or acting, you are already in the MIDDLE of the scene or song, so that you are involved and communicating, rather than BEGINNING to communicate. 
   I realize that to prepare performers one needs to direct their attention and energy to mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual realities, which are brought about by clear and present thoughts. This demands much from a performer, inasmuch as mental work can be as trying as physical work. Yet, this mental work is a known necessity and requirement of the performer.
    Much of this discipline lends itself to the task of living. I encourage performers to overcome adversity, illness, laziness and apathy. By challenging ourselves to remove criticism from our lives, we set our sights on finding positive choices, which edify our families and friends. We set a standard of living which is higher than life itself.
It is the secret to living a life of joy.

OUR PHILOSOPHY

Chapter Two

Our Philosophy

    Your attention is the most valuable asset you have. Your mind is guided by your thoughts and your thoughts lead you to either success or failure. Accepting criticism from people minimizes your energy and reduces your effectiveness as a performer. The best way to take criticism is to thank the person who gives it to you
and let that be the end of it.    Performing is a team sport. Each performer contributes to the total event in concert with one another, supporting each other’s preparation and delivery to achieve a desired result. Technique is how you know, have and use a workable, patterned approach to the work which allows you to assume the character’s viewpoint. Performing requires specific attention which cannot be distracted
by anyone or anything. Performers are masters of maintaining their attention, regardless of audience responses.     Singing is sustained talking as you are communicating to a specific person always.
The most effective tool for communicating is having a strong imagination which can establish and form an event. Building the ability to imagine is essential for performers, as it provides an anchor point, a recipient of your communications. Discovering your source of energy is important in developing your technique and abilities to perform any task.     Performers are special people. They are dedicated to challenging and moving audiences to change personal considerations, adjust their habits, alter their actions in life toward improvement and thereby improve the performer’s life and situations.
    The process of learning is a gentle, gradient-based progression which is free of negative input so as to engender cooperation, enhanced understandings, quality communications and wonderful performances. Learning is something that occupies a performer’s lifelong ambition. Age is not a factor when it comes to learning if the person confronts success, failure and adversity with a relentless willingness to be challenged. Much like the early forefathers of our country, we are all faced with trials, tribulations, conflicts, economic reversals, emotional upheavals, disappointments, and disasters. George Washington suffered many defeats before the victory at Yorktown and the eventual defeat of the British. He suffered through
Valley Forge, the death of hundreds of soldiers, disgrace among his peers and countrymen, and periods of hunger, cold and starvation of his men. Yet he persisted in spite of all that was thrust upon him. He was a military “performer” who never gave up his belief in his country and determination to survive the adversity. He learned that the only way to withstand a storm is to drive directly to the heart of the matter without running or hiding from it.    So it is with performers. You may encounter criticism, which is prevalent in our society, and may be affected by it, may even cause you to become sick, depressed, rejected, and ashamed that you let it happen to you. Just know that you are special, unique, and spiritual in nature. Know that people love you and that God loves you as your father or mother loves you. Remind yourself that you are a good person; you seek after joy and learning. Know that you may have to defend yourself on occasion, and know that you will survive, you will be fine. Adversarial attacks come out of nowhere, and if you refuse to be the effect of them, they soon fade away into the darkness they come from. Seeking light is the best way to defeat darkness. Turning to spiritual realities helps you conquer the world’s ills. You are primarily a thinking, rational being who is loved and loves. Adversarial attacks occur without provocation, randomly and are not the results of any specific target. Things happen. It is your responsibility to maintain a cool head, not be provoked into making a mistake which will drop you down a deep hole. Once, I remember walking down a street on the lower east side of New York City, and a man came out of nowhere and grabbed me. My initial reaction was to take the hand and dance with him! I instinctively knew it would prevent the attack, and I was right. He recoiled saying, “You’re crazy!” Only later did I discover that criminals are afraid of crazy people. 
    As performers, and indeed, people, we are responsible for our personal condition. We can point the finger that other people are responsible, but when we do, four of our other fingers are pointing directly back to us. The odds are four to one we are responsible for our choices in life, and indeed for our performances. I can’t say that I haven’t had the desire to blame someone, especially my father, growing up, but as I matured, I realized I had to forgive him, and understand his particular viewpoint, not discounting that his actions were wrong and indecent, but that we all respond to life’s pressures, and as a performer, we need to be able to “walk a mile in that person’s moccasins.”
    It’s a matter of being “pan-determined,” going out of the world and standing on the moon to get the whole picture, seeing the truth of a situation from another viewpoint other than our own, relating to how a person arrives at a place where they could do something negative, destructive, and self-deprecating. Some people believe in Karma, what goes around, comes around. There may be some truth in that, but to react because of that is foolish, and is an assumptive trap, because it might be that a person responded to a chaotic event which had nothing to do with a causative action supposedly committed earlier. Things happen, and for us to assume that we are the cause of what happens to us is naïve. What is more important is that our choices in response are what we have control over. Imagine if people thought what happened in New Orleans was the result of the sinful or wayward actions of the people. No, it just happened. What they do in response is the issue. 
   Now, when 9-11 happened, we were attacked, similar to Pearl Harbor. Certainly, no one viewed either of those incidents as provoked by causation. What did we do? How did we interpret those acts? We declared war on the enemies, who represent an adversarial force wanting to eliminate our freedom to exist, the same way Israel responds to the Palestine or Iranian desire to extinguish their people from the earth.
    Some time ago, I was in a touring production of “Antigona Perez” a rewrite of Anouilh’s Antigone, and we were sent to Boston to perform around town. Little did we know that the climate was hostile, that the Cuban refugees in the neighborhood were reacting to us as the invaders, suggesting that they return to Cuba, and that the play was a message to “go home?” So guerrillas came on the scene armed with weapons, and threw bottles at us on the stage, forcing us to seek refuge in our touring bus, and two of them boarded our bus, and threatened us mortally if we did not run away and not present this “propaganda” anywhere else in Boston. We ran for our lives and witnessed our bus, costumes, and clothes left behind burning behind us. I was the Equity deputy, and had the responsibility of contacting the union to demand two weeks pay and return transportation back to New York for the cast and crew. There are times when it is wise to not resist evil, but to preserve yourselves and friends, away from harm. I was responsible for that decision to comply with the terrorists and leave while we still could.    I pray that no one will ever have to endure that situation. In forty five years, it only happened once, and I am grateful for that. We learn from life’s turns of fate or we expose ourselves to a repeat performance later on. It’s what we do in the clinch that makes a difference. 
    Our philosophy is basically, that students need to be prepared for as many situations they can imagine, like what the New York Water Authority did recently with the US Air crash in the Hudson river. They were prepared and acted decisively to save lives. We believe that students should be ready to assume full responsibility for their actions, especially their reactions to whatever comes their way. We believe we are problem solvers, not problem makers.

A JOYOUS LIFE

Chapter One

A Joyous Life

   I believe it began, this quest of mine, as a young man wanting to serve others, as an acolyte in the Episcopal Church. It brought joy which I could share with others. Then, in my last two years of high school, I performed on the stage as an actor and in a local night club, as a stand up comedian. I also wanted to be an officer and a gentleman, and was accepted into Kings Point Military Academy, but fate would turn. I grew up the son of a first generation Italian father and a first generation German mother. My father was an alcoholic and beat both my mother and I. I sincerely thought he wanted me dead, especially when he refused to take me to the hospital when I was crippled over in paid from a ruptured appendix. Fortunately, my mother successfully took me in only to hear the doctor tell her that I had a twenty percent chance of living, even if the surgery was successful. I guess I was an optimist from that time on, because I decided I would live and that twenty percent was better than no percent. I learned then to make the positive choice in life, that I would always treat others with dignity and compassion, especially children I knew I would have later in life, and that I would never strike a child, or adult. I became an Eagle Scout, got a part time job, and found my way into performing, if no other reason to bring joy to myself and others.
    Which is why I am writing this book. I could have been an officer in the Navy, had my father not prevented me from pursuing that interest, by stealing the money I had saved for college to make his mortgage payment. I understand he resented me and wanted me to pay for that, and now, in retrospect, from his viewpoint, he considered he was entitled to some repayment for my lack of obedience. He wanted me to work my last summer, and I went to Scout camp to achieve a gold palm for my Eagle Award, forsaking my part time job, as I had saved the money already. However, I am grateful my life took a turn, after enlisting in the Navy, being sent to Pensacola, Florida to train as an Naval Aviator, which was thwarted on my first day after gaining a new-found friend in the program who was excited about his first solo flight and invited me to watch him take off. Now, I had studied aeronautics and knew the basic principles of flight, one of which you need to lower your flaps on the wings to get sufficient lift on take off. I sat in horror as he taxied to the runway without lowering his flaps and began screaming at the top of my lungs to lower them. He could not hear me of course, and proceeded to take off without lowering his flaps. I witnessed him crashing at the end of the runway and found out later that the engine went through his body, leaving a pool of blood and tiny bones. I was shocked to think that one error might cost someone his life and decided to bail out of the program, another major turn.    I began to study history and philosophy in the Navy, and after my four year tour, applied to universities to study history. I decided to start at a small junior college in Louisburg, North Carolina, since I was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia at a naval air station, and had trained as a radio operator on P2V’s - patrol planes. 
    I had no fear of flying, only the fear of being a pilot, so letting someone else fly the plane was fine, and after three years of flying, I was ready to live on the ground.
    So I was accepted and decided to major in history and philosophy, writing as my first assignment, the History of Utopian Thought. My professor was duly impressed and ratified my interest in becoming a historian, or at least, a professor of history. But my first semester presented yet another turn of fate, as I was eating lunch in the cafeteria and an older gentlemen joined me, announcing that he was looking for a carpenter to prepare a theatre for his drama classes. Since I had learned as a child to do carpentry, and later used that skill to pay for graduate studies in New York, I asked if it came with a scholarship, and it did! So, I solved a financial problem I was facing, paying my tuition in my second year, as I had saved enough from the Navy to pay my first year’s tuition and now I could save enough to get me through my second year.     I loved carpentry work, and began to rekindle my joy from being in theatrical productions, and was asked to play a small part in Elmer Rice’s Adding Machine!
    I built a small coffin (because of the small stage area) and then climbed into it, before the audience arrived, and had to remain quiet for the entire first act until my cue came, which prompted me to rise up in white face make-up and shout “Won’t you shut up and let a man sleep!” It created a shocking moment just before the lights went out and intermission began. I went on to act in several productions for the next two years, and transferred to the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, still intending to major in History. But the first production that fall in my Junior year was My Fair Lady, in which I played Doolittle, and sang “Get me to the church on time” to a thunderous applause in the 1800 seat theatre. I thought to myself, “What am I doing in History, I can make history in Theatre!” Again, the joy it brought to both myself and the audience was special, unique and provocative.    After graduation, I went to Europe seeking more information about the arts, and was curious about fine artists I witnessed at the Louvre in Paris. I watched them working on reproducing the great masters, especially DaVinci. There was no criticism in their countenance, only looking at what they liked about what they did, evaluating the color, line, shadows, light, and composition. Then, after doing that, they searched the canvas for something they would change or add to it. It struck me, that it is the only true way to proceed as an artist, to evaluate what you like about what you do, getting everything you liked and then asking yourself, what would you change? I went to London, and checked out different drama schools, thinking that I would like to further my education, but my money ran out and I had to return to the states. Once I got back, I looked up a girl friend in San Francisco, and we went to Berkeley, to check out the University programs. I found a theatre set up in a store front, called the “Berkeley Repertory Theatre” and got a job as a carpenter and stage manager. It was their first season! After all, it began my interest in college, so why not continue it? It seemed a great way to introduce myself to the area, help them build the theatre’s reputation, and I met some fine actors, one of which I would meet later in Los Angeles on "Hill Street Blues," Joe Spano, who stayed at Berkeley Rep for several years. 
Berkeley Repertory was terrific! I acted in several plays, once in Norman Mailer’s Deer Park, as Herman Teppis, a sixty year old man (I was 26). I had learned make up in college, and was a dancer and singer, and was considered a “triple threat.”
I brought such joy to the part that my age transformed and after the show, no one recognized me, in street clothes and out of make-up. I enjoyed bouncing out of the theatre as a young man, instead of limping my way through life as Herman Teppis did. Even now in my late sixties, I have the same energy I had then, having just completed my sixth production at the Egyptian Theatre in Park City, Utah as Mayor Shinn in The Music Man. I realized some years ago, that whenever I was either in a film, play or musical on my birthday, I would not age, and it’s true! Spreading joy has its rewards!   After two years at Berkeley Rep, I got hired as an actor as Richard II at the Mill Valley Shakespeare Festival, and was noticed by a director who offered me the role of R.P. McMurphy in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, which was picked up by a producer who offered me my first union contract at the Little Fox Theatre in San Francisco. That was 1969, and I have continued to act to this day! In fact, I have two pensions from acting, one with Actor’s Equity and another with Screen Actor’s Guild. From that production, I moved to New York City, and played the same show Off-Broadway as Cheswick, as McMurphy was played by Billy Devane, and Martini was played by Danny Devito. Peter Yates saw our performance and I was cast in my first movie, The Hot Rock , with Robert Redford and Zero Mostel, joining SAG in 1971. It’s usual to be a member of more than one union. In fact, I joined AFTRA, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists shortly after that. It prompted me to frequent the downtown Actor’s Equity lounge to gain insight on older performers. Often they were bitter, sarcastic, and critical of other performers, directors and producers. I couldn’t understand how they expected to get hired with such negative attitudes, and decided then and there that I would not let sarcasm and bitterness get the best of me. I would retain the positive choice in life. For two years I performed eight shows a week, and also studied with Uta Hagen, Robert Lewis, and Mira Rostova from the Moscow Art Theatre, but decided I needed to increase my education and started a master’s degree at Hunter College, in Directing, to gain another viewpoint of the profession, and especially since professional theatre people were teaching: Harold Clurman, Lillian Helman, Arthur Miller, and Joseph Anthony, a Broadway Director.     It was the best two years, I thought at the time, of my professional career. Just before I graduated, I noticed that the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art was holding auditions for their one year post graduate program in the classics. I had prepared several Shakespeare monologues and submitted an application. I had so much joy in that audition, they asked me to do seven monologues, one right after the other, and invited me to join them in London! It’s a rare occasion when you’re offered a role or invitation to participate on the first meeting. Fortunately, after graduation I was hired to act in Ibsen’s Masterbuilder at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut in the Fall, the time I had set aside for going to London. So I called LAMDA and asked if I could come the following year, 1974-75, and to my surprise they said yes! Once again, the joy saved the day. 
    When I arrived at LAMDA in September of 1974, I went up to the headmaster, introduced myself and asked him a very important question, following this remark, “I have performed and studied for the last ten years with some of the top people in Theatre, but not one of them could say in a nutshell what the secret to acting is!” He smiled and said, “It’s quite simple, it’s knowing what your attention is on, moment to moment.” My jaw hit the floor. It’s a matter of viewpoint. That year turned out to be the best year of my life, because it made me aware of the source of the communication, and what absorbs the character’s ATTENTION. That simple truth has made sense out of every performance I have done since then.
    On my return to the states, I arrived in New York, and flipped a coin (talk about fate) and flew to Los Angeles, where within three weeks I secured an agent as I was already a SAG member. Two weeks after that I was called to audition for Jackson County Jail opposite Yvette Mimieux and Tommy Lee Jones (his first movie). After three weeks of auditions, they were worried that such a kind guy couldn’t play a rapist cop and Ms. Mimieux had doubts. I asked her what did she need to know (what was her attention on?) and she said we needed to arm wrestle, which I gladly did, convincing her that I could physically overwhelm her. It was my first starring role in film. 
   Once I was established, offers came in to do other similar roles and I turned them down, because I didn’t want to be pigeon holed as a sexual deviate. But the word got out that I knew something about acting, and people began to ask me to help them learn how to act, so I started an acting class in my apartment, which became so successful the neighbors said I had to take it elsewhere, and so I did, I opened the Los Angeles Academy of Dramatic Art, which Neil Simon used in I Ought To Be In Pictures! Neil became a friend of the Academy, which lasted eight years, and the Academy produced some fine actors, who are working to this day. We produced several plays at the Academy during those late seventies and early eighties, and had three theatres operating simultaneously. I continued to work in film and on television until I left again for New York, as I knew my true wife would be there (I had married once in San Francisco and once in Los Angeles) so it was time to find the right one. As fate would have it, I married in New York to the wrong one, and because of her career and children, we moved back to LA after three years teaching at Hunter College in the Theatre and Film departments.     Back in California, the work picked up, but the marriage failed, and so I went back to New York, where I taught at a small theatre company close to 14th Street. I had a sudden interest in opera, (another wonderful turn of fate prompted by providence as one of my actresses was hired by City Opera at Lincoln Center and recommended I audition. I did and was cast in Carmen. Sure enough my first rehearsal answered my lifelong question, as I saw the woman I had sought for many years. I was cast as the priest and she was cast as the nun, because her young son was in the children’s chorus, and, rather than sit backstage, she signed on as a supernumerary, although she is really a wonderful soprano who had done several professional leading roles herself. She had real joy in her work, even as an actress! It was love at first sight, and I made the mistake of telling her. I said, “Where have you been? You are my true wife!” That freaked her out, and she stood me up so many times, even for concerts at the New York Philharmonic. (I was hired to promote concerts, call patrons and sell season tickets, for which I was paid well and received complimentary tickets, many of which I gave away after waiting for her to arrive.) 
    She finally told me she was in a relationship with another man and was reeling from a recent divorce and had no room in her life for an actor! That did it. Although I loved her, and told her so, I could no longer remain in the same city knowing that the woman I’ve looked for most of my adult life would not consent to be my wife. I returned to Los Angeles to continue my career, even though I knew my agent was completely fed up with me and I would have to find other representation. So several months went by and due to a freaky motorcycle accident (the bike fell over and I extended my leg to catch it, which torqued my knee and I was laid up for a spell. I called her and she was excited to hear from me, as she had broken up with the other man. I asked her what we should do with 3000 miles between us. She asked if I would write her, and I jumped at the opportunity. After several months of writing letters back and forth, one of her friends read one of my letters and she told her, “This guy loves you, if you don’t marry him, I will!” Like I said, it’s always a question of viewpoints! That was another spiritual moment, one which convinced her to move out to Hollywood, marry me and begin our life together.
    We ran a studio teaching vocal performance at Beachwood Arts & Music for almost three years with some notable success, but a handful of students. We were prompted to visit Utah, where Debra worked for seven seasons at Utah Opera as a soloist and had graduated, where she had taught for eleven years, with honors, a Masters Degree in Vocal Performance from Brigham Young University. We drove to Provo, which was okay, but nothing special in terms of living there, and then to Salt Lake City, which was covered with a temperature inversion, much like smog in LA. She recommended that we drive up to Park City, and I thought “A city of parked recreational vehicles?” But as we came up Parley’s Canyon I told Debra that “for the first time in my life I couldn’t see the air!” Then I said, “What are we doing with our lives? Let’s move here!” So we sold our house in Hollywood, bought another in Park City, and wondered what we should do. I said, “We should go to the local music store, pick up some sheet music and do a duet!” There wasn’t a local music store, the nearest store was thirty miles away in Salt Lake City. We knew why we moved to Park City and established Park City Music twelve years ago, and music instructors came out of the woodwork wanting to teach in our store. So we did, out of a little seven hundred square foot store within the Treasure Mountain Inn on Main Street, which grew to over one hundred fifty students in three years. We applied for a non-profit organization named Park City Arts & Music Conservatory and opened in June, 2000. We received a few grants to do concerts but had a difficult time raising funds and decided after four years to relegate the non-profit to a scholarship program depending upon support from the community, which we continue to do every year, and have opened up the opportunity to students of other teachers in Salt Lake City. We added a studio in Salt Lake City and changed our name to Utah Conservatory. Recently we added the Paul Green School of Rock as an experimental program to encourage performers to prepare and improve their skills for audiences. Currently we have over 400 students with several students winning competitions and gaining paid performance work. Moreover, Debra has been teaching actors how to sing and perform for the last nine years at the University of Utah, which is where I studied in the Doctoral Education Program for seven years and finally graduated from Rochville University with a PhD in Educational Studies in 2004. 
    Age should not be a factor in our lives. It is essentially mind over matter. The prospect and progress of our lives is to have enthusiasm and joy, which sheds light over darkness, brings optimism instead of criticism, ushering in hope to the equation. I consider this the responsibility of the performer. Like a race horse, performers need to guard and protect themselves from negative influences so that they are able to feel, express passion from a viewpoint, maintain compassion for others, forgive people rather than harboring resentment and ill will. Performers should desire a life of joy so others can follow. Performers can be leaders. It is a choice one makes. Performers are capable of instilling courage, hope and happiness.

THE BEGINNING STUDENT

The Beginning Student

   What’s the quickest, surest way to get competency from the “rank beginner” voice student. These students are from all walks of life: children, high school kids, adult recreational students. They may even be professional actors or dancers who find they have top learn to sing competently for an impending performance. At any rate, the teachers at Utah conservatory have been working with the “community student” and the “professional track” student for some years. Yet, the challenges of the “community student” to the voice teacher are unique. Usually, they are “recreational singer,” that is, they are looking for enjoyment of a new skill that enhances their quality of life, reduces stress, and accomplished some personal goal, yet, their quest in not the central focus of their vocational goals. These students are part of our new “consumer mentality.” They are looking for maximum results from their “professional trainer” without a whole lot of leisure time to study at the “professional track level.” If they spend their time exclusively with vocal drills and exercises, they feel progress is too slow, as they have not “product” to show for it. Conversely, if they only work on their favorite songs, they may not experience the essential basics of technique that the drills and technique have to offer. At any rate, we usually find that they need to feel quickly that there is a change in their abilities for the better.
   These issues have brought us to put our heads together and pose the question: What have we, as a faculty, seen as the consistent methods, strategies and techniques that contribute to solid progress and competency for the rand beginning student, particularly the student who practices less that 45 minutes a day? And, when they do practice, they are usually double-tasking.
  We have noticed that the pursuit is in “synergistic principals.” 
   Here are some of our guiding strategies:

Insist on Perfect Posture:

Why?  Because perfect singing posture get the student out of his/her own way.  It will prevent the student from overcompensating in other areas.  This includes: feeling tall and loose; sensing broadness on both sides of the sternum with a high torso; teaching skeletal alignment, feet balanced and shoulder width apart, a feeling of “roundedness” and a “synergistic balance.”

Breathe with the Student in Solidarity:

Proper breathing can be led by example.  As we all recognize that correct breathing is foundational and synergistic to the rest of the singing process, the example of our breath with the student will help to re-pattern their habits.  We recommend the instructor put her on own hand on her own abdomen while the other hand plays the scales.  Let the student always see you breathe move and they will do the same.    Some basics: Keep the energy low, talk about the “pelvic floor” and the feeling of breath energy flowing through the body and into the floor, allow no tightness to come into the posture during the breath, practice long slow breaths, pant, “plie” with the inhalation, or prop the students entire back side, knees bent, up against the wall, and have them bend down while inhaling. Encourage them to practice low slow breathing while laying in bed with a dictionary on their abs, or when walking or driving.

Support!

The fastest way to get new students to progress is to really get them to support, even if the high sub-glottic pressures might cause them to over-sing a bit.  We find that the over-singing can be quickly resolved by just noting to the student that their voice is doing a little more work than it needs to, and that they can release their voice through more air flow.  We are so afraid of damaging beginning voice students with over-singing, that they go for months, even years, with unembodied, wimpy tones, never really finding out what their “real” voice sounds like. Conversely, teaching the student about the apoggio and its ability to build the voice is the key.  The sub-glottic pressure can first be felt with bubbles and lips drills, then a little feeling of pressure with arpeggios on “ZZZZZ,” followed by the [u] vowel and then some sirens.  Sirens get them to feel the way that the air pressure can raise their voices without any vocal work.  Last, and perhaps the most controversial, we find that the student who know how to shout, can transfer than sensation to the torso strength that it takes to sing on the breath.  We recommended lots of speech-to-singing exercises.  We even recommend that students monologue, loudly, their pieces, and then sing them.  

Lesson Structure:  A Balance approach in a small amount of time

Basic drills and exercises (5-10 minutes)

Sieber or Concone (5 minutes)

Classical Style Song of teacher’s choosing (5-10 minutes)

Contemporary song selected by Student with teacher’s approval (5-10 minutes)

Taping the lesson as a pattern for practice

Keep explanations concise so that the student in singing for the majority of the lesson

Keep focus on actual learning time (reference)

Stay Socratic and positive

Avoid critical evaluations

Attention:

Extrovert the student’s attention

Put attention on communication

Get the student to non-threatening performance opportunities: master classes, friends at lessons, rest home, etc.  The students who perform make the best progress.

WHAT IS ACTING?

What is Acting?? 

   For years people have been asking me What is Acting?? My customary answer is the same one the headmaster at the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art told me over thirty years ago as I was a student who had worked professionally as an actor in New York for ten years and had studied with several well-known actors, Uta Hagen, Mira Rostova, and Bobby Lewis which had confused me and didn’t get right down to the core of the matter. So my answer is: It is knowing what your character’s attention on moment to moment, knowing what s/he is communicating, to whom and having a point to say, something of significance, something relevant and pertinent to the scene or song you are delivering. 
  That is what acting is.
  So the problem is: How does one do that?
  When I opened the Los Angeles Academy of Dramatic Art, I had to figure out a technique, something an actor or singer could do that followed a pattern, and guided the person through the treacherous process of interpretation, which itself is laden with traps, but that’s another article called the 4 A’s Worksheet. There is another article you might consult, Six Things Every Voice Student Should Do When Performing, but for now, I’ll sum up the technique I developed and have used as a performer over and over again. It’s called SRS,
   See Relate Signify, the three steps to assuming a viewpoint of a character.
   For that there is the SRS Worksheet, which you can ask for to help you discover the treasures that await you. Acting is mostly mental with some emotional and physical work attached, but the most important thing is to align your thoughts with the character’s thoughts so you can assume his/her viewpoint readily and sometimes not easily… The only way I know it to experience doing it, and the number of times you do that, the better it is.
   Have fun and above all Enjoy your work!!

AN ODE TO JOY

An Ode To Joy

    An Ode is a structured piece praising or glorifying a topic, namely what Joy does for us. It is normally done intellectually as well as, emotionally. It is somewhat difficult to write about joy without experiencing the effects of it. This is classified as an irregular ode as it is fashioned in prose rather than poetry, although it is written in three parts: an introduction of my history discovering the presence of joy, then examples of achieving joy in my experiences, and an explanation of how I discovered the ways and means of seeking, finding and sharing joy.
   Some time ago, due to certain events in my troubled life as a teenager, I started seeking ways and means to find joy in my life. It seemed like I was always struggling, absorbed in troubles and not involved in finding solutions. After high school, I realized that it was time to become a man, matured, more interested in good things, good people, and attempted to distance myself from negative, hostile influences. So, I joined the US Navy! I was seventeen and would be out by the time I was 21! Out of boot camp, I thought I would become a Navy pilot, so I went to Pensacola, Florida for training. I felt light, positive, and that there was a bright future for me. My first acquaintance was a student who had his first solo flight at the end of the week. Now, as an Eagle Scout, I had studied aeronautics, knew the principle of lift, how a plane needed its’ flaps down in order to take off, and I regret not bringing that fact up with my friend, just assuming he would have learned that six months earlier. Not so. I watched his plane taxi up to the runway, and watched him rev up his engine. I thought, okay, when will he lower his flaps?
He never did, and I witnessed the crash, watching him crushed by the engine, and felt utterly helpless. I tried screaming at the top of my voice “Lower your flaps!” Over and over again, until it was too late. I was a religious guy, brought up in the Episcopal Church as an acolyte, the cross bearer and candle lighter. But I was at sea after that incident, for a few years, and opted out of the flight school, studying aviation technology, becoming a radio operator in a P2V, patrol squadron, out of Norfolk, Virginia. It was apparent that I needed to create fun and experience enjoyment in my life, so I became a prankster, living a double life, one on the base, another in town. I rented an apartment, bought a car, and as soon as I left the base, I put my military sticker in the glove compartment. I volunteered at a local church to be assistant scout master, pretending I was a college student. It lasted over a year, until one of the parishioners saw me on base, in uniform! He came over to my apartment and asked why I had created a double life. I told him that it cheered me up, made life easier pretending to be someone I was not. He said I couldn’t help the scouts and would have to end the charade. This, after much thought and consternation, agreed to. I actually, enrolled in a history course at William & Mary College, which gave me more trouble, ducking out of the base without approved liberty, and finally, being brought up in front of a court martial!
    I continued my duties, being transferred to Quantanimo Bay during the Bay of Pigs nuclear standoff in 1962. Shortly after that, I was accepted to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, interested in becoming a history teacher, after reading many books on history and philosophy. My first semester started and a new drama professor met me in the lunchroom and asked if I was a carpenter? I thought he must be a psychic as it was the only trade my father taught me. He gave me a generous work scholarship which got me through the first two years of college, More importantly, he asked if I would act in an Elmer Rice play, The Adding Machine? I had done a play in high school, Where’s Charley ? But that was a one -time thing. But that little moment in time stuck with me. Why? Because it was 30 seconds of unadulterated JOY!
That was the moment I cherished. It lifted me out of troubles that came my way.
   However, it took me two years before I had the courage, will, and desire to change my major from history to hysterics, which is what the study of drama was presented to be, nevertheless, it brought me joy.

    After I graduated, I went to Europe, lived in Paris, London and Berlin, went to art galleries, like the Louvre and the National Gallery in London. I stood in front of DaVinci’s Madonna for two days, looking in her eyes and having her look into mine. At one point, I openly asked her to move because there were two roads behind her head, converging upon one another, and I wanted to know what was there! I discovered DaVinci’s purpose, which I understood as: “When a person’s attention is riveted to beauty in a person, we often lose track of where we are, what we are going for, and what in life brings us meaning.” I have come to the conclusion that JOY is the Glue in Life. It encourages us to love someone, share ideas, thoughts, and feelings with others. It demands that we place more attention on others than we do on ourselves. It bypasses the trap of having an ego. It focuses our attention on others, on communicating something worthwhile. Joy extroverts our lives as we experience, and share it with people.
   Years later, I was in New York, acting Off- Broadway in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, and Peter Yates, a movie director saw me as a character in his movie, The Hot Rock, with Robert Redford and Zero Mostel. I played Otto, a prisoner who enjoyed picking his toes, and got into a fight with Paul Sand, another inmate. The key to the scene was finding the joy the character had, and defending his right to do what he liked, no matter what. It was my first film, one which I will never forget. Because, once again it brought me joy. I went back to graduate school at Hunter College, to learn more about the industry. My professors were Harold Clurman, Arthur Miller, Lillian Hellman, and Joe Anthony, a Broadway director. I also studied acting with Uta Hagen, Mira Rostova from the Moscow Art Theatre, and Robert Lewis from Yale Drama School. I continued acting on stage and television in New York, and discovered the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art was auditioning for a one-year Post Graduate Course in the Classics.
   In college I had performed several Shakespearean roles, and had prepared nine monologues for that audition. Why did I want to go to London? Because I felt there were things I hadn’t learned which would help me create a workable, reliable,
effective technique to approach each role, with a deeper understanding that I knew was available to me. On the spot, and believe me, I can count the times on one hand that I was cast or accepted for the assignment at the initial audition. They said, “Mr. Cook, you are why we are here, looking for performers who want to create wonderful characters.” I was ecstatic! Unfortunately, that summer I was cast as Ragnar in Ibsen’s Masterbuilder, at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut in September. I called the academy in London and asked if I could attend the following year. He asked how old I was and informed me that I would have to come next year, before my age would keep me out of the program. “I promise I will be there next year, without fail! So, after that Fall, I moved to Los Angeles, and did episodic work, and some theatre, but was dedicated to moving to London for the year.   The first day I attended LAMDA I went up to the headmaster and said, “My name is Fredric Cook, I am a professional actor in three unions, in New York, regionally, and in Los Angeles. The reason I am here is because, after all the training, education and experience, I have no clue about what I’m doing.” He smiled, and I asked, “ Can you tell me the basic fundamental principle of acting?”
(I had asked this question before without receiving a positive response). He was a true mentor, wise, compassionate, interested in my well-being, and exhibited a lot of joy as he said, “It’s quite simple, actually, it is knowing what the character’s attention is on, moment to moment.”
   I was stunned. Speechless. In my mind, I raced through years of coaching, years of ‘acting techniques.’ Finally, after what seemed an eternity, I thanked him and left, to sort out the meaning of what I had just heard. It is thought-driven. It is a process of overcoming my individual thoughts and ideas, and gaining the character’s viewpoint. I understood, for the first time, what it means to be an actor.
    It is a progression of thoughts, ideas, actions and feelings that capture a character’s attention. Emotion does not drive the character, it is the thoughts and reactions s/he has that propel him/her through the scene. Previously, I felt the emotions of the moment, not necessarily the accurate emotions of the character, but my emotions. And, I discovered that the misalignment I had created lessened the degree of joy I had as the character. A lot of the roles I had created came up to me, like spirits urging me to recognize the true nature of their viewpoints. Immediately, I began to slow down the process, rather than leaping to assumptions that propelled me into emotional states, the thoughts became dominant. I began to understand that the process of gaining compassion with the character is very similar to life’s challenges in relationships.    I recalled days in New York, as a young actor successfully active in theatre, I would bounce into the Actor’s Equity lounge, and attempt to have conversations with the older, wiser (I thought), balanced actors. Unfortunately, I was encountered by bitterness, blame, shame, and regret. Here I was, full of joy and my fellow actors were miserable and negative. I made a decision at that point in time, to never fall into that trap. I was dedicated to discover how I could avoid the perils of thriving on myself, being absorbed in me, me, me. Finally, after these many years preparing myself for this joyful work, I found where the light comes from. It comes by having your attention on others, giving support, assistance, acknowledgment, and sharing joy with as many people who will receive it. We all have choices in life. The secret is predicting the outcomes of each choice you make, and taking personal responsibility for making that choice and dealing the cards that follow. 
    I have been performing and teaching since 1975 when I opened the Los Angeles Academy of Dramatic Art. I have mentored many students following the principles taught at the London Academy. One of the most valuable lessons I learned was teaching is entirely collaborative, without criticism, opinions, declarations, etc. As a performer, I realized when I’m on stage, television or in front of a camera, I am responsible for every choice I make. I had brief encounters with a few bullish instructors, whose philosophy was to belittle, badger, and berate artists to toughen them up for the profession. I had the privilege to work with some of our best actors, all of whom were sincerely interested people. I remember on the film set of Gideon’s Trumpet, working with Henry Fonda, how he was open to all fans who wanted his autograph, and he even had conversations with some of them. There was nothing bullish about him, or Gregory Peck on the set of The Blue and The Grey. I worked with Robert Duvall, Ed Asner, Elizabeth Montgomery, and others, none of which were pushy, arrogant or aggressive. For the most part, they followed the policy, “if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything.” That is not what they said, but how they behaved. Criticism leads to a dead end street. Criticism is an enemy to joy. 
   Whenever I see a documentary film that exploits people who are negative, critical, eager to blame others for their plight, I feel sorry for them, They have succumbed to the many traps laid and hidden in front of them. They have had many people steal their thunder, by making choices for them, rather than helping them make choices with someone.
   I have six children, all grown, some of which fell into difficult situations. One of them spent time in jail. Some struggled with addictions and the difficult recovery process. Whenever they called me, asking for me to solve their problems, I said, no. One thing to know is that your choices pave the way through life, and once you make a decision, positive or negative, the learning process begins. I was not cold, or indifferent. After I saw them make better choices, I supported them, mentally, physically, emotionally, and monetarily. It is extremely important that we provide opportunities for loved ones, friends, neighbors, students, parents to make well-thought out choices in their lives, because the only way we experience true joy is through the recognition and acceptance that, “I built that!” “My choices made that happen.” Personal achievement is far more valuable than the praise people give you. 
   Occasionally, my students are told, “You’re a Natural Talent.” Why, because they perform positively, honestly, without criticism, envy, bursts of reactivity and anger. Why people think a performer is natural is based on the fact that there were thousands of hours preparing for this work, which is much like the foundation of an iceberg. The Titanic went down because the crew couldn’t imagine the base of the iceberg below the water, which ripped the ship apart. Your results are the top ten percent of the iceberg, with ninety percent supporting your work, which people never see or even imagine. I encourage performers to thank people who call them a “Natural.” I also encourage them to know that the true result of their many hours monologuing, reading, rehearsing, understanding the viewpoint of their characters, contributes to the compassion they have in their lives. It is important for performers to know what they do, how they achieve results, and discover first, and foremost, what they like about what they do. Only after evaluating all the things they like, they are prepared to ask themselves, “What would I like to change?”
   I discovered this principle initially at the Louvre in Paris, watching student artists copy the masters. I looked into their eyes, and saw no criticism of their work, only evaluating what they liked, the colors, the shapes, the light vs. darkness, the message conveyed, and the structure of the painting. After reading their thoughts, I noticed them sit back, tilt their heads, and think, “What would make this better?” Immediately, a burst of enthusiasm took over, they put the brush to the palette, grabbed the color they needed and applied it to the canvas, with confidence and assurance. They built the picture by making positive decisions: thus they were filled with joy. It’s a heavenly concept, one of achieving serenity and peace.
    When Stanislavsky formed the Moscow Art Theatre, he collected workers from farms as his cohorts. He would pronounce to them, “Leave your toiling and troubles at the door. When you enter the theatre, you are living examples of
the best of humanity.” He encapsulated a truth about our native state: Everyone wants to be right with the choices they make in life. It is an act of justifying ourselves, each and every moment. No matter what they’ve decided to do, say, or think, they must believe that it’s for the greater good. Even evil people follow this unwritten, unsaid code. Now the performer needs to understand that joy can be achieved in the middle of heinous acts. I site Richard III, seducing queen Anne over her dead husband’s corpse, and the joy he takes achieving it. Even more despicable, is the joy he takes in killing the two little male children in the tower.
As actors, we cannot judge our characters, because we are representing their viewpoint. Much like a trial attorney does not have license to be critical of his/her client. We are supporting a viewpoint, and we leave the judgment up to our audience. If we are critical of our clients, they go to jail. (i.e. lose an ability to experience joy)    It is for each of us to decide the road we want to travel, and what our destination is.
I encourage you to adopt Einstein’s Thesis: “In the middle of difficulty, arises opportunity.” When you seize upon the opportunity, joy is the inevitable result.
Fredric Cook, Instructor, Actor, Executive Director

VIEW POINTE PROPERTIES (2)

Business Description

   View Pointe Properties, LLC began as a service oriented company dedicated to help clients who do not meet conventional requirements, having high FICO scores, excellent credit, clear of bankruptcies, excessive debt, histories of default, and often incapable of raising funds for the customary twenty per cent down. It was structured as a means of solving issues which prevent them from gaining ownership in real estate. We formed the service organization to help people gain equity through a lease option contract which gives them three years to pay towards ownership, accruing equity with each principal payment, which is deducted from their cost after three years, and makes it easier for them to refinance, building up their credit history and gaining ownership of their home. We realized it takes a team of professional people to make this possible, which is part of View Pointe Properties efforts to gather investor partners, which make their profit on the shared interest and initial consideration presented at the beginning of the lease option agreement. Our business is unique in that regard, that we offer a professional collaboration of time, talents, funds, and guidance to help them overcome past errors and mistakes. We formed View Pointe Properties as a 401K LLC, which is set up to reinvest profits into real estate acquisition, to establish a retirement fund for the members. Dr. Fredric Cook and his wife, Debra Cook have successfully built Park City Music for the last fifteen years, which brings in income day to day, but does not create a retirement income. View Pointe Properties 401K, LLC is the vehicle which will gain equity, income properties, and funds for retirement.   Although we live in Park City, where the average income is higher than our neighboring Salt Lake County populace, there are still individuals who need to overcome challenges, and as far as we know, there is no other group set up to help them at this point in time. This is our mission, to make it possible for more people to gain home ownership, gain self-esteem and confidence in their ability to be responsible for their condition, and not rely on government hand outs or bail outs. This is our way of assisting our clients gaining worthwhile values in their lives, and setting an example to their families, friends, and neighbors that it is possible. It is our dream that within the next five to ten years, we will have a strong, vibrant company serving less fortunate people, helping them to increase their self-worth, their innate abilities, as well as providing them opportunities to become self-reliant, self-sufficient and somewhat free of fears that crop up when we are subject to the will of others, employers, family members, and those of us who thrive by taking advantage of their weaknesses and naïveté.

Services

   Initially, we hold an interview with the client, gathering a brief history of their situation, how they came to be where they are, and what their current state of mind, health, and wealth is. This is not an interview designed to be critical of their situation, but rather gathering a view of what they understand, what challenges they are having, and what they’ve done to confront those challenges. We ask what resources they have, a job, an income source, some savings, some credit available, and if they have family members who can help them in whatever capacity they are able to. It is meant to produce insight into their predicament, not directed to making them feel bad, angry or in any way hostile to themselves or others. It is not an indictment, but an indication of what available solutions exist. We are not here to make anyone wrong, or blame anyone for their condition, but rather focus on positive choices which can help them recover, gain stability, and prosper in life. We are not psychologists, just interested, compassionate people who offer help, without draining their current resources. 
    Secondly, we offer assistance to landlords, investors, and private lenders by establishing a screening process suitable to their needs, guiding people to adjust to each individual’s situation. We have resources to set up rent collection services to collect monthly rents automatically from either a client’s bank account or credit card. The service we currently use guarantees protection against credit card fraud, and is accepted by major credit card companies.

The Market

Park City:    Demand is greater in a ski resort community for suitable housing, and therefore, there is less flexibility with market values, however, there are occasional owners who may have purchased properties before the 2008, 2009 bust in real estate values, who are interested in selling, even less than market rates. There are also distressed properties that come available which can be purchased at a discount. Investors are attracted to Park City real estate, but know they will ultimately pay more per square foot than Salt Lake County properties. The question is, “how much rent is customary?” We have sources to clarify and resolve that question. The best news is Park City has a wealth of industry professionals who are interested in helping one another understand and create solutions. Park City has been a magnet attracting innovative and creative people to our mountain resort, many of which live here year around. Although there are many realtors in Park City, they are limited by a variety of regulations levied by lending institutions, and by clientele who can afford luxury properties. They do not have the time or desire to focus their attention on buyers who cannot qualify for conventional loans. It is estimated that 25-35% of people seeking home ownership fall outside the parameters and will welcome our team to help them gain equity and ownership.
Salt Lake City:
   Supply is greater in Salt Lake County, and investors have been actively purchasing properties there, which make the area more competitive. Because the size of the area is much greater, they have more time to invest in securing and selling properties. As we expand our network of landlords and private lenders to Salt Lake City, we will supply them with resources and vetting services which will save them a major percentage of screening buyers and tenants.
    It may be possible that a greater percentage of people in Salt Lake City fall into the similar plight, not having sufficient means to gain home ownership. We will reach out to community groups to find these people, who like those who have given up the task of seeking work, may have reached a foregone conclusion that it is impossible to work out the problems of securing their own home. What has happened in Park City will eventually happen in Salt Lake City that the word will go out that View Pointe Properties, LLC is here to help you bypass the usual channels and find creative solutions to gaining home ownership. These are the people who make up our targeted market.
   When they come to us, we educate our clients in a variety of ways of overcoming the barriers that have surrounded them in this process.

Competition

   There are property management companies who address some of the issues, but take little time or effort to consult their buyer-clients in available means to that end. Often, the good managers have most of their attention on providing the best service to handle their properties, and so the client is left to his/her own devices. The concept is to place their emphasis on the quality of the work done, and exchanging that service for funds directly. Our concept is to question, collaborate and come to workable solutions. That’s how they get referrals, primarily on the healthy satisfaction from their clients. Their attention is directed to maintaining a viable facility for them to live in. Our attention is on creating a client interested in finding and discovering effective solutions that are exchanged by fees.    It places our clients in a positive mindset to be able to continue making positive solutions. So, in many ways, we have little or no competition, because of the emphasis and importance we place on our services. Unlike a tradesman whose sole attention is on exchanging a product or service, our attention is to help our client gain more certainty, belief and practical knowledge s/he can build upon to confront and solve problems and issues. Unlike the tradesman who collects for products delivered, estimates and fees for labor costs, installation, and finishing services, our service is complementary, and the only payment we require is not hourly, daily, weekly, but the compensation we receive initially, and the monthly interest charged over the three year period. We know we can help people make adjustments in their lives that are intellectual property that they can retain for the rest of their lives, and that, to anyone is priceless.

Operations

   Operations are defined as the processes used to deliver our services to our clients, landlords, and equity partners. At this stage in our development, we have no employees, only independent contractors, who work part-time for us and have other sources of income. We only provide 1099s for our contractors, professionals, attorneys, CPAs, Limited Equity partner investors and members of our LLCs. There are two LLC organizations, View Pointe Properties 401K LLC, which is our retirement organization that reinvests all profits back to the organization, and View Pointe Real Estate, LLC which handles the execution of Lease Option Agreements, Tenant-Landlord contracts, and member acquisitions and distributions of profit. They are separate entities, one for retirement only, the other for profit.    At the start up stage, we work both companies from our home office and Park City Music. We have secured legal representation from Robert Saunders in Park City, Utah for contractual agreements, adjustments to our operating agreements for each entity, and Landlord contracts, tenant contracts, Lease Option Agreements, and creation of distribution agreements between equity partners, landlords, and members of each LLC.

Management Team

   Dr. Fredric Cook has been a businessman since 1975 when he opened, managed and taught at the Los Angeles Academy of Dramatic Art, sharing his knowledge and success as a professional theatre, film, television actor and director. He founded and was the Executive Director of the Alexander Repertory Company from 1977 to 1982.   He taught as an Associate Professor at Hunter College from1982-1985 developing a cross-over curriculum between theatre and film. When his wife gave birth to their two children, they moved back to Los Angeles to raise them, and resumed his film, theatre and television career until 1997 when his family moved to Park City. Upon discovering that there was no music store, he and his wife, Debra, and son, Aaron opened Park City Music that year.   This drew in musicians who wanted to share their knowledge with students. Dr. Cook completed his PhD at Rochville University in Sarasota, Florida and became the Executive Director of Utah Conservatory which was formed in 2000 and has grown with 22 instructors and 350 students. The idea for View Pointe Properties came up in 2010 when students needed help getting their families relocated to Park City. View Pointe Properties, 401K LLC was formed March 11, 2011. 

   Debra Cook has been a teacher and entrepreneur since the mid seventies, and has successful private studios in Provo, Utah and Hollywood, California. Debra co-founded National Realty Counselors, Inc. in 1990 (through 1995) thin Fort Lee, New Jersey. NRC does negotiations to reduce real estate and personal property taxes for commercial, industrial properties throughout the United States. Debra was responsible for office management, initial evaluations of properties, and property analysis. She was involved in some negotiations with clients such as Lever Brothers, Lipton Tea and National Starch & Chemical. As a voice teacher and professional singer, she collaborated with Seth Riggs, a well-known vocal performance coach who has had several Broadway and Hollywood performers as his students. Debra is a member of Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, who has performed on stage, film, television and opera, having completed seven seasons at Utah Opera. She has a master’s degree in music from Brigham Young University and has several of her students who have been given major scholarships at universities coast to coast.