Boot camp no act for students

Tom Titus

Those who choose a career in the military first must endure a few

months of basic training, or boot camp, to steel them for the

challenges that lie ahead.

Serious students of acting have their own boot camp at South Coast

Repertory. Each summer, the Costa Mesa theater offers an intensive

eight-week program for people seeking to chart a professional career

in the theater, movies or television. Graduates from the program

include funnyman Will Ferrell.

The professional conservatory is an intensive program, running

from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and culminating in a

final performance lab presented before an audience of invited guests

and members of the company’s artistic staff, with evaluation for

possible auditions for South Coast Rep productions.

Students come from miles around for this program, but five members

of the current class are local residents -- four from Costa Mesa and

one from Newport Beach. They are unanimous in their enthusiasm for

the conservatory experience.

“You learn so much in eight weeks,” said Costa Mesa’s Peri Baker,

25, a graduate of Estancia High School and UCLA, who cut her acting

teeth on eight productions of “Annie” as a youngster. “The program is

constructed so well.”

David Sinatra, one of the youngest students at 18, agrees. The

Costa Mesa resident, who played Cassio in Orange Coast College’s

recent production of “Othello,” notes that “everybody cares about

each other. It’s a group effort.”

Sinatra, who can truthfully claim to be Frank Sinatra’s son

(though no kin to Old Blue Eyes), notes that “everybody is putting so

much into the program, and the teachers take an active interest.”

A business major at USC, Sinatra is striving to “bring my acting

to a professional level.”

Kimber Rewun, 28, who moved to Corona del Mar from Colorado about

six months ago, declares that she has harbored a passion for acting

since she was a little girl.

“This program is fantastic,” she said. “The amount of learning is

unparalleled to any class. Karen takes a personal interest in all of

the students.”

Karen is the conservatory’s director, actress Karen Hensel, who

won a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle award for her performance in

South Coast Repertory’s “Top Girls” and was particularly memorable

opposite Richard Doyle in “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune”

on the theater’s old Second Stage.

She’s been directing the theater’s adult and professional programs

since 1986, while appearing on a number of television programs. For

daytime TV devotees, Hensel plays the role of Doris Collins on “The

Young and the Restless.”

“The faculty is made up of teachers who also are working actors,”

Hensel said. “These instructors bring to the classroom a wealth of

knowledge not always available at acting academies.”

Kristen Howerton, 30, of Costa Mesa, professes to be “amazed that

we have such a great program in Costa Mesa.” The marriage and family

therapist describes the conservatory as “very comprehensive,” noting

that she has attended performances at South Coast Repertory for the

past six years and was “blown away” by them.

Also “very impressed” by the program is Paul Lucero, 28, of Costa

Mesa, who is on a leave of absence from his job at IBM to enroll in

the conservatory.

“The instructors are terrific,” he said. “The all-around skills

taught by this program will make me a better actor.”

Among the courses offered at the summer conservatory is a class in

improvisation, taught by veteran actor-director Greg Atkins. Here,

students learn to react instantaneously to situations they might

encounter onstage.

In one exercise, the students stand in a circle and pass a water

bottle around while playing off one another in a brisk word game as

Atkins encourages them to be “faster.” Atkins’ credo for young actors

is a simple one: “Say what you want, out loud, and you’ll start to

believe it.”

Another improv exercise involves two actors creating a scene in

their heads while acting on it. The only rule is “no questions.” When

that rule is broken, Atkins motions the pair to sit down and two

others take their best shots.

Hensel’s auditioning class probably is the most important lesson

students can learn.

“First,” she admonishes her students, “you have to get the job.

Prove you can do it.”

On this particular day, pairs of students are reading the same

scene over and over with the goal of establishing sexual tension.

They read with each other and with Hensel, who professes to be “a

middle-aged, underpaid casting assistant” purposely reading blandly.

It’s up to the students to overcome this roadblock.

When the conservatory wraps up at the end of this month, these

students and their classmates will have a leg up on the road to a

professional acting career. Some even may be plying their trade right

here at South Coast Repertory.

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Daily Pilot. His reviews

appear Fridays.