Howard Fine by me

A new phrase I've learned here is, auditing. This is where you go to a class and check out if it's any good. I suppose finding one word to cover that makes it sound a bit more professional. You don't want to be called into a class with "OK who's here to check we're not charlatans?"

Anyway, I "audited" Howard Fine's class last night. Howard Fine is one of the top acting coaches in Hollywood. His classes take place at his school which has an impressive theatre as well as workshop spaces. The format of the class I watched, which was a scene study class, involved pairs of actors performing a scene they'd been working on. The Great and Powerful Howard would then join them on stage and teach them how to be less shit. I'm sure there's a posh acting term for it but that's basically what happened. 

He's very good at what he does because indeed, at the second attempt, the actors were definitely less shit. Some were, in fact, very good. 

After the class, he takes the auditors off to a separate room for a Q and A. That was very illuminating. Howard is obviously all about the art so any question that even inferred that your intention was to learn how to do better in auditions or heaven forbid, want to book the job, would mortally offend him. You're intention should be to take a well rounded, complete character into the audition room. That's it. 

Someone asked if he ran screen acting classes. I knew he's hate this question. And he did. He was practically vibrating with rage and said, through gritted teeth something like, "My dear girl, acting is acting!". 

I decided I liked this weird bloke and will hopefully take a class with him in the not too distant future.