KC Stage asked ATS actor Curtis Smith to interview me to mark the 10th anniversary of the studio! Here it is. You can find out more about the Kansas City performing arts community at www.kcstage.com [1] AG

My Dinner With Andy - Reflections on Ten Years of The Actor Training Studio - Curtis Smith
Posted: Mon, Dec 31 2007, 7:23 PM

Ten years ago, I decided to get into some community theater to see how I'd do, being that I had experience in high school, and try to meet some people, which was a fantastic decision in hind sight. It was clear early on that despite the fun I was having, I couldn't really hang without training, so I started taking classes at the Actor Training Studio under the tutelage of Andy Garrison, who I found to be tall, friendly, and of the sort I could get away with trusting. His studio had just opened a couple months earlier. I started taking classes, and he has ever since been my mentor and "go to" guy in all things acting. He's also a damn good friend.

What you're about to read is an edited conversation between Andy and I about his business, his trade, his craft, and his thoughts about creating a successful acting studio that has thrived in this community for ten years this month.

So it's been nearly ten years. It'll be ten years when?

January. I think the actual start date for ATS was January eighteenth. Not positive about that. I think I started with six. Six students.

How many students do you have now?

Well, more than six.

How did you come to acting, and start a studio?

The nutshell story is I thought about doing some acting between my junior and senior year in high school, got a part in a play, said a funny line, three hundred fifty people laughed, and I was done.

And I was like, "So. I want to do this forever!" So, got another play, found out from my drama teacher in high school that I was doing some things kind of on my own, on my own instincts that were working, and I thought, "Wow. Maybe this is something I can do." I thought I was going to go to college to become a high school drama teacher. Once I went to college, it was all about acting and not about education so much, at least not about becoming an educator so much. I got my theater degree, and then after graduation promptly tried to stop acting, and that lasted a year. When I was doing community theater, I got tired of people bailing with the excuse they just wanted to have fun, and it was like, "No, we need to do a good show. That's when it will be fun."

And at some point, you know, you're going along, doing all these different jobs - like I had five different jobs in seven years - and I finally decided that I gotta get doing what I have to do. I was tired of making excuses. I got tired of that. So, I thought, "What do I really want to do?" I thought, "I want to go back, and I want to go to grad school," because it had been something I had thought about since college. I auditioned for graduate school at UMKC. Kind of a one-time shot. If I couldn't get in to graduate school in Kansas City, I was going to figure out something else.

What year was that?

The crisis point - and it was a crisis point really - was 1987. I was basically self-employed for about a year. So I auditioned for grad school in January of 1988. It went really well. I got a letter saying, "We might be interested in you." I told them, "I'm coming if you're going to take me." They accepted me, and I was the only person from Kansas City they took that year. Of the seven actors that graduated that year, two of us are still in the business.

So after that, I started working right away: got some Coterie shows, got some American Heartland shows, and then I was looking at no more employment. After about a year, I got a job engraving trophies.

1992 was spent doing that, then I was able to put the patchwork quilt together. I worked at the zoo as an interpreter for five summers. I worked at Sprint as a role player a couple nights a month for ten years. Oh, and I got Christmas Carol. So between those three things and the commercial work I was doing and some other shows I was doing, well, I was doing that very lower middle class actor thing.

I did that for a couple years, and then started to teach. I got an opportunity to cover a sabbatical at Baker University. I was thirty five. I thought it would be ten years later when I started to teach. You know, act professionally for another ten years, and then teach. I always knew I was going to teach. But I got this opportunity, and it was like, "This is it." I tried to get hired there as a full time, you know, as a professor, but they weren't hiring any more theater people. They had their one and a half positions filled.

So, I left there, started to work with some local people in putting together a theater company. It was going to be called The Cobalt Theater.

Sounds snazzy.

Just ‘cause it's my favorite color, and it's a cool name.

Anyway, that didn't work out. There were a lot of reasons to start an acting studio, one of which was I didn't want to work at the zoo anymore. Get myself on my own career path. So I found space and went totally descriptive and said, "Well I'll call it The Actor Training Studio." Which has kind of been a bane of my existence because everybody wants to call it The Actors Training Studio.

I think I was five years into knowing you that I started calling it the right thing. That doesn't say much for my own intellect, but there you go.

No. That's okay. Had I known that was such an easy mistake to make, I'd have just gone to Actors Training Studio right away. But I didn't want it to get mixed up with the Actor's Studio. Anyway, that's how we got started. Started with six students, one workshop: this January, we're going to open another workshop and we'll have five.

Within the confines of this awesome room you've found, it's been a lot more than acting training, you've done several showcases.

Yeah. Well, it really all goes toward the work. Acting, directing, teaching, writing, editing, helping guide someone in their career as an actor, it's all the same work. It's all part of the same work. Sure it's about dramatic storytelling, whether it's on stage or on camera or in the street.

Do you get, very often, someone coming in here, where it's painfully obvious to you that they are not cut out for this?

There are so many different ways of being cut out for this. The thing is, yeah, there are people that come with gifts, all right? And there are people who come who haven't found those gifts yet. And there are people whose learning curve takes a lot longer than someone else's. But, I don't care.

I think [it would be wrong] for me to say to somebody, "Look. You're just not cut out for this." You know? For some people, that might save them time and money. For other people, it might, you never know. And I don't want to be the guy that Sigourney Weaver is waving to on the Johnny Carson Show, where she's on the tonight show and it was Johnny Carson in those days, and they talk to her about her training, and she says, ‘yeah, I studied at Yale and some people said I'd never make it, and I'd just like to say hi, I'm on Johnny Carson right now. How you doing?" You know? I don't want to be that guy she's waving to.

To me, if you have the desire, that is pointing toward something, and I don't think you have to prove yourself to do this. You don't have to prove yourself worthy to act. There are a lot of people who are clogging up the works, let's face it. Too bad. If you're better than they are, you'll cut through. There are so many people to whom telling stories, being part of stories, is so important. Everybody is looking for a way to express themselves, whether they are doing it through acting, or writing, or accounting. At some point, it's not my job to say, "You can't follow up on this." Talent is the willingness to reveal one's self. I wish I could remember who said that. As long as you're willing to go in and bring yourself to the table, bring yourself out, and go deeper and deeper, you're going to find a way into what's uniquely you. I'll do anything except manipulate somebody.

Honestly, you know, I think that's what holds people's trust with you. That's why you have students who, like myself: I don't know when the last time I took a class here was, but I still consider myself a student, you know?

I do too, Curtis.

Do you allow the class to give feedback?

It's moderated group feedback. It's moderated through me, and once somebody starts to direct, I'm calling a time out and saying, "What do you see that causes you to say that?" The feedback about what the audience got, what they saw, what they experienced, is more valuable to the actor than eight different opinions on what the solution should be, on what they should do. At the same time, there are times when I'm going to tell an actor, "Look, I'm going to direct you for a second. You need to turn away on this line, you need to get away." It's something that if they pay attention to will redirect their work overall.

The reason I bring that up is that you do, you do take care of the students you have. You don't bring them in here, rip their guts out and send them home.

Oh, absolutely not.

One of the things that I really respected about you since day one was your patience with people and your ability to tell somebody they are horrible without them feeling like they did something wrong. Not to say that they are horrible, just to say that they are making inaccurate choices. You've seen me do good work and you've seen me do horrible work, and we have essentially the same conversation after each one, about making me better.

I'm not really that patient. I'm just fascinated by acting on its most molecular level. But that's what a studio is for. It's a place where you do your best work, and it's a place where you do your worst work. It's a place where you go and you absolutely suck, and that might still be a victory. I'd rather see an actor fail miserably, than succeed minimally.

Our conversation went on. We spoke of technique versus indication, his goals for the next ten years, which are not at all limited to a long waiting list, and he spoke of all the people who helped him get started, and that's where I'd like to close.

I didn't really do this alone. My wife Allise helped me develop and refine the vision for opening the studio and she remains my sounding board for much of the business and marketing aspects of it. My FlyOver partner Anna Hadzi from Denver has helped build it from a part time thing to a full time thriving business - she's always urging me to add services and workshops, saying, "If you build it, they will come." And they have. We're adding a Thursday evening workshop in January - we'll have five workshops a week at that point. My friend Bill Smith, also in Denver, helped mentor me in opening my studio - he let me job-shadow him early on and has given lots of invaluable advice. Kathy Landin, Curtis Smith, Theresa Von Colln, Katie Ligon, Jeff Fellin (the new Studio Manager), Jeff East - just a few of the students who, over the years, have helped by giving me insight into the student experience and by putting actual physical labor into the place.

I feel like because of my decision to study with Andy, my life as well as my work has absolutely been the better for it. I don't think I'm alone in that. I know I'm not. So on behalf of those whose work you help continue to make better, I offer our deepest gratitude, and many thanks. See you in class!