UMHB Performance Studies Personal Marketing Workshops

Each semester at UMHB we provide workshops and performances of autobiography, poetry, effective use of e-technologies,
staged readings of original Cru screenplays, and screenings of original Cru films. These activities are free and open to the public. We host many open, free workshops and presentations by guest presenters and advisors, such as those below. These are announced on the UMHB Web site and through regional media. We have an advisory group made of casting directors, talent agents, talent coaches,
and regional communication leaders, who assist us with guidance, as well as workshops, to keep our program up-to-date and on the cutting edge.

We are grateful for our advisors and presenters, who work with us in positive and constructive ways. They are effective team members who support us and others. They guide and promote high standards and expectations in contexts of praise, encouragement, and mutual respect. As role models, they lead by example. They guide by their lives and words. They facilitate talent, effective artistry, and good working relationships. They know that healthy relationships, teams, and community produce the most positive results.

You can find many of our advisors on our Cru Film '10 Facebook Group. (This group has nearly 100 talented members. Many of them are Performance Studies/Communication/Film Students, Alumni, Faculty, Advisors, and Associates, who are experienced talent with rich backgrounds as film, television, radio, and stage cast/crew. On the Cru Film '10 Web pages, I daily post jobs and tips for film careers. I also post reviews and tips for an Austin online publication.)

Karen Divisek- Talent Coach- masterful talent coach,
who brings detailed facets, dimensions, and levels to film acting

Karen Hallford, Casting Director, Casting Works L.A.
gracious and effective casting director

Lainie Frasier- VoiceWorks
outstanding voice talent and voice-over coach
co-author - Speak Skillfully and Sucessfully:
A Guide to Developing Diction and Voice-Over Excellence

Ray Bengston, Actor, Photographer- EyeKool-
outstanding headshot photographer, especially skillful with lighting

(*Note Megan Moore & Ashley Ramirez are planning headshot shoots at UMHB
with Ray Bengston for Spring Semester 20010. You can contact them
on our Cru Film '10 Group, http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=110555132295066 )

Step Rowe
outstanding actor, talent coach

Guest Presenters
Actors-

George Fishoff, Writer, Performer Of Shepherd, longest-running, one-person performance from the Bible in New York theatre history.

Marco Perella has played principal roles in many feature films such as the following with notable stars and directors: The Rookie (Dennis Quaid), director- John Lee Hancock; Miss Congeniality (Bullock, Caine), director- Don Petrie; A Perfect World (Costner), director- Clint Eastwood; and JFK (Costner), director- Oliver Stone.

Diane Hallock (UMHB Performance Studies Alumna)- Television, Film Talent; She performs in L.A. and has worked with Bill Cosby, Sidney Poitier, Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Elizabeth Taylor, Vic Tayback, Danny Glover, Eddie Murphy, Jackie Mason,
Lynn Redgrave, Jerry Seinfeld, Joan Van Ark, Judith Light, Rhea Perlman, Ted Danson...

Robert Bly, Nationally Recognized Poet Robert Bly has had an illustrious career. At Harvard he was part of a famous group of writers, who were undergraduates at that time. They included Donald Hall, Adrienne Rich, Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, Harold Brodky, George Plimpton, and John Hawkes.

Bly graduated in 1950. Beginning in 1954, he spent two years at the University of Iowa at the Writers Workshop. He was involved there with W. D. Snodgrass, Donald Justice, and other notable writers. In 1956 he received a Fulbright grant to translate Norwegian poetry into English in Norway. While he was there, he discovered the work of a number of major poets whose force was not yet present in the United States. Among these writers were Pablo Neruda, Cesar Vallejo, Gunnar Ekelof, Georg Trakl and Harry Martinson. Bly won the National Book Award for The Light Around the Body. During the 1970's, he published eleven books of poetry, essays, and translations. During the 1980's, he published Loving a Woman in Two Worlds, The Wingéd Life: Selected Poems and Prose of Thoreau, The Man in the Black Coat Turns, and A Little Book on the Human Shadow. His work Iron John: A Book About Men has been an international bestseller. It has been translated into many languages.

Robert Bly has conducted workshops for men with James Hillman and others. He has presented workshops for men and women with Marion Woodman. Robert Bly, wife Ruth, and storyteller Gioia Timpanelli have held seminars on European fairy tales. In the early 1990s, Bly edited The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, an anthology of poems from the men's work with James Hillman and Michael Meade. Since then he has edited The Darkness Around Us Is Deep: Selected Poems of William Stafford, and The Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy, which is a collection of sacred poetry from many cultures.

His recent books of poetry, What Have I Ever Lost by Dying and Collected Prose Poems and Meditations on the Insatiable Soul, were published by Harper Collins. Bly's second large prose book, The Sibling Society, was published by Addison-Wesley in hardcover and by Vintage in paperback. His collection, Morning Poems was published by Harper Collins. Bly recently published The Maiden King: The Reunion of Masculine and Feminine (Henry Holt). It was developed in collaboration with Marion Woodman.
Scribners has published Best American Poetry 1999 that Robert Bly edited Other recent publications have included the following:
Eating the Honey of Words (Harper Flamingo), translations of Ghalib (Harper Flamingo), and The Lightning Should Have Fallen on Ghalib with Sunil Dutta (Ecco Press). See http://www.robertbly.com/biography.html

Talent Agents

Heather Collier- Talent Agent Ms. Collier has been a veteran in the talent management field. She began her career in Chicago, after graduating from Northwestern University with a degree in Radio/TV/Film. Right out of college, she was hired as a runway agent for Elite Chicago where she learned the ins and outs of representing models for editorials, catalogues, and commercial print. She made the transition from modeling agent to talent agent when she accepted a position as an agent for young people for Stewart Talent, which was also owned by Elite Chicago.

Heather represented children ages newborn to 18 for print and on camera work. She moved to Manhattan and began working in the theatrical department at Abrams Artists Agency, representing adult actors and actresses for film, television, and theater. During her time at Abrams, Heather not only handled the careers of well-established actors and actresses, but she was active in signing and developing new talent. Ms. Collier then moved to Charleston, SC., where she continued working in film projects. She helped find investors for an independent film “Almost Salinas” starring John Mahoney produced by Strata Productions based in Chicago, IL.

In Charleston, Heather met producer Peter Wentworth, a filmmaker with eight independent features to his credit, including the
Academy Award nominee Metropolitan. Heather and Peter started Slant 6, a film development/production company. Heather received a call from Abrams Artist’s LA office. She packed her bags and spent a few months in LA. When she returned to South Carolina, she picked up where she left off and continued to work with Peter Wentworth and Slant 6. After the events of 9/11,
Heather took a job in tourism, working for a destination management company. That led to a job at the South Carolina Aquarium. Most recently, Heather decided to make Austin her new home. She is committed to helping actors develop their careers. http://www.colliertalent.com/about.htm

Tara Coet Felmly, Talent Agent, Auditioning for the Camera & Breaking Into the Business-Tara Coet Felmly, Austin talent agent, is a UMHB Performance Studies and Business Alumna and the Owner of T Coet Talent in Austin. As a director, actor, writer, producer, and talent agent, Felmly has spent most of her life involved in the entertainment industry. She has inherited a passion for the business from her actor father. Her daughters, Kendra and Noell, are professional actors. Felmly's husband, Fred, serves the business side of the agency. T Coet Talent has been cast in many commercials, industrials, television series and films.

Dec. 8, 11 a.m., 2008, Tara to conduct a workshop on Breaking Into the Business in Brindley Auditorium, York Hall, at UMHB.
Tara works in the entertainment business daily as a talent agent, who represents actors for commercials, voice over, television, and film. Her actors have had principal roles in nationally known projects including, "The Great Debaters," "W," "Kings of Appletown," "Prison Break," "Friday Night Lights," "Major Movie Star"... and countless others.

Tara Coet Felmly comes regularly to UMHB to meet and greet talent. Through one of her workshops at UMHB she "discovered" UMHB's Will Johnson, who was then a Performance Studies student and now is an alumnus. As one of Tara's talent, Will has worked in the role of Thomas in "Friday Night Lights" and has played Scott in the soon to be released "Bandslam" that stars Vanessa Hudgens and Alyson Mychalka. He is currently employed by the Disney Corp. as a performer. Tara is also currently developing Marianna Lugo Cancel, another UMHB Performance Studies Alumna, who is a bilingual talent.

This workshop is free and open to the public. For further information about the workshop or the Performance Studies Program at UMHB, contact Dr. Diane Howard. The Performance Studies Major provides training for students in film, television, radio, and platform presentations. The Performance Studies Program is in the Dept. of Communication and Media Studies and in the College of Humanities at UMHB.

Lainie Frasier- Voice-Over Coach-VoiceWorks- With well over 1500 radio, television and animation voice-over credits,
Lainie Frasier ... moved to... Austin to take a position with GSD&M Advertising, and then with Fralix Advertising... Lainie then worked as Studio Manager for eighteen years for the Production Block, Austin'sleading commercial recording studio. During her stint at the Production Block, Lainie developed her popular voice acting workshops and now teaches workshops, produces and acts full-time as owner of VoiceWorks... Lainie has recently been heard on projects for the Texas Department of Health, Time Warner Cable, Insure-A-Kid, and Patriot Pontiac.

Her animation credits include Wedding Peach, Final Fantasy Unlimited, Mazenkaiser, Sonic the Hedgehog, Legend of Crystania, Samurai X, MAPS... Her recent directing projects have been for Tocquigny/Steel (which won a gold and silver Addy Award,) Globalscape, El Paso Import Company, Hewlett-Packard, Austin Board of Realtors, Keepsake Fine Jewelry, and Guadalupe Valley Electric Cooperative.

Besides her VoiceWorks workshops, Lainie Frasier teaches master classes for the UT College of Fine Arts, the University of Mary Hardin Baylor, UT's Informal Classes program and Austin Information Radio.... Lainie has worked on Austin stage productions of Talk Radio, The Sisters Rosensweig, Free Will and Wanton Lust, Inspecting Carol, Six Degrees of Separation, Road to Nirvana, A Delicate Balance, Colonel Mustard and Bleacher Bums. She also was a founder and star of Ground Zero Theatre.
Lainie received a best actress award in Inspecting Carol and best supporting actress award in in Road to Nirvana. She has won numerous local...national advertising...public relations awards for acting and producing.

She has co-authored with Dr. Diane Howard the textbook, Speak Skillfully and Successfully: A Guide to Developing Diction and Voice-Over Excellence

Mona Lee - Talent Coach -The Biz- Mona is a working actress whose 30 years of experience includes theatre, film, and television.
While a student in the Theatre Department of the University of Texas at Austin, she was awarded a full scholarship to the Juilliard School under the tutelage of John Houseman.... Her extensive stage work includes appearances in The Prodigious Snob at Lincoln Center; as Guest Artist for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival; and a tour of The Second Time Around, starring Pat O'Brien.

She performed Marigolds; Crimes of the Heart; and many other stage performances in California, New York, and Texas.
Mona's been cast in over 50 films and TV movies. She most recently filmed a role in Richard Linklater's, A Scanner Darkly,
in a scene opposite Keanu Reeves. Lee has done four projects with Linklater who also has taken Mona's acting classes.
You can see her as "Mitch's ear-pulling mom" in Dazed and Confused, and in his award winning animated feature, Walking Life. Her first "Mom" role was co-starring as the mother of star, Christian Slater, in The Legend of Billie Jean... she worked in the cast of Molding Clay, ...in which she co-starred with Barry Corbin and William Katt.

Mona can be seen in many co-starring and supporting roles like the 20th Century Fox film, Hope Floats, directed by Forest Whitaker and starring Sandra Bullock. She's appeared in co-starring roles in the TV mini-series, True Women, and in the television drama, Tornado Alley. As an actress, a screenwriter, and an acting coach, Mona also finds time to author The BIZ. A proud member of Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA, she is active in her unions serving as Secretary/Treasurer of the Houston Council of SAG...
"I love the diversity of cultures in Texas, especially the Mexican culture and people."

Step Rowe, Keene Studios Step Rowe has coached many successful, professional, and award-winning actors in television and film.
Further, she has directed award-winning educational and community theater programs. She is a degree and certified acting teacher (UT Austin) with a background in psychology.

Van Brooks- Two Chairs Studio, Austin, TX- Van Brooks is an actor, teacher, director, and photographer with twenty-five years of experience in the professional film industry. He is formerly the General Manager of the Actor's Institute in New York City,
where he also taught acting and led workshops on creativity, audition technique, and business skills. He has ...taught in Chicago, Toronto, Boston, Seattle, LA, Dallas, Houston, and Austin. He has worked with some of the best people in the business, including Academy Award winners Joel and Ethan Coen, Frances McDormand, and Marissa Tomei, Tony and Golden Globe winner Mary-Louise Parker, Obie winners Christopher Durang and E. Katherine Kerr; as well as with actors Kelly Lynch, Rip Torn, Alan Parker, Willie Nelson, and many more.

Technical Coaches-
Dr. Charles Day- Plastic Surgeon, Digital Photography, PowerPoint in E-Medicine