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Dare to Be Bad
By Randy Simer
From her hilltop home in Agua Dulce, director/writer/actress/teacher Katt Shea enjoys a panoramic
view of Vasquez Rocks, vast mountain ranges, and a sky that goes on forever. Could there be a more beautiful setting
for an acting class? Fortunately for Santa Clarita thespians, this is where Shea conducts her very popular cold reading
classes. Through positive word of mouth, even established working actors from all over Los Angeles have been making
the drive to study with her. With classes ranging from beginning to advanced, she uses what she has learned over 26
years in the business to give her students a positive acting experience. As most actors will attest, some acting programs
can be torturous endeavors, with megalomaniacal gurus berating the students until they are worthless mounds of submissive
meat. Not so with Shea. Her goal is to bring out the best in her students without all the emotional damage.
"I don't beat them down," she explains. "When they have problems, I find the exercise and the technique
that will guide them out of the problem without them even focusing on it. I want it to be a joyful experience."
Her advice for unleashing creativity is both freeing and succinct; "Dare to be bad," she says.
Born
and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Shea has been a resident of Santa Clarita for 16 years, 11 of them in Agua Dulce. "I
like it here so much because of the friends you make and the values," she states. "I'm good friends with
my neighbors. If your pipes freeze in the middle of winter, they all come over to look and see if they can help you.
It's great." At age 19 she decided to move to Hollywood to seek a writing career. "I started to
get some acting work and that was my way in, which is really a strange thing because I'm not a performer, particularly.
I would get really nervous at auditions. That's kind of how I developed this whole method that I teach now.
It really helps you so you don't get nervous. That's when I started to get work." Her acting credits
include Scarface, Psycho 3, and Preppies and she has written and/or directed multiple films including Poison Ivy, Stripped
to Kill, and The Rage, Carrie 2. She has directed Leonardo DiCaprio, Drew Barrymore, Angelina Jolie and has been honored
with film retrospectives of her work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the British Film Institute in London.
But Shea's enthusiasm is most palpable when she says about her students, "The coolest thing for me is that I've
got actors getting their joy back!"
For more information, you can reach Shea at (661) 268-8611. Her
e-mail is kattshea@earthlink.net, and her website is www.kattshea.com.
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