Feature Stories

UC Regents' Lectureship Program funds inter-disciplinary master class with award-winning actor/director

SCROLL DOWN for an edited version of a scene directed in the class by Robyn Charles and videographed by Robyn Charles, who are MFA directing candidates.

TFT’s programs for acting and directing are among the best in the world, each a priceless resource for the other, in terms of preparing these “professionals in training” for the collaborations that will be the heart and soul of their future careers..

Above: Video footage of the “Directing the Actor” master class with writer/director/actor Kasi Lemmons. Videographer Juan Tallo and editor Nolwen Cifuentes helped us prepare this documentary glimpse of an extraordinary educational experience. The scene being workshopped in the segment above was shot from several angles by director Robyn Charles and videographer Robyn Charles. The footage has been edited exclusively for TFT by Nolwen Cifuentes.

That was the reasoning behind the proposal submitted by Barbara Boyle, chair of the UCLA Department of Film, Television and Digital Media, the committee that selects and funds appointments in the Regents' Professors and Lecturers Program, which is designed to bring students into contact with top professionals in their fields.

Boyle’s successful proposal brought award-winning actor-director Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou,” “Talk to Me”) to TFT to teach the six-week master class “Directing the Actor,” smoothing the path of interaction for a group of MFA theater actors and MFA film directors, who worked together on scenes from as yet-unproduced screenplays written by Lemmons herself.

About Kasi Lemmons

KASI LEMMONS was born in Missouri but raised in Massachusetts, where she performed in Boston Children’s Theatre before studying acting at NYU and history at UCLA.

Lemmons attended the New School for Social Research in NYC and made her first film there, “Fall From Grace,” a short documentary about the homelessness. She continued to develop her writing and directing skills while working as an actor in many films, including “The Silence of the Lambs,” “Candyman,” “Hard Target,” and “Fear of a Black Hat.” In 1997, she appeared in “Gridlock’d,” the debut feature film directed by her husband, actor/director Vondie Curtis-Hall.

Lemmons wrote the screenplay for and directed “Eve’s Bayou,” a Southern Gothic drama about a girl growing up in Louisiana. With star Samuel L. Jackson as co-producer, “Eve’s Bayou” was a critical success, winning Lemmons an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature. She teamed with Jackson again in 2001 for the psychological thriller “The Caveman’s Valentine.”

Lemmons’most recent film, “Talk To Me,” was a biographical drama about Ralph Waldo “Petey” Greene Jr. (Don Cheadle), a real-life soul music DJ who galvanized Washington DC in a tumultuous period in the mid-1960s.