Faculty
Jon Jory
Visiting Professor
Jon Jory is an author, playwright and theater director. He is the founder of the internationally renowned Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Ky., and was previously the producing director at Actors Theatre of Louisville and the founding artistic director of the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Conn.
As a writer, he has had nearly 100 plays published, and is the author of a number of books including Complete Tips for the Actor, Tips for the Director, Tips on Auditioning and Teaching the Actor Craft.
He has directed productions on and Off-Broadway; at The Guthrie in Minneapolis; Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.; Hartford Stage in Hartford, Conn.; American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco; the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, N.J., and Milwaukee Repertory Theater, among others. He has also directed productions in Germany, Yugoslavia, Hong Kong, Ireland, Bulgaria and Romania.
In 1980, Jory received a special Tony Award for his work in regional theater. He was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 2000.
Jory attended the Yale School of Drama, and prior to teaching at UCLA TFT, was a tenured acting professor at the University of Washington from 2000-2011.
Faculty
Rod Holcomb
Visiting Professor
Rod Holcomb is an Emmy Award winner for his direction of the ER finale in 2009 and received the Director’s Guild of America Award for the original ER pilot. He has received numerous other Emmy and DGA Award nominations and has directed and executive produced 22 network and cable pilots, 15 of which went on to series.
Recent television series directing credits include Criminal Minds: Beyond Boarders, ICE, Agent X, Blood & Oil and Chicago Fire.
Additionally, Holcomb has directed many prestigious made-for-television movies including The Pentagon Papers with James Spader and Paul Giamatti; Convict Cowboy with Jon Voight and Marcia Gay Harden; Code Breakers with Scott Glen; Songs in Ordinary Times with Sissy Spacek; Scene of the Crime with Orson Welles; and Finding the Way Home with George C. Scott.
Holcomb was previously the co-chair of the Directors Guild of America’s Creative Rights Committee and has served as a member of the guild's Western and National Boards.
He and his producing partner, Beau Marks, recently designed the Advanced Dramatic Television Workshop for the School of Theater, Film and Television.
Faculty
Peter Guber
Peter Guber is chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment Group. Prior to Mandalay, Guber was chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, chairman and CEO of Polygram Entertainment, co-founder of Casablanca Record & Filmworks and president of Columbia Pictures. Guber produced or executive produced (personally or through his companies) films that garnered five Best Picture Academy Award nominations (winning for Rain Man in 1989) and box-office hits that include Midnight Express, Flashdance, The Color Purple, Batman, The Kids Are All Right and Soul Surfer. Mandalay's forthcoming release, The Birth of a Nation, premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and swept the two top prizes — the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award and the prestigious U.S. Dramatic Jury Award. The film sold to Fox Searchlight for a record-breaking sum.
Guber is owner and co-executive chairman of the Golden State Warriors, the 2015 NBA Champions; an owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the three-time National League West Champions; and an owner and executive chairman of Major League Soccer's Los Angeles Football Club (LAFC). He is an owner of Dick Clark Productions, a leading independent producer of television programming such as the perennial hits American Music Awards, Golden Globe Awards and So You Think You Can Dance. He is an investor, board member and chairman of the Strategic Advisory Board for NextVR. He is chairman of Mandalay Sports Media and a professor at both the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television and the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Guber is also a noted author whose works include Shoot Out: Surviving Fame and (Mis)Fortune in Hollywood, from which AMC's TV series of the same name was adapted, and for which he served as host during the show's seven-year run. Additionally, Guber wrote the Harvard Business Review cover article "The Four Truths of the Storyteller." His most recent business book, Tell to Win: Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story, became an instant No. 1 New York Times bestseller.
www.peterguber.com