Sandra Seacat(1936-2023)
- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Director
From the mid-1970s on, Sandra Seacat has been one of America's more
sought-after and influential acting teachers/coaches. A method-based
actor and teacher, closely associated with the Method's originator, her
mentor Lee Strasberg, Seacat gradually
became recognized as well for her groundbreaking work in the early
eighties involving the application of
Carl Gustav Jung's theories to acting
technique and pedagogy, thus introducing the practice now known as
dream work (also known as "The Way," much as Strasberg's
Stanislavski-based system eventually came to be known as "The Method").
Born on October 2, 1936, Sandra Diane Seacat (whose first name, despite
the spelling, is pronounced somewhere between 'Sondra' and 'Saundra')
was the first of three daughters born to Lois Marion Seacat (née
Cronic) and Russell Henry Seacat of Greensburg, Kansas.
After attending Northwestern University, Seacat made her way to New
York, eventually being admitted to The Actors Studio, where she would
become well versed in the method school of acting espoused by the
Studio's director, Lee Strasberg. During the 1960s, Seacat began to get
acting work in the city, appearing under her married name, Sandra
Kaufman. In 1962, she earned plaudits from Village Voice critic Jerry
Tallmer, making her New York stage debut in the American premiere of
Leonid Andreyev's "Waltz of the Dogs,"
an Off-Off-Broadway production mounted by noted acting teacher - and
Actors Studio member -
Michael Howard.
While the next two years would be taken up with the birth and early
rearing of her daughter Greta B. Kaufman (eventually also known as
Greta Seacat), she returned to action in
1964 on Broadway with a small role in the Actors Studio production of
Anton Chekhov's "Three Sisters," starring
Kim Stanley,
Geraldine Page, and
Shirley Knight (though neither
she nor Knight would appear in the version eventually preserved on
videotape).
For the remainder of the decade, as she continued to hone her craft at
the Studio, doing scene work with future stage co-stars
Ben Piazza and
Will Hare, as well as
Robert Walden and
Robert Viharo, each of whom would remain
longtime friends, Seacat (aka Kaufman) quickly became one of
Strasberg's prize pupils, and one of the Method's most articulate
exponents. Thus, at just about the time her first marriage was coming
to an end, a new career path beckoned, when, in 1969, the Lee Strasberg
Theatre Institute was born.
By the early 1970s, Seacat was leading classes, not only at the
Institute, but also at the City College of New York's Leonard Davis
Center for the Performing Arts, as well as teaching privately. By 1980,
she would also teach at John Strasberg's
The Real Stage.
In the meantime, though, both Seacat's acting career - which, from this
point forward, along with all other facets of her career, would be
conducted under her maiden name - and her matrimonial status (in
conjunction with fellow actor
Michael Ebert) showed renewed
signs of life, as the couple appeared together in a 1969 production of
Brendan Behan's
'The Hostage," followed by the New Orleans Repertory Theater's June 1970 revival of Tennessee Williams'
"A Streetcar Named Desire," directed by
June Havoc, featuring Ebert as Harold "Mitch"
Mitchell and E. Katherine Kerr as
Blanche DuBois, as well as Seacat and Ben Piazza, respectively, as
Stella and Stanley Kowalski.
Returning to New York, Seacat began to build her teaching practice.
Among her early students were
Treat Williams and
Steve Railsback (the latter preparing
for his film debut in Elia Kazan's
The Visitors (1972)), and later,
Lance Henriksen,
Jessica Lange, and
Mickey Rourke. Rourke would study with
Seacat for several years in New York before departing for the west
coast, and then, only at his mentor's behest.
Rourke has repeatedly cited his time with Seacat as the turning point
in his career. "That's when everything started to click," he told
Newsday in 1984, making a point - as he had in a New York Magazine
profile the previous year - to contrast this with his disappointing
Actors Studio stint ("I sat there a year, waiting for the teacup to
develop in my hand"), saying of the Studio's director, "All I saw Lee
do was tear people down." By contrast, speaking with the Los Angeles
Times in 1984, Rourke credited Seacat with "channeling all it was that
was messing me up into something creative and challenging."
Moreover, notwithstanding his subsequent disillusionment with the
Studio, it was Seacat's counsel (as Rourke himself has mentioned more
than once) - i.e. that, in order to bring some semblance of conviction
to the scene Rourkee himself had chosen for his Actors Studio audition,
he must immediately find his biological father (whom he hadn't seen in
20 years) - that enabled Rourke to realize his dream of membership in
the alma mater of Brando, Clift and Dean. During Rourke's 2009
appearance on
Inside the Actors Studio (1994),
after describing his first affective memory, executed under Seacat's
guidance more than thirty years before, the 56-year-old Rourke was
asked whether he still used what Seacat had taught him. "Very much," he
replied. (13 years earlier, a previous generation of ITAS viewers had
witnessed Jessica Lange call Seacat "a powerful influence on my
acting," and two years before that, Lance Henriksen had offered Film
Comment readers an unsolicited 20-year-old recollection of "a great
teacher named Sandra Seacat.")
During the 1970s, Seacat continued to juggle her teaching and acting
careers, portraying the female leads in a number of Off and
Off-Off-Broadway productions, as well as minor roles in three Broadway
and Off Broadway shows, receiving particularly favorable notices in the
1973 revival of William Inge's "Natural
Affection," co-starring Nathan George, and
the American premiere of
John Hopkins's "Economic Necessity"
in 1976. Halfway between the two came a much-anticipated but ultimately
disappointing Actors Studio revival of
Harold Pinter's "Old Times." Presented in
the fall of 1974 (and followed by a particularly disastrous January
1975 Actors Studio West reprise) with the nominal participation of
'supervising director' Arthur Penn,
the production was, in essence, self-directed by its three actors,
Seacat, Hildy Brooks, and Will Hare, a fact
much lamented by reviewers.
In February 1975, upon Seacat's less than triumphant return to New York
following the "Old Times" debacle, Seacat's CCNY employment afforded
her a welcome distraction, in the form of an upcoming four-day, Davis
Center event featuring playwrights
Peter Shaffer,
Edward Albee and
Arthur Miller, moderated by
director Alan Schneider. Starting
on May 12 with a symposium entitled "Theatre in the University," and
concluding with one day apiece devoted to the works of each of the
three guests, with student performances followed by discussions with
the respective playwrights, the final day would be devoted to Arthur
Miller's work, with each grade level in the Davis Center's acting
program performing a scene from a different Miller opus.
The play assigned to Seacat's freshman class was "A View from the
Bridge." After choosing as their showcase the final scene from Act One,
she cast four of her regular students, but reserved the central role of
Eddie Carbone for one of her private students who had just started
auditing the class. And thus did Seacat, in this somewhat obscure
setting, come to direct the stage debut of the as-yet unknown Mickey
Rourke.
Starting in 1978 (after minor roles in two TV specials, NBC's
Bicentennial tribute,
First Ladies Diaries: Edith Wilson (1976),
and Hallmark Hall of Fame's premiere presentation of Arthur Miller's
Fame (1978), Seacat's stage career
concluded on a decidedly anticlimactic note: a pair of smaller roles,
albeit within the context of two somewhat notable productions - one
being the first work to be staged in the new
Harold Clurman Theatre, Eugene
Ionesco''s "The Lesson;" the other, a rare directorial credit for Ellen Burstyn,
in the 1979 Actors Studio production of
Norman Krasna's rarely revived "Bunny."
In fact, 1978 provided a number of punctuation points for Seacat. Early
that year, two significant eras had come to an end - first, on January
26, the end of her marriage to Michael Ebert, and next, just two days
later, the death of her father, Russell. This was also the year Seacat
persuaded her prize pupil Rourke that there was nothing further to be
gained by staying in New York, that it was time to go west and test his
fortunes in Hollywood.
Certainly, given her circumstances at that moment, one could see such
advice applying equally to Seacat herself, and, indeed, by the early
1980s, Seacat had expanded her base of operations, teaching in both New
York and Los Angeles (as she has continued to do ever since), helping
actors like Lange, Rachel Ward, and
Marlo Thomas give career-changing
performances. On March 29, 1983, just weeks after the announcement of
Lange's dual Oscar nominations, Seacat was acknowledged by the
Associated Press as the one who "helped turn Jessica Lange from King
Kong's consort into the soulful actress in
Frances (1982) and
Tootsie (1982)." A few years later,
Liz Smith would acknowledge Seacat
for "helping Jessica Lange to her Oscar and Marlo Thomas to her Emmy."
Lange herself later told both James Lipton
and Vanity Fair just how pivotal Seacat's contribution had been, both
for her career in general and, in particular, her portrayal of
Frances Farmer.
Regarding the latter, and the intensive nature of that collaboration,
J.T. Jeffries writes in his 1986 biography of Lange: "In the spring of
1981, while still breast-feeding her newborn daughter by Baryshnikov,
she worked on each scene with her coach, Sandra Seacat... Seacat had
expanded her theatrical repertoire in recent years to include
techniques from Eastern meditation. Lange regularly used those deep
relaxation techniques on the set to improve her concentration in the
grueling role." (For screen novice Baryshnikov, the Seacat connection -
and those relaxation techniques in particular - would prove a welcome
legacy of his relationship with Lange, long since ended by 1985, when
the legendary dancer was coached by Seacat on the set of
White Nights (1985).)
Regarding the Emmy-winning performance that would help transform the
image of Marlo Thomas (at least within the industry), from the
indefatigable, relentlessly upbeat protagonist of
That Girl (1966) to an actor who
could take on any role and be taken seriously doing it, Thomas writes
in her 2010 autobiography: "I only wish Lee [Strasberg] could have
lived to see me portray a schizophrenic in
Nobody's Child (1986). I
never could have gotten near playing that kind of part without Lee's
exercises, and the subsequent work I did and continue to do with his
primary disciple, the brilliant Sandra Seacat."
Of the three career turning points mentioned above, Rachel Ward's
transformation - culminating in her Golden Globe-nominated lead
performance in
The Thorn Birds (1983) -
stands out. In the fall of 1982 and continuing on through the following
winter, even as Lange's two Oscar-nominated performances were receiving
applause, acclaim, and, eventually, awards, the then inexperienced Ward
was undergoing a rigorous makeover program under Seacat's guidance. But
simply in order to get to that point, Ward first had to get the part.
As the Associated Press reports: "Ward's first reading before producers
David L. Wolper and
Stan Margulies was disastrous. So she
hired drama coach Sondra [sic] Seacat." "I studied exhaustively for two
weeks," recalled Ward, "went back and did a screen test with Richard."
According to Margulies, Ward's second reading "was so breathtaking that
she got the part right there. But our questions were whether she could
do it over the five-month shooting period."
Seacat had no problem answering those questions, but her prescription
was radical, and required Ward's active participation and unwavering
commitment. To her credit, Ward did not disappoint; under Seacat's
direction, she gave up cigarettes and meat, started a daily exercise
regimen, and - utilizing those same meditation techniques used by Lange
to such great effect just months before - learned to calm her mind and
focus on the task at hand. "You can almost see her develop as an
actress in 'Thorn Birds,'" reported the Chicago Tribune. "By the
finish, her Meggie is much stronger, more worldly, compassionate. The
changes were in character, but they were taking place in Ward too.
Thanks, in large part, to Seacat."
"She's extraordinary," Ward said of her new mentor. "She made me work
in a totally different way than I'd ever worked before. For the first
time, I really worked on technique... It was definitely not an easy
five months. It was a lot of tying things together and understanding
and confusion and frustration and anger. I asked a lot of questions
about acting and about me and stuff, and Sandra just had these answers,
and they were just like, of course, oh my God, of course!"
It was during this same period, as reported by The New York Times more
than 25 years later, that Seacat's Jung-inspired experiments ushered in
the now widespread practice known as dream work, wherein actors
interpret and sometimes influence their own dreams, often casting and
staging those dreams in the process, all in the interests of achieving
the richest, most genuine characterization possible. A number of the
younger dream work practitioners, such as
Elizabeth Kemp,
Kim Gillingham,
Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, and
actor/directors John Markland and
Jamie Wollrab, as well as Sandra's
daughter and fellow acting coach, Greta, all claim Seacat as their
mentor. Moreover, longtime Seacat clients
Melanie Griffith and
Gina Gershon, as well as onetime student,
Diane Salinger, have long been on record
regarding the impact this innovation has had on their own careers.
"In Sandra's class," recalled Salinger in 1987, "we had dream
assignments where, before you went to sleep, you'd write out an
assignment to yourself, and dream dreams that had connections to the
work you were doing. I've done that with this play." "It's a great way
to open yourself up," insisted Griffith in a 1986 interview. "It's been
very healthy for me, because I think our interior soul knows a lot more
about ourselves than our conscious intellect ever allows you to think
about." More recently, Hélène Cardona, a
Paris-born poet, translator and actor who studied at the American
Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Actors Studio in the early 1990s,
recalled: "When I trained with Sandra Seacat at the Actors Studio in
New York, she introduced me to a particular form of dream work. You
could call it Jungian. I have kept doing this work for many years now.
It's very therapeutic, a more holistic approach to [sic] medicine. And
it can also be used to develop a character in a play or movie. You dig
into yourself to find the answers. In the dream you are connected to
your inner self and to the divine."
Gershon is particularly passionate on the subject, speaking in a 1998
interview: "Sandra totally changed my acting. Instinctively, I was
always in love with psychology and my dream life had always been very
important to me... What's really exciting to me about Sandra's work is
that it changes your life, almost on a psychic level. Now I'll get
parts and in working on them, she'll say, 'Well, let's see how you're
developing, as a human being.' Because the parts you're doing, it's no
accident. Those parts affect your life and they kind of illustrate the
map that your life is following." As recently as August 26, 2012,
speaking with The Lab Magazine, Gershon reaffirmed the importance of
Seacat and dream work to her career.
In a 2001 interview with Back Stage West, another longtime Seacat
client of mid-eighties vintage, Laura Dern,
went public. While not specifically referencing dream work, Dern echoes
both Gershon, Cardona and Rachel Ward in her portrayal of Seacat's
holistic, almost therapeutic approach, a characteristic previously
noted in 1994 by erstwhile Wonder Woman,
Lynda Carter ("better than any therapist,"
Carter told USA Today, regarding the time spent studying with Seacat:
"you strip yourself of ego, and the whole experience unearths all your
analytical feelings and self-discovery"), and one which brings to mind
another Jungian archetype central to Seacat's career from at least the
1980s onward; as Seacat would tell the New York Times in 2009, "I
believe that the artist is a wounded healer, that they are healing
wounds of their own, and when they do that truthfully, they heal the
audience." Dern recalled:
"Through studying and through being raised on movie sets, I was
surrounded by a lot of people who believed that the more tortured the
person, the greater the artist. I always had a hard time understanding
that, but thought, 'I guess that's the way it is'... Luckily through
life and the gift of the acting teacher who's changed my life in so
many ways since 1984 (her name is Sandra Seacat), I learned there's
another opinion, which is: the better the person, the better the
artist. The more true you are to who you are and the more honest you
are as an individual, the more honest you can be as an actor, and I'm
really liking that." Asked if she still studied, Dern replied, "I still
study with Sandra and I love studying."
Speaking again with BSW in 2004, Dern elaborated: "All of a sudden,
this new idea that the parts I play help me discover myself and I could
maybe be kinder to the ambiguous places and the flaws - I was so lifted
by that. Since then, I feel like it's an extraordinary experience of
therapy and learning about being in the moment and honoring that. All
of a sudden, acting wasn't this torment where you're supposed to be a
screwed-up artist, but it's an opportunity for self-growth. And I think
I've had fun ever since." Finally, in January 2012, at the
[error],
Dern reaffirmed the connection, thanking Seacat in her acceptance
speech for Best Actress in HBO's
Enlightened (2011), the first two
episodes of which had each featured Seacat in a small role.
In 1988, with her dream work innovations now well underway, and some
well-publicized individual success stories under her belt, a unique
opportunity came Seacat's way - that being the chance to direct a
feature film. This would eventually become
In the Spirit (1990), the first,
and as yet, only film Seacat has directed, "a low-budget pic," as
Variety would note, featuring "big-name talent."
The over-qualified/underpaid cast included no less than three of
Seacat's regular clients, Marlo Thomas, Melanie Griffith and
Peter Falk, as well as
Olympia Dukakis at the height of her
popularity, having just collected her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for
Moonstruck (1987). Arguably the film's
casting coup, however (and probably the positive element most
frequently cited by reviewers), was landing the celebrated
writer/performer Elaine May to
co-star opposite Thomas (with May's daughter,
Jeannie Berlin, who co-authored the
screenplay, also appearing).
Very much a homegrown New York product (a passing reference to
The Robin Byrd Show (1977)
being just one of several inside jokes contained therein), the
supporting cast featured an assortment of local luminaries, some of
them professional actors, some not. The former group included both
indie icons - e.g. Michael Emil,
Mark Boone Junior and
Rockets Redglare - and
'legit' stage and TV actors such as Hope Cameron
and Gary Swanson (both fellow Actor Studio
members); the latter, such miscellaneous notables as Fox TV
anchor/reporter Steve Powers,
musicians Roy Nathanson and
Nora York, and playwright
Christopher Durang. Of the remaining
bit players, at least two were Seacat students,
Phil Harper and
Emidio La Vella (the latter of whom
would be Seacat's first post-ITS coaching client in 1990). Moreover,
making his film debut here was Seacat's current husband,
Thurn Hoffman.
Notwithstanding numerous press references to Seacat's screen directing
debut, both before and after the film's release (almost all citing her
storied coaching career), Seacat herself maintained a
characteristically low profile throughout, surfacing only long enough
to contribute one sentence to an article on the film's producer,
Julian Schlossberg: "There
are two main things about Julian -- he has a big heart and he goes the
distance." Speaking of Schlossberg, co-star Elaine May got into the act
as well, providing her own characteristically tongue-in-cheek teaser, a
mock-interview with the producer on the making and marketing of ITS,
published in the New York Times just days before the film's release.
Regarding May, Liz Smith would report (circa December 1988, shortly
after the film had wrapped): "Recent remarks here about the genius that
is Elaine May brought forth the encouraging news that we'll soon see
this gifted actress in a new suspense movie written by her daughter
Jeannie Berlin (with co-writer
Laurie Jones). In the Spirit had
all its money raised independently by producers Julian Schlossberg and
Beverly Irby. They're now editing the film
and seeking a distributor for release next spring. The cast is a
staggering one -- Elaine and daughter, as well as Peter Falk, Melanie
Griffith, Marlo Thomas, Olympia Dukakis and
Louise Lasser. The director was an
interesting choice: Sandra Seacat, acting coach and guru to many
stars..."
In retrospect, given both the fact that Louise Lasser - barely visible
in the finished film and nowhere to be seen in its credits - was still
being announced as one of the film's featured players even after the
film had wrapped, and that the film itself would not make it to
theaters until more than a year past its estimated release date, one
becomes better prepared for the reality of ITS's narrative disarray - a
reality made obvious by the titles themselves in this broad sample of
reviews: "Grand and Goofy Comedy," "'In the Spirit' - An Endearing
Mess," "Screwball Comedy Holds Up Even When Plot Sags," "Spirit Loses
Its Comic Flair Halfway Through," "'Spirit' Amusing, But Unpolished,"
"'In the Spirit' Needs a Bit More Body," "'In The Spirit' Needs To Be
More Perky, Less Poky," and "A Few Screws Are Loose But 'In The Spirit'
Offers A Rare Glimpse Of Elaine May In A Feminist Comedy."
As one can see, critical reaction among the nation's dailies was mixed
at best. Two reactions were almost universal: appreciation for the
film's performances, especially those of the two leads, as well as
disdain for its technical shortcomings - seen primarily in the areas of
camera placement and pacing, as well as the aforementioned matter of
narrative construction. What distinguished the favorable from the
unfavorable review in these cases was largely a matter of emphasis.
Unfortunately for Seacat, when it came to evaluating her impact on the
finished film, the emphasis was placed almost exclusively on the
shortcomings. And while reviewers had, almost without exception, made
the obligatory mention of Seacat's storied coaching career, in
practice, it appears, few felt compelled to credit her with even
contributing to her actors' success.
Two of the more sympathetic reviews, by
Dave Kehr of the Chicago Tribune and
ex-Village Voice critic Carrie Rickey,
writing for the Philadelphia Inquirer, tended however to bypass both
Seacat and the film's screenwriter, Jeannie Berlin, and instead credit
Elaine May as the film's true auteur.
Two of the film's most merciless drubbings were administered,
respectively, by the Washington Times ("New Age 'Spirit' Gets Old and
Boring Quickly") and by the Chicago Sun-Times ("The Mystery of 'Spirit'
is Finding Film's Funny Parts"); however, given the film's target
audience (even the Los Angeles Daily News called it "a flat-out New
York comedy, with all of the pluses and minuses"), the most damaging
blow of all was almost certainly delivered by the New York Times'
Janet Maslin, with her considerably more
polite, yet thoroughly condescending dismissal:
"The beneficial power of crystals has done nothing for In the Spirit, a
nervous new-age comedy much more notable for good intentions than good
luck. A rare appearance by Elaine May, who co-stars with Marlo Thomas
in what proves to be an unexpectedly mundane caper story, and a
directing credit for the respected acting coach Sandra Seacat give In
the Spirit a lot more curiosity value than it would otherwise have...
Ms. Seacat's direction is especially strange, since it is so thoroughly
unaccommodating to the actors. The camera is treated as if it were
radioactive, never being allowed to linger where a performer might be
heard clearly or shown off to good advantage." Even the generally
lauded female leads do not escape unscathed: "The actors, especially
Ms. May and Ms. Thomas, spend a lot of time yammering simultaneously in
time-honored sitcom style."
If America's original paper of record had delivered one of Spirit's
most resounding pans, it would fall to the entertainment industry's
trade 'paper of record' to supply arguably its most simpatico critique
(though it did little to help the movie's less than middling box office
returns). Not merely echoing the critical consensus regarding Thomas'
and May's "memorable screen odd couple," Variety embraced the film
itself, portraying its limitations as strengths: "an unusual case of
big-name talent gathering with friends to make a low-budget pic freed
of mainstream good taste and gloss." While not oblivious of the film's
structural issues ("weakest element being a stupid framing device of a
mystical narrator... midway shift in tone may put off some viewers, but
others will likely relish the intensity of the May and Thomas
segment"), it was Variety, virtually alone among reviewers, that cited
Seacat for something beyond merely her ability to handle actors:
"First-time director Sandra Seacat emphasizes slapstick but also female
bonding as the gals on the lam reach beyond their wacky survivalist
tactics to address feminist issues."
After Seacat's extended directorial excursion, the transition back to
her customary regimen was eased considerably by the fact that the
clients for her next few coaching projects were all ITS cast members.
First, as previously mentioned, was Emidio La Vella in
Un metro all'alba (1990). Next
in line was Thomas herself, on
Held Hostage: The Sis and Jerry Levin Story (1991);
in addition, Seacat would work with Melanie Griffith on
Born Yesterday (1993), and with
Thomas again on Reunion (1994).
Back on the east coast, Seacat would join the faculty of the recently
formed Actors Studio Drama School at the New School for Social Research
in the fall of 1996.
Starting in 1999, Seacat embarked on an unprecedented binge of media
exposure, becoming the 'talking head' on three TV documentaries in the
space of two years, and, even more uncharacteristically, speaking at
length about three of her clients in the process. Despite this seeming
incongruity, given Seacat's customary regard for client confidentiality
(witness the Sandra Seacat entry at TakeHollywood.com), the fact is
that, whenever a given actor has had no qualms about revealing their
working relationship, or has already done so, Seacat has always been
happy to grant interviews on the subject, as she did at length in 1983
for New York Magazine's Mickey Rourke profile. Speaking of whom, Rourke
is the subject of the first of these three documentaries (as well as
one in 2008, in which Seacat also participated), followed,
respectively, by two very vocal Seacat champions, Laura Dern and
Jessica Lange.
Another Seacat outburst, addressed not merely to the press, but to one
of her longstanding client's potential employers, would occur in 2003,
part of an image makeover much like that of Seacat's oft-recounted
early success stories, Jessica Lange and Marlo Thomas, especially the
latter, another era's perpetually perky, seemingly ubiquitous paragon
of
'cute.' This time, however, instead of a sixties sitcom princess, it was the nineties romcom queen, Meg Ryan,
who was chomping at the bit for some more challenging roles. While
working with Seacat on her upcoming Jackie Kallen biopic,
Against the Ropes (2004), Ryan
saw the opportunity for an even more radical departure with
Nicole Kidman's early exit from
Jane Campion's
In the Cut (2003).
Interviewed shortly before the film's release, Campion recounted
Seacat's surprising phone intervention: "Sandra said, 'Look, I'm
working with Meg Ryan. I've never done this before, but she's doing
amazing work. You should audition her.' And I said, 'Audition Meg? Do
you think she'd audition?' She said, 'Sure, she would.'"
Ryan would indeed audition, and for helping Campion get beyond her
preconceptions, the grateful director likened Seacat to "a fairy
godmother who takes the mists away." As it happens, Campion's
preconceptions were not unlike those of the many reviewers who would
find Ryan's performance a revelation, as well as the most interesting
and accomplished element within a not so successful film. Speaking for
public consumption, Seacat reiterated: "Meg has great courage and
discipline and commitment. Her talent is large, and her potential is
vast."
The following year, speaking with Newsday on the set of
We Don't Live Here Anymore (2004),
exactly one week after the film's co-star, Laura Dern, had expanded
upon her own 2001 tribute to Seacat, her longtime teacher returned the
favor: "'Laura is a free spirit,' says Sandra Seacat, the celebrated
acting coach and a longtime associate of Dern's.
'She's also a great student and a dedicated artist - and there aren't very many people I call artists. But the entire cast of this film [including also Mark Ruffalo,
Naomi Watts, and
Peter Krause], they're all true
artists, dedicated to their own inner truth, and they have the courage
to share that. You don't find that very often.'"
As the decade wore on, perhaps fueled by dream work's increasing
popularity, Seacat's name began to be seen in print more frequently,
some of the mentions dreamwork-related, others - like those by Dern,
Marlo Thomas, or Mickey Rourke - simply satisfied customers reaffirming
their indebtedness.
Speaking with Back Stage in 2010, acting teacher
Alex Cole Taylor called Seacat "a
beautiful woman and a beautiful artist'," as well as the primary model
for Taylor's compassionate and nurturing stance towards his own
students. Speaking with CNN in 2012, acting coach and dream work
practitioner Elizabeth Kemp paired Seacat with Lee Strasberg as two of
the teachers to whom she was most deeply indebted. Moreover, two of
Seacat's students, actor/directors Jamie Wollrab and John Markland,
have each been putting Seacat's teachings into practice, one play at a
time - Wollrab, with his Triptych Theatre; Markland, with the Moth
Theatre Company, itself composed largely, if not entirely, of fellow
Seacat alumni (including Scoot McNairy,
Pamela Guest,
Dov Tiefenbach,
Anna Rose Hopkins, and
Kris Lemche), recently incorporating Wollrab
as well. The latter's words -- quoted in
Steve Julian's 2010 Moth Theatre profile --
echo those of his mentor, just one year before: "'More than anything,'
Wollrab says, 'we're wounded healers. Each of us. I think that's why
audiences keep taking to our work.' Work he describes as fragile and
beautiful."
As it happens, Wollrab had hitherto collaborated with his teacher on
just such work, when, in August 2007, more than four decades and a
quarter of a century, respectively, after Seacat's previous notable
forays into directing, she would oversee Wollrab's direction of
Elizabeth Meriwether's play, "The
Mistakes Madeline Made," staged at Boulder, Colorado's Dairy Center for
the Arts.
As in her previous directorial assignments, Seacat was again
supervising a number of current and/or former students, including,
along with the director, her daughter Greta Seacat,
Justin Chatwin,
Shannon Woodward, and the late
Johnny Lewis. The younger Ms.
Seacat's performance garnered particularly favorable notices, dubbed
"steady and grounded" by Mark Collins of the Boulder Daily Camera, and
"a marvel" by Lisa Bornstein of the Rocky Mountain News: "Simplistic
(she frequently shuts her laptop to avoid news of Iraq) and
authoritarian, but awkwardly kind as well, Beth is annoying, but she
knows it; in Seacat's hands, she's funny and real."
Regarding Seacat Sr., one happy addendum: roughly coinciding with the
millennial media spike in Seacat sightings was a corresponding increase
in the size and substance of her film roles. Seacat's screen resumé had
long seemed little more than a collection of discreetly camouflaged
acting coach credits, typically a small part contained in one or two
scenes within a film which itself featured one or more of Seacat's
coaching clients - well-acted, in and of itself, but, as conceived,
simply too perfunctory and/or peripheral to the film's narrative to
register strongly. (For a perfect case in point, witness Seacat's
5½-minute one-and-done appearance in
The Golden Seal (1983) with Steve
Railsback, starting at the '01:23:14 remaining' mark; IMDb provides
free access to the film in its entirety.)
This began to change in 1999 with a series of three consecutive films,
each one featuring Seacat as the protagonist's mother. In the first
two, Crazy in Alabama (1999) and
Daddy and Them (2001) (portraying,
respectively,
'Crazy' Melanie Griffith's concerned mom, and 'Daddy' Andy Griffith's
oft seen, but rarely heard wife), the upgrades were subtle, to be sure;
nonetheless, Seacat was onscreen far more - and at more crucial points
in the narrative - than in any of her previous films.
It was 2003, however, that brought the most dramatic change, not just
from a subsidiary to a starring role, but from the almost mute
matriarch of D&T's constantly bickering clan (blocking out the most
intense or awkward moments with her trusty Macarena monkey) to the
vigorously - and vocally - proactive 'normalizer' of the equally - if
less loudly - dysfunctional family in
A Little Crazy (2003).
Co-starring Seacat students Jack Kerrigan,
Kim Gillingham, and Kirk Baltz, "A Little
Crazy" debuted at the 2003 Method Fest, earning Kerrigan a nomination
for the festival's John Garfield Award, and, for the film itself, a
rave review from Variety's Robert Koehler, praising, in particular,
"the superb Seacat," as the "overreaching but never strident" matriarch
of the film's "unhinged American family." Sadly, despite the review and
subsequent awards from the Berkeley Video & Film Festival, the
Hollywood MiniDV Festival, and the Los Angeles Silver Lake Film
Festival, the independently produced film found neither a theatrical
nor a DVD release (though it has, as of 2010, become available online
via IndieFlix); as a result, what is almost certainly Seacat's most
sizable and fleshed-out film performance to date has gone largely
unseen.
Her next assignment, another independently made feature that would not
see a theatrical release (again co-starring Kim Gillingham),
In the Land of Milk and Money (2004),
features Seacat in a much smaller role, but again a pivotal one, in a
film which, none too skillfully, harkens back to the cautionary sci-fi
tales of the fifties, as well as the neo-zombie variations of the
seventies and beyond, in its tale of genetically modified cow's milk
generating an epidemic of mothers killing their offspring. As one of
the affected mothers, Seacat, in a handful of scenes, with a minimum of
screen time and dialogue, gives an acting clinic, shifting from
unreadable rage to transparent delight, from grief-stricken,
guilt-ridden parent to righteous avenger.
Seacat's next few post-millennial assignments included a number of
independently made films that remain, for better or worse, even harder
to get a hold of than the previous two. More recently, however, have
come brief but high-impact performances in a pair of relatively
high-profile projects, HBO's
You Don't Know Jack (2010),
starring Al Pacino as Jack Kevorkian, aka
'Dr. Death' (and featuring Seacat as his first 'patient,' the Alzheimers-afflicted Janet Adkins), as well as actor Mark Ruffalo's
feature film directing debut,
Sympathy for Delicious (2010),
wherein Seacat has an even smaller, but equally pivotal, role.
The former, in particular, caught the eye of Columbia University MFA
candidate Jed Cowley in the fall of 2011,
then casting his thesis film, a short subject set - and shot - in a
shale pit in the filmmaker's home town of Medford, Oregon. As he would
later recall, it took no more than one viewing of Seacat's brief but
telling appearance in the Kevorkian biopic before Cowley and his
producer "knew she should be Sheila,"
Shale (2012)'s long-suffering but "newly
empowered" protagonist, the "once dutiful wife" now confronting her
intractable ex-spouse against the shale pit's stark backdrop.
With Seacat in attendance, "Shale" had its premiere on May 5, 2012, at
Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater, as part of the Columbia
University Film Festival, where the film would earn the IFC Audience
Choice Award. The film is also an official selection at the 2013
Slamdance Festival in Park City, Utah, screening with the
South-African-set feature, Fynbos (2012),
on Friday, January 18th, at 7 PM, and again on Tuesday the 22nd, at 12
noon.
As already mentioned, Seacat also appeared recently in the first two
episodes of Laura Dern's HBO series "Enlightened," as well as the
feature film,
The Time Being (2012),
representing the directing and screenwriting debuts, respectively, of
Nenad Cicin-Sain and producer
Richard N. Gladstein.
Seacat's next scheduled appearance is in
Gia Coppola's feature film directing debut,
still in pre-production, entitled
Palo Alto (2013), based on short
stories by James Franco.
In the meantime, Seacat has not neglected her educational mission; in
fact, while remaining active on both coasts, she also recently made
inroads into the heartland, when, on March 8, 2012, together with
longtime friend and colleague, Robert Walden, and several others, she
became a founding faculty member of the newly instituted Winthrop
Rockefeller Institute Film Forum, a three-day, multi-disciplinary
seminar to be hosted annually by the University of Arkansas.
sought-after and influential acting teachers/coaches. A method-based
actor and teacher, closely associated with the Method's originator, her
mentor Lee Strasberg, Seacat gradually
became recognized as well for her groundbreaking work in the early
eighties involving the application of
Carl Gustav Jung's theories to acting
technique and pedagogy, thus introducing the practice now known as
dream work (also known as "The Way," much as Strasberg's
Stanislavski-based system eventually came to be known as "The Method").
Born on October 2, 1936, Sandra Diane Seacat (whose first name, despite
the spelling, is pronounced somewhere between 'Sondra' and 'Saundra')
was the first of three daughters born to Lois Marion Seacat (née
Cronic) and Russell Henry Seacat of Greensburg, Kansas.
After attending Northwestern University, Seacat made her way to New
York, eventually being admitted to The Actors Studio, where she would
become well versed in the method school of acting espoused by the
Studio's director, Lee Strasberg. During the 1960s, Seacat began to get
acting work in the city, appearing under her married name, Sandra
Kaufman. In 1962, she earned plaudits from Village Voice critic Jerry
Tallmer, making her New York stage debut in the American premiere of
Leonid Andreyev's "Waltz of the Dogs,"
an Off-Off-Broadway production mounted by noted acting teacher - and
Actors Studio member -
Michael Howard.
While the next two years would be taken up with the birth and early
rearing of her daughter Greta B. Kaufman (eventually also known as
Greta Seacat), she returned to action in
1964 on Broadway with a small role in the Actors Studio production of
Anton Chekhov's "Three Sisters," starring
Kim Stanley,
Geraldine Page, and
Shirley Knight (though neither
she nor Knight would appear in the version eventually preserved on
videotape).
For the remainder of the decade, as she continued to hone her craft at
the Studio, doing scene work with future stage co-stars
Ben Piazza and
Will Hare, as well as
Robert Walden and
Robert Viharo, each of whom would remain
longtime friends, Seacat (aka Kaufman) quickly became one of
Strasberg's prize pupils, and one of the Method's most articulate
exponents. Thus, at just about the time her first marriage was coming
to an end, a new career path beckoned, when, in 1969, the Lee Strasberg
Theatre Institute was born.
By the early 1970s, Seacat was leading classes, not only at the
Institute, but also at the City College of New York's Leonard Davis
Center for the Performing Arts, as well as teaching privately. By 1980,
she would also teach at John Strasberg's
The Real Stage.
In the meantime, though, both Seacat's acting career - which, from this
point forward, along with all other facets of her career, would be
conducted under her maiden name - and her matrimonial status (in
conjunction with fellow actor
Michael Ebert) showed renewed
signs of life, as the couple appeared together in a 1969 production of
Brendan Behan's
'The Hostage," followed by the New Orleans Repertory Theater's June 1970 revival of Tennessee Williams'
"A Streetcar Named Desire," directed by
June Havoc, featuring Ebert as Harold "Mitch"
Mitchell and E. Katherine Kerr as
Blanche DuBois, as well as Seacat and Ben Piazza, respectively, as
Stella and Stanley Kowalski.
Returning to New York, Seacat began to build her teaching practice.
Among her early students were
Treat Williams and
Steve Railsback (the latter preparing
for his film debut in Elia Kazan's
The Visitors (1972)), and later,
Lance Henriksen,
Jessica Lange, and
Mickey Rourke. Rourke would study with
Seacat for several years in New York before departing for the west
coast, and then, only at his mentor's behest.
Rourke has repeatedly cited his time with Seacat as the turning point
in his career. "That's when everything started to click," he told
Newsday in 1984, making a point - as he had in a New York Magazine
profile the previous year - to contrast this with his disappointing
Actors Studio stint ("I sat there a year, waiting for the teacup to
develop in my hand"), saying of the Studio's director, "All I saw Lee
do was tear people down." By contrast, speaking with the Los Angeles
Times in 1984, Rourke credited Seacat with "channeling all it was that
was messing me up into something creative and challenging."
Moreover, notwithstanding his subsequent disillusionment with the
Studio, it was Seacat's counsel (as Rourke himself has mentioned more
than once) - i.e. that, in order to bring some semblance of conviction
to the scene Rourkee himself had chosen for his Actors Studio audition,
he must immediately find his biological father (whom he hadn't seen in
20 years) - that enabled Rourke to realize his dream of membership in
the alma mater of Brando, Clift and Dean. During Rourke's 2009
appearance on
Inside the Actors Studio (1994),
after describing his first affective memory, executed under Seacat's
guidance more than thirty years before, the 56-year-old Rourke was
asked whether he still used what Seacat had taught him. "Very much," he
replied. (13 years earlier, a previous generation of ITAS viewers had
witnessed Jessica Lange call Seacat "a powerful influence on my
acting," and two years before that, Lance Henriksen had offered Film
Comment readers an unsolicited 20-year-old recollection of "a great
teacher named Sandra Seacat.")
During the 1970s, Seacat continued to juggle her teaching and acting
careers, portraying the female leads in a number of Off and
Off-Off-Broadway productions, as well as minor roles in three Broadway
and Off Broadway shows, receiving particularly favorable notices in the
1973 revival of William Inge's "Natural
Affection," co-starring Nathan George, and
the American premiere of
John Hopkins's "Economic Necessity"
in 1976. Halfway between the two came a much-anticipated but ultimately
disappointing Actors Studio revival of
Harold Pinter's "Old Times." Presented in
the fall of 1974 (and followed by a particularly disastrous January
1975 Actors Studio West reprise) with the nominal participation of
'supervising director' Arthur Penn,
the production was, in essence, self-directed by its three actors,
Seacat, Hildy Brooks, and Will Hare, a fact
much lamented by reviewers.
In February 1975, upon Seacat's less than triumphant return to New York
following the "Old Times" debacle, Seacat's CCNY employment afforded
her a welcome distraction, in the form of an upcoming four-day, Davis
Center event featuring playwrights
Peter Shaffer,
Edward Albee and
Arthur Miller, moderated by
director Alan Schneider. Starting
on May 12 with a symposium entitled "Theatre in the University," and
concluding with one day apiece devoted to the works of each of the
three guests, with student performances followed by discussions with
the respective playwrights, the final day would be devoted to Arthur
Miller's work, with each grade level in the Davis Center's acting
program performing a scene from a different Miller opus.
The play assigned to Seacat's freshman class was "A View from the
Bridge." After choosing as their showcase the final scene from Act One,
she cast four of her regular students, but reserved the central role of
Eddie Carbone for one of her private students who had just started
auditing the class. And thus did Seacat, in this somewhat obscure
setting, come to direct the stage debut of the as-yet unknown Mickey
Rourke.
Starting in 1978 (after minor roles in two TV specials, NBC's
Bicentennial tribute,
First Ladies Diaries: Edith Wilson (1976),
and Hallmark Hall of Fame's premiere presentation of Arthur Miller's
Fame (1978), Seacat's stage career
concluded on a decidedly anticlimactic note: a pair of smaller roles,
albeit within the context of two somewhat notable productions - one
being the first work to be staged in the new
Harold Clurman Theatre, Eugene
Ionesco''s "The Lesson;" the other, a rare directorial credit for Ellen Burstyn,
in the 1979 Actors Studio production of
Norman Krasna's rarely revived "Bunny."
In fact, 1978 provided a number of punctuation points for Seacat. Early
that year, two significant eras had come to an end - first, on January
26, the end of her marriage to Michael Ebert, and next, just two days
later, the death of her father, Russell. This was also the year Seacat
persuaded her prize pupil Rourke that there was nothing further to be
gained by staying in New York, that it was time to go west and test his
fortunes in Hollywood.
Certainly, given her circumstances at that moment, one could see such
advice applying equally to Seacat herself, and, indeed, by the early
1980s, Seacat had expanded her base of operations, teaching in both New
York and Los Angeles (as she has continued to do ever since), helping
actors like Lange, Rachel Ward, and
Marlo Thomas give career-changing
performances. On March 29, 1983, just weeks after the announcement of
Lange's dual Oscar nominations, Seacat was acknowledged by the
Associated Press as the one who "helped turn Jessica Lange from King
Kong's consort into the soulful actress in
Frances (1982) and
Tootsie (1982)." A few years later,
Liz Smith would acknowledge Seacat
for "helping Jessica Lange to her Oscar and Marlo Thomas to her Emmy."
Lange herself later told both James Lipton
and Vanity Fair just how pivotal Seacat's contribution had been, both
for her career in general and, in particular, her portrayal of
Frances Farmer.
Regarding the latter, and the intensive nature of that collaboration,
J.T. Jeffries writes in his 1986 biography of Lange: "In the spring of
1981, while still breast-feeding her newborn daughter by Baryshnikov,
she worked on each scene with her coach, Sandra Seacat... Seacat had
expanded her theatrical repertoire in recent years to include
techniques from Eastern meditation. Lange regularly used those deep
relaxation techniques on the set to improve her concentration in the
grueling role." (For screen novice Baryshnikov, the Seacat connection -
and those relaxation techniques in particular - would prove a welcome
legacy of his relationship with Lange, long since ended by 1985, when
the legendary dancer was coached by Seacat on the set of
White Nights (1985).)
Regarding the Emmy-winning performance that would help transform the
image of Marlo Thomas (at least within the industry), from the
indefatigable, relentlessly upbeat protagonist of
That Girl (1966) to an actor who
could take on any role and be taken seriously doing it, Thomas writes
in her 2010 autobiography: "I only wish Lee [Strasberg] could have
lived to see me portray a schizophrenic in
Nobody's Child (1986). I
never could have gotten near playing that kind of part without Lee's
exercises, and the subsequent work I did and continue to do with his
primary disciple, the brilliant Sandra Seacat."
Of the three career turning points mentioned above, Rachel Ward's
transformation - culminating in her Golden Globe-nominated lead
performance in
The Thorn Birds (1983) -
stands out. In the fall of 1982 and continuing on through the following
winter, even as Lange's two Oscar-nominated performances were receiving
applause, acclaim, and, eventually, awards, the then inexperienced Ward
was undergoing a rigorous makeover program under Seacat's guidance. But
simply in order to get to that point, Ward first had to get the part.
As the Associated Press reports: "Ward's first reading before producers
David L. Wolper and
Stan Margulies was disastrous. So she
hired drama coach Sondra [sic] Seacat." "I studied exhaustively for two
weeks," recalled Ward, "went back and did a screen test with Richard."
According to Margulies, Ward's second reading "was so breathtaking that
she got the part right there. But our questions were whether she could
do it over the five-month shooting period."
Seacat had no problem answering those questions, but her prescription
was radical, and required Ward's active participation and unwavering
commitment. To her credit, Ward did not disappoint; under Seacat's
direction, she gave up cigarettes and meat, started a daily exercise
regimen, and - utilizing those same meditation techniques used by Lange
to such great effect just months before - learned to calm her mind and
focus on the task at hand. "You can almost see her develop as an
actress in 'Thorn Birds,'" reported the Chicago Tribune. "By the
finish, her Meggie is much stronger, more worldly, compassionate. The
changes were in character, but they were taking place in Ward too.
Thanks, in large part, to Seacat."
"She's extraordinary," Ward said of her new mentor. "She made me work
in a totally different way than I'd ever worked before. For the first
time, I really worked on technique... It was definitely not an easy
five months. It was a lot of tying things together and understanding
and confusion and frustration and anger. I asked a lot of questions
about acting and about me and stuff, and Sandra just had these answers,
and they were just like, of course, oh my God, of course!"
It was during this same period, as reported by The New York Times more
than 25 years later, that Seacat's Jung-inspired experiments ushered in
the now widespread practice known as dream work, wherein actors
interpret and sometimes influence their own dreams, often casting and
staging those dreams in the process, all in the interests of achieving
the richest, most genuine characterization possible. A number of the
younger dream work practitioners, such as
Elizabeth Kemp,
Kim Gillingham,
Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, and
actor/directors John Markland and
Jamie Wollrab, as well as Sandra's
daughter and fellow acting coach, Greta, all claim Seacat as their
mentor. Moreover, longtime Seacat clients
Melanie Griffith and
Gina Gershon, as well as onetime student,
Diane Salinger, have long been on record
regarding the impact this innovation has had on their own careers.
"In Sandra's class," recalled Salinger in 1987, "we had dream
assignments where, before you went to sleep, you'd write out an
assignment to yourself, and dream dreams that had connections to the
work you were doing. I've done that with this play." "It's a great way
to open yourself up," insisted Griffith in a 1986 interview. "It's been
very healthy for me, because I think our interior soul knows a lot more
about ourselves than our conscious intellect ever allows you to think
about." More recently, Hélène Cardona, a
Paris-born poet, translator and actor who studied at the American
Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Actors Studio in the early 1990s,
recalled: "When I trained with Sandra Seacat at the Actors Studio in
New York, she introduced me to a particular form of dream work. You
could call it Jungian. I have kept doing this work for many years now.
It's very therapeutic, a more holistic approach to [sic] medicine. And
it can also be used to develop a character in a play or movie. You dig
into yourself to find the answers. In the dream you are connected to
your inner self and to the divine."
Gershon is particularly passionate on the subject, speaking in a 1998
interview: "Sandra totally changed my acting. Instinctively, I was
always in love with psychology and my dream life had always been very
important to me... What's really exciting to me about Sandra's work is
that it changes your life, almost on a psychic level. Now I'll get
parts and in working on them, she'll say, 'Well, let's see how you're
developing, as a human being.' Because the parts you're doing, it's no
accident. Those parts affect your life and they kind of illustrate the
map that your life is following." As recently as August 26, 2012,
speaking with The Lab Magazine, Gershon reaffirmed the importance of
Seacat and dream work to her career.
In a 2001 interview with Back Stage West, another longtime Seacat
client of mid-eighties vintage, Laura Dern,
went public. While not specifically referencing dream work, Dern echoes
both Gershon, Cardona and Rachel Ward in her portrayal of Seacat's
holistic, almost therapeutic approach, a characteristic previously
noted in 1994 by erstwhile Wonder Woman,
Lynda Carter ("better than any therapist,"
Carter told USA Today, regarding the time spent studying with Seacat:
"you strip yourself of ego, and the whole experience unearths all your
analytical feelings and self-discovery"), and one which brings to mind
another Jungian archetype central to Seacat's career from at least the
1980s onward; as Seacat would tell the New York Times in 2009, "I
believe that the artist is a wounded healer, that they are healing
wounds of their own, and when they do that truthfully, they heal the
audience." Dern recalled:
"Through studying and through being raised on movie sets, I was
surrounded by a lot of people who believed that the more tortured the
person, the greater the artist. I always had a hard time understanding
that, but thought, 'I guess that's the way it is'... Luckily through
life and the gift of the acting teacher who's changed my life in so
many ways since 1984 (her name is Sandra Seacat), I learned there's
another opinion, which is: the better the person, the better the
artist. The more true you are to who you are and the more honest you
are as an individual, the more honest you can be as an actor, and I'm
really liking that." Asked if she still studied, Dern replied, "I still
study with Sandra and I love studying."
Speaking again with BSW in 2004, Dern elaborated: "All of a sudden,
this new idea that the parts I play help me discover myself and I could
maybe be kinder to the ambiguous places and the flaws - I was so lifted
by that. Since then, I feel like it's an extraordinary experience of
therapy and learning about being in the moment and honoring that. All
of a sudden, acting wasn't this torment where you're supposed to be a
screwed-up artist, but it's an opportunity for self-growth. And I think
I've had fun ever since." Finally, in January 2012, at the
[error],
Dern reaffirmed the connection, thanking Seacat in her acceptance
speech for Best Actress in HBO's
Enlightened (2011), the first two
episodes of which had each featured Seacat in a small role.
In 1988, with her dream work innovations now well underway, and some
well-publicized individual success stories under her belt, a unique
opportunity came Seacat's way - that being the chance to direct a
feature film. This would eventually become
In the Spirit (1990), the first,
and as yet, only film Seacat has directed, "a low-budget pic," as
Variety would note, featuring "big-name talent."
The over-qualified/underpaid cast included no less than three of
Seacat's regular clients, Marlo Thomas, Melanie Griffith and
Peter Falk, as well as
Olympia Dukakis at the height of her
popularity, having just collected her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for
Moonstruck (1987). Arguably the film's
casting coup, however (and probably the positive element most
frequently cited by reviewers), was landing the celebrated
writer/performer Elaine May to
co-star opposite Thomas (with May's daughter,
Jeannie Berlin, who co-authored the
screenplay, also appearing).
Very much a homegrown New York product (a passing reference to
The Robin Byrd Show (1977)
being just one of several inside jokes contained therein), the
supporting cast featured an assortment of local luminaries, some of
them professional actors, some not. The former group included both
indie icons - e.g. Michael Emil,
Mark Boone Junior and
Rockets Redglare - and
'legit' stage and TV actors such as Hope Cameron
and Gary Swanson (both fellow Actor Studio
members); the latter, such miscellaneous notables as Fox TV
anchor/reporter Steve Powers,
musicians Roy Nathanson and
Nora York, and playwright
Christopher Durang. Of the remaining
bit players, at least two were Seacat students,
Phil Harper and
Emidio La Vella (the latter of whom
would be Seacat's first post-ITS coaching client in 1990). Moreover,
making his film debut here was Seacat's current husband,
Thurn Hoffman.
Notwithstanding numerous press references to Seacat's screen directing
debut, both before and after the film's release (almost all citing her
storied coaching career), Seacat herself maintained a
characteristically low profile throughout, surfacing only long enough
to contribute one sentence to an article on the film's producer,
Julian Schlossberg: "There
are two main things about Julian -- he has a big heart and he goes the
distance." Speaking of Schlossberg, co-star Elaine May got into the act
as well, providing her own characteristically tongue-in-cheek teaser, a
mock-interview with the producer on the making and marketing of ITS,
published in the New York Times just days before the film's release.
Regarding May, Liz Smith would report (circa December 1988, shortly
after the film had wrapped): "Recent remarks here about the genius that
is Elaine May brought forth the encouraging news that we'll soon see
this gifted actress in a new suspense movie written by her daughter
Jeannie Berlin (with co-writer
Laurie Jones). In the Spirit had
all its money raised independently by producers Julian Schlossberg and
Beverly Irby. They're now editing the film
and seeking a distributor for release next spring. The cast is a
staggering one -- Elaine and daughter, as well as Peter Falk, Melanie
Griffith, Marlo Thomas, Olympia Dukakis and
Louise Lasser. The director was an
interesting choice: Sandra Seacat, acting coach and guru to many
stars..."
In retrospect, given both the fact that Louise Lasser - barely visible
in the finished film and nowhere to be seen in its credits - was still
being announced as one of the film's featured players even after the
film had wrapped, and that the film itself would not make it to
theaters until more than a year past its estimated release date, one
becomes better prepared for the reality of ITS's narrative disarray - a
reality made obvious by the titles themselves in this broad sample of
reviews: "Grand and Goofy Comedy," "'In the Spirit' - An Endearing
Mess," "Screwball Comedy Holds Up Even When Plot Sags," "Spirit Loses
Its Comic Flair Halfway Through," "'Spirit' Amusing, But Unpolished,"
"'In the Spirit' Needs a Bit More Body," "'In The Spirit' Needs To Be
More Perky, Less Poky," and "A Few Screws Are Loose But 'In The Spirit'
Offers A Rare Glimpse Of Elaine May In A Feminist Comedy."
As one can see, critical reaction among the nation's dailies was mixed
at best. Two reactions were almost universal: appreciation for the
film's performances, especially those of the two leads, as well as
disdain for its technical shortcomings - seen primarily in the areas of
camera placement and pacing, as well as the aforementioned matter of
narrative construction. What distinguished the favorable from the
unfavorable review in these cases was largely a matter of emphasis.
Unfortunately for Seacat, when it came to evaluating her impact on the
finished film, the emphasis was placed almost exclusively on the
shortcomings. And while reviewers had, almost without exception, made
the obligatory mention of Seacat's storied coaching career, in
practice, it appears, few felt compelled to credit her with even
contributing to her actors' success.
Two of the more sympathetic reviews, by
Dave Kehr of the Chicago Tribune and
ex-Village Voice critic Carrie Rickey,
writing for the Philadelphia Inquirer, tended however to bypass both
Seacat and the film's screenwriter, Jeannie Berlin, and instead credit
Elaine May as the film's true auteur.
Two of the film's most merciless drubbings were administered,
respectively, by the Washington Times ("New Age 'Spirit' Gets Old and
Boring Quickly") and by the Chicago Sun-Times ("The Mystery of 'Spirit'
is Finding Film's Funny Parts"); however, given the film's target
audience (even the Los Angeles Daily News called it "a flat-out New
York comedy, with all of the pluses and minuses"), the most damaging
blow of all was almost certainly delivered by the New York Times'
Janet Maslin, with her considerably more
polite, yet thoroughly condescending dismissal:
"The beneficial power of crystals has done nothing for In the Spirit, a
nervous new-age comedy much more notable for good intentions than good
luck. A rare appearance by Elaine May, who co-stars with Marlo Thomas
in what proves to be an unexpectedly mundane caper story, and a
directing credit for the respected acting coach Sandra Seacat give In
the Spirit a lot more curiosity value than it would otherwise have...
Ms. Seacat's direction is especially strange, since it is so thoroughly
unaccommodating to the actors. The camera is treated as if it were
radioactive, never being allowed to linger where a performer might be
heard clearly or shown off to good advantage." Even the generally
lauded female leads do not escape unscathed: "The actors, especially
Ms. May and Ms. Thomas, spend a lot of time yammering simultaneously in
time-honored sitcom style."
If America's original paper of record had delivered one of Spirit's
most resounding pans, it would fall to the entertainment industry's
trade 'paper of record' to supply arguably its most simpatico critique
(though it did little to help the movie's less than middling box office
returns). Not merely echoing the critical consensus regarding Thomas'
and May's "memorable screen odd couple," Variety embraced the film
itself, portraying its limitations as strengths: "an unusual case of
big-name talent gathering with friends to make a low-budget pic freed
of mainstream good taste and gloss." While not oblivious of the film's
structural issues ("weakest element being a stupid framing device of a
mystical narrator... midway shift in tone may put off some viewers, but
others will likely relish the intensity of the May and Thomas
segment"), it was Variety, virtually alone among reviewers, that cited
Seacat for something beyond merely her ability to handle actors:
"First-time director Sandra Seacat emphasizes slapstick but also female
bonding as the gals on the lam reach beyond their wacky survivalist
tactics to address feminist issues."
After Seacat's extended directorial excursion, the transition back to
her customary regimen was eased considerably by the fact that the
clients for her next few coaching projects were all ITS cast members.
First, as previously mentioned, was Emidio La Vella in
Un metro all'alba (1990). Next
in line was Thomas herself, on
Held Hostage: The Sis and Jerry Levin Story (1991);
in addition, Seacat would work with Melanie Griffith on
Born Yesterday (1993), and with
Thomas again on Reunion (1994).
Back on the east coast, Seacat would join the faculty of the recently
formed Actors Studio Drama School at the New School for Social Research
in the fall of 1996.
Starting in 1999, Seacat embarked on an unprecedented binge of media
exposure, becoming the 'talking head' on three TV documentaries in the
space of two years, and, even more uncharacteristically, speaking at
length about three of her clients in the process. Despite this seeming
incongruity, given Seacat's customary regard for client confidentiality
(witness the Sandra Seacat entry at TakeHollywood.com), the fact is
that, whenever a given actor has had no qualms about revealing their
working relationship, or has already done so, Seacat has always been
happy to grant interviews on the subject, as she did at length in 1983
for New York Magazine's Mickey Rourke profile. Speaking of whom, Rourke
is the subject of the first of these three documentaries (as well as
one in 2008, in which Seacat also participated), followed,
respectively, by two very vocal Seacat champions, Laura Dern and
Jessica Lange.
Another Seacat outburst, addressed not merely to the press, but to one
of her longstanding client's potential employers, would occur in 2003,
part of an image makeover much like that of Seacat's oft-recounted
early success stories, Jessica Lange and Marlo Thomas, especially the
latter, another era's perpetually perky, seemingly ubiquitous paragon
of
'cute.' This time, however, instead of a sixties sitcom princess, it was the nineties romcom queen, Meg Ryan,
who was chomping at the bit for some more challenging roles. While
working with Seacat on her upcoming Jackie Kallen biopic,
Against the Ropes (2004), Ryan
saw the opportunity for an even more radical departure with
Nicole Kidman's early exit from
Jane Campion's
In the Cut (2003).
Interviewed shortly before the film's release, Campion recounted
Seacat's surprising phone intervention: "Sandra said, 'Look, I'm
working with Meg Ryan. I've never done this before, but she's doing
amazing work. You should audition her.' And I said, 'Audition Meg? Do
you think she'd audition?' She said, 'Sure, she would.'"
Ryan would indeed audition, and for helping Campion get beyond her
preconceptions, the grateful director likened Seacat to "a fairy
godmother who takes the mists away." As it happens, Campion's
preconceptions were not unlike those of the many reviewers who would
find Ryan's performance a revelation, as well as the most interesting
and accomplished element within a not so successful film. Speaking for
public consumption, Seacat reiterated: "Meg has great courage and
discipline and commitment. Her talent is large, and her potential is
vast."
The following year, speaking with Newsday on the set of
We Don't Live Here Anymore (2004),
exactly one week after the film's co-star, Laura Dern, had expanded
upon her own 2001 tribute to Seacat, her longtime teacher returned the
favor: "'Laura is a free spirit,' says Sandra Seacat, the celebrated
acting coach and a longtime associate of Dern's.
'She's also a great student and a dedicated artist - and there aren't very many people I call artists. But the entire cast of this film [including also Mark Ruffalo,
Naomi Watts, and
Peter Krause], they're all true
artists, dedicated to their own inner truth, and they have the courage
to share that. You don't find that very often.'"
As the decade wore on, perhaps fueled by dream work's increasing
popularity, Seacat's name began to be seen in print more frequently,
some of the mentions dreamwork-related, others - like those by Dern,
Marlo Thomas, or Mickey Rourke - simply satisfied customers reaffirming
their indebtedness.
Speaking with Back Stage in 2010, acting teacher
Alex Cole Taylor called Seacat "a
beautiful woman and a beautiful artist'," as well as the primary model
for Taylor's compassionate and nurturing stance towards his own
students. Speaking with CNN in 2012, acting coach and dream work
practitioner Elizabeth Kemp paired Seacat with Lee Strasberg as two of
the teachers to whom she was most deeply indebted. Moreover, two of
Seacat's students, actor/directors Jamie Wollrab and John Markland,
have each been putting Seacat's teachings into practice, one play at a
time - Wollrab, with his Triptych Theatre; Markland, with the Moth
Theatre Company, itself composed largely, if not entirely, of fellow
Seacat alumni (including Scoot McNairy,
Pamela Guest,
Dov Tiefenbach,
Anna Rose Hopkins, and
Kris Lemche), recently incorporating Wollrab
as well. The latter's words -- quoted in
Steve Julian's 2010 Moth Theatre profile --
echo those of his mentor, just one year before: "'More than anything,'
Wollrab says, 'we're wounded healers. Each of us. I think that's why
audiences keep taking to our work.' Work he describes as fragile and
beautiful."
As it happens, Wollrab had hitherto collaborated with his teacher on
just such work, when, in August 2007, more than four decades and a
quarter of a century, respectively, after Seacat's previous notable
forays into directing, she would oversee Wollrab's direction of
Elizabeth Meriwether's play, "The
Mistakes Madeline Made," staged at Boulder, Colorado's Dairy Center for
the Arts.
As in her previous directorial assignments, Seacat was again
supervising a number of current and/or former students, including,
along with the director, her daughter Greta Seacat,
Justin Chatwin,
Shannon Woodward, and the late
Johnny Lewis. The younger Ms.
Seacat's performance garnered particularly favorable notices, dubbed
"steady and grounded" by Mark Collins of the Boulder Daily Camera, and
"a marvel" by Lisa Bornstein of the Rocky Mountain News: "Simplistic
(she frequently shuts her laptop to avoid news of Iraq) and
authoritarian, but awkwardly kind as well, Beth is annoying, but she
knows it; in Seacat's hands, she's funny and real."
Regarding Seacat Sr., one happy addendum: roughly coinciding with the
millennial media spike in Seacat sightings was a corresponding increase
in the size and substance of her film roles. Seacat's screen resumé had
long seemed little more than a collection of discreetly camouflaged
acting coach credits, typically a small part contained in one or two
scenes within a film which itself featured one or more of Seacat's
coaching clients - well-acted, in and of itself, but, as conceived,
simply too perfunctory and/or peripheral to the film's narrative to
register strongly. (For a perfect case in point, witness Seacat's
5½-minute one-and-done appearance in
The Golden Seal (1983) with Steve
Railsback, starting at the '01:23:14 remaining' mark; IMDb provides
free access to the film in its entirety.)
This began to change in 1999 with a series of three consecutive films,
each one featuring Seacat as the protagonist's mother. In the first
two, Crazy in Alabama (1999) and
Daddy and Them (2001) (portraying,
respectively,
'Crazy' Melanie Griffith's concerned mom, and 'Daddy' Andy Griffith's
oft seen, but rarely heard wife), the upgrades were subtle, to be sure;
nonetheless, Seacat was onscreen far more - and at more crucial points
in the narrative - than in any of her previous films.
It was 2003, however, that brought the most dramatic change, not just
from a subsidiary to a starring role, but from the almost mute
matriarch of D&T's constantly bickering clan (blocking out the most
intense or awkward moments with her trusty Macarena monkey) to the
vigorously - and vocally - proactive 'normalizer' of the equally - if
less loudly - dysfunctional family in
A Little Crazy (2003).
Co-starring Seacat students Jack Kerrigan,
Kim Gillingham, and Kirk Baltz, "A Little
Crazy" debuted at the 2003 Method Fest, earning Kerrigan a nomination
for the festival's John Garfield Award, and, for the film itself, a
rave review from Variety's Robert Koehler, praising, in particular,
"the superb Seacat," as the "overreaching but never strident" matriarch
of the film's "unhinged American family." Sadly, despite the review and
subsequent awards from the Berkeley Video & Film Festival, the
Hollywood MiniDV Festival, and the Los Angeles Silver Lake Film
Festival, the independently produced film found neither a theatrical
nor a DVD release (though it has, as of 2010, become available online
via IndieFlix); as a result, what is almost certainly Seacat's most
sizable and fleshed-out film performance to date has gone largely
unseen.
Her next assignment, another independently made feature that would not
see a theatrical release (again co-starring Kim Gillingham),
In the Land of Milk and Money (2004),
features Seacat in a much smaller role, but again a pivotal one, in a
film which, none too skillfully, harkens back to the cautionary sci-fi
tales of the fifties, as well as the neo-zombie variations of the
seventies and beyond, in its tale of genetically modified cow's milk
generating an epidemic of mothers killing their offspring. As one of
the affected mothers, Seacat, in a handful of scenes, with a minimum of
screen time and dialogue, gives an acting clinic, shifting from
unreadable rage to transparent delight, from grief-stricken,
guilt-ridden parent to righteous avenger.
Seacat's next few post-millennial assignments included a number of
independently made films that remain, for better or worse, even harder
to get a hold of than the previous two. More recently, however, have
come brief but high-impact performances in a pair of relatively
high-profile projects, HBO's
You Don't Know Jack (2010),
starring Al Pacino as Jack Kevorkian, aka
'Dr. Death' (and featuring Seacat as his first 'patient,' the Alzheimers-afflicted Janet Adkins), as well as actor Mark Ruffalo's
feature film directing debut,
Sympathy for Delicious (2010),
wherein Seacat has an even smaller, but equally pivotal, role.
The former, in particular, caught the eye of Columbia University MFA
candidate Jed Cowley in the fall of 2011,
then casting his thesis film, a short subject set - and shot - in a
shale pit in the filmmaker's home town of Medford, Oregon. As he would
later recall, it took no more than one viewing of Seacat's brief but
telling appearance in the Kevorkian biopic before Cowley and his
producer "knew she should be Sheila,"
Shale (2012)'s long-suffering but "newly
empowered" protagonist, the "once dutiful wife" now confronting her
intractable ex-spouse against the shale pit's stark backdrop.
With Seacat in attendance, "Shale" had its premiere on May 5, 2012, at
Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater, as part of the Columbia
University Film Festival, where the film would earn the IFC Audience
Choice Award. The film is also an official selection at the 2013
Slamdance Festival in Park City, Utah, screening with the
South-African-set feature, Fynbos (2012),
on Friday, January 18th, at 7 PM, and again on Tuesday the 22nd, at 12
noon.
As already mentioned, Seacat also appeared recently in the first two
episodes of Laura Dern's HBO series "Enlightened," as well as the
feature film,
The Time Being (2012),
representing the directing and screenwriting debuts, respectively, of
Nenad Cicin-Sain and producer
Richard N. Gladstein.
Seacat's next scheduled appearance is in
Gia Coppola's feature film directing debut,
still in pre-production, entitled
Palo Alto (2013), based on short
stories by James Franco.
In the meantime, Seacat has not neglected her educational mission; in
fact, while remaining active on both coasts, she also recently made
inroads into the heartland, when, on March 8, 2012, together with
longtime friend and colleague, Robert Walden, and several others, she
became a founding faculty member of the newly instituted Winthrop
Rockefeller Institute Film Forum, a three-day, multi-disciplinary
seminar to be hosted annually by the University of Arkansas.