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Michael Howard was my mentor. I studied with him at his studio in the early 80s. At the time I knew a fair amount about the skills an actor needed to sustain a career. I had some craft. But something was missing. Michael showed me what it meant to be an actor. He taught me what playing an action meant and how one exists in a scene as a three-dimensional human. He was a kind, direct, passionate coach who knew what truthful, authentic acting was and how to achieve it.
A typical evening scene study session with Michael began with him making an energized entrance into the room and quickly crossing to his small desk and chair to sit in the right corner close to the small stage. After several years of study, I always sat in a chair behind Michael to observe the actors’ scene work from his perspective. After a scene Michael would usually ask for comments from the audience. He wouldn’t look at the commenter but rather at the actors in front of us to see their reaction to the idea proposed. I did my fair share of offering ideas. One evening I made a comment and Michael turned in his chair, looked at me and said, “You’re a teacher”. I was stunned and in fact angry. I muttered to myself as I walked home after the class, “How dare he suggest I wasn’t an actor”. Turns out Michael was prophetic. He knew me well and had spoken the truth in his usual direct and encouraging way.
Over the years we became lifelong friends. In my many years as director of the acting program at the University of Virginia I would correspond with him about teaching, about connecting summer programming and about recent trends in acting.
In his final years any opportunity my wife Jude and I could find to sit with Michael in his office or at his beautiful Park Slope home we savored, and I learned so much. Here’s a photo of our visit to his home in 2017.
During that final visit he gave me two gifts that I treasure from his exquisite theater collection. The statue is an original Staffordshire of David Garrick as Richard III (circa 1840s). The plate is a depiction of Edmund Kean as Richard III (circa 1820s).
On page 168 of Michael’s autobiography, The Actor Uncovered, he has written a chapter entitled “What Makes a Good Teacher?” Here are the qualities he suggests:
“PASSION – Passion about the subject. Passion about sharing it. Passion about the beauty and elegance of a solved problem.
THE NURTURING INSTINCT – Deep personal gratification at the growth and development of the student. The willingness to be an instrument in the fulfillment of another’s success.
CURIOSITY – It means an easily excited, open-ended open mindedness about the new, the pleasure in a student seeing something that you missed – and therefore the willingness to be wrong. It means learning from those being taught.”
The final message Jude and I received from Michael
Michael is with me in spirit every day in my acting studio, sitting on my shoulder like a good angel, guiding my intuitions about how best to help an actor find truth in the moment.
