Turns out, this was an acting class.
A motley crew of roughly 30 sat in padded chairs around three sides of the large rectangular space housed in south Arville's Talent Services International; a white Christmas tree in the corner and an impressive spread of snacks filled the remaining wall, in front of which presided Joshua Sofer. Sporting black jeans, tennis shoes, a dark blue Hawaiian shirt, a sandy shag and a matching moustache, the writer, director, producer, actor, fourth-degree black belt and TSI talent manager got right to the point: There is no "miracle diet" to memorizing. Simply recalling "empirical data" (i.e., a script) will impede the creation of a character. You can't go wrong with breaking things down to the smallest relevant details. "Blue door moments"— for example, memories of a first kiss or barrelling down a snow-covered hill in a sled as a child —are something we all have in our lives, and recapturing the original emotions they evoked is one of the most valuable abilities an actor can possess.
TSI regulars—principals from offshoot companies Nickel City Players, The Hive, Ambient Light Films and The Direct Broadcast Corp.—nodded and asked questions freely. Steve, Kelley, Mario, Ronni, Matt; all were addressed by first name and privy to the throwaway inside jokes littering the lesson.
"We're involved with seminars and commercials and movies and all kinds of other stuff," explained TSI Vice President Marilyn Weinmann. "There's an in-house mentor program, and we all do spotlights and stage manage. This is a company in all senses of the word. We are a family."
The first half of the class nearing completion, students had explored the four components of human beings (physical, calculable, the ability to learn and imagination) and the three aspects of memorization (attention, storage and retrieval). The second half would be the process: the "how" of learning how to memorize. But first, the Dominos guy delivered 10 deep-dish beauties, and it was break time.
"Most acting teachers are actors who didn't quite make it for whatever reason, but I wanted to teach since I was 16," Sofer said between soda sips. "Las Vegas is a good place for very beginning actors because there are no judgments, but it can also be very tough. We have a program in place where we rehearse here during the week and perform in LA on weekends."
With some of the Nickel City Players' upcoming productions only a few weeks away, students were anxious to move away from the theory and into the practice of memorizing. Unfortunately, at least one attendee needed Part II more so than others, and failed to return to TSI's second-floor offices. Seems that somewhere out there, a "DRINK AND LEARN HOW TO TAKE SATURDAY-AFTERNOON NAPS" lecture was under way.