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Houde School of Acting comes to Kent
RICHARD WEINER
Legal News Reporter
Published: November 3, 2015
As a young Hollywood actress, Jessica Houde ran around with the likes of famous celebs such as Jeff Goldblum, James Franco, Scott Caan, Shawnee Smith. and Mark Peligrino. Never did her dreams she said include returning to northeast Ohio and starting an acting school.
Billed as “Cleveland’s premier acting school,” Houde (now Houde-Morris) started her business in the Coventry area of Cleveland Heights in 2007 and opened up a branch of the school in an old barber shop in Kent this past September.
Houde had “moved around a lot” when she was a child she said, until her family finally settled in the Cleveland area. She went to the West Coast to pursue an acting career, eventually teaching acting at the Playhouse West in Los Angeles.
Then she said her father became ill and she moved back to Ohio to take care of him. When he passed away, she said she decided to stay, got married and opened the acting studio.
The Houde school teaches the Meisner Technique, which Houde said is different from the popular “method” acting approach practiced by Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro and Meryl Streep to name a few. While the method emphasizes psychological interior work to create a character, “Meisner starts from the outside in,” she said. “It can be up to a year before the students even get to scene work.”
The school offers both adult and children’s classes, which include Meisner technique classes, on-camera audition classes, scene study, improvisational theatre and film production.
Houde said the school emphasizes learning the acting and production skills necessary to create a career in the field in Ohio, but also send students out to Los Angeles to try to break into the business in Hollywood.
“This is a very different kind of market,” said Houde-Morris. “There are very few—or no—television shows or big movies. The bulk of the professional acting work is in commercials or industrial films.”
On the other hand, Houde, 37, said that a number of her alumni, “are getting work in California.” The school is affiliated with Los Angeles’ Playhouse West.
One of the school’s most successful students, Kurt Yue, started studying acting as a hobby and now teaches for the Houde school, specializing in audition techniques. He also makes his living through acting.
“Most people don’t think that making a living as an actor is a viable option in Ohio, but it is,” said Houde.
Yue works in a five-state area, he said. He gave up his “day job” two years ago. Working with an agent, which he said is the only way to get work, he stays busy filming commercials and corporate videos. Making “scale,” he said, “actors in the area can make $70,000 to $100,000 a year. That’s the same amount of money that non-stars make in Hollywood, because the scale is the same here as there.”
Of course, he said, the cost of living is much less here. On the other hand, Yue said that he spends a lot of time travelling from job to job in Ohio and all of its surrounding states.
The Coventry school has about 100 students currently, said Houde-Morris. The Kent branch, which only opened a couple of months ago, started with fewer than 10 students and now has around 20. About a half dozen of the Kent students come from the Kent State University School of Theatre and Dance, she said.
“Things are going pretty fats here (in Kent),” said Houde-Morris. Although classes are a bit limited for the time being, she said that the Kent branch of the school will be expanding.
Besides the school’s teaching staff, which also includes Tom Cullinan teaching improv and Jose Infante teaching film production, the Houde school also hosts guest instructors from the California film industry.
Beginning in November, film veteran writer, director and actor William Butler will be in residence for an extended period at the school, while he works on a film to be shot in the area. Butler has worked extensively with the Disney studios, but is most well-known for acting in horror films—mostly as grisly death victims and for writing.
For more information classes, rates, etc., Houde’s website is http://www.houdeschoolofacting.org.