THE GARAGE is a not for profit theater workshop. Our members chip in to cover the rental cost of the space. There is no charge for sessions and no one including the director gets any salary. In April 2014 Sohee Park, a Korean Japanese actor living in Los Angeles approached a group or dedicated actors, predominantly Asian and predominantly Japanese, who were having difficulty getting cast because of our ethnicity to begin a support group in his studio apartment. What began as a support group quickly evolved into a sort of workshop doing audition material and monologues for one another’s feedback. There were obvious limitations as to what we could choose to do given that we were in the confined space of Sohee’s studio. Sohee, who had a very illustrious career in Japan working in theater, television and movies, had done a great deal of work with the internationally acclaimed director Robert Allan Ackerman who was also living in Los Angeles. Ackerman - we call him Bob-San - to watch one of our sessions. Bob-San accepted the invitation and that’s when the workshop formally began. Bob-San started attending our weekly sessions, giving us advice and encouragement and challenging us to take on more complicated acting assignments. He gave us a list of plays by world famous playwrights and suggested that we choose scenes to rehearse. It soon became obvious that we were outgrowing Sohee’s apartment. We needed a space in which we could actually stage scenes with appropriate props and furniture. And that’s when we found the garage. We took a rather run down, dirty, old garage and with our Japanese ingenuity were able to transform it into a rather run- down, but warm and friendly studio space which we filled with props, furniture, seats, etc. We now have sixteen members, We meet once a week, Bob-San assigns us a different classic movie to watch every week. This has helped us all with our language development as well as given us an appreciation of the culture we have adopted by coming to America. Our membership is no longer exclusively Asian. Several of our members are American born. We read plays, choose scenes and scene partners, rehearse and present our scenes to Bob-San and the rest of the group for their feedback. Bob-San guides us through our rehearsal process and suggests areas for us to work on and improve. Bob-San is a five time Emmy and Golden Globe nominee, as well as a multi-award winning theater and film director. He has directed the finest actors in the world including Al Pacino, Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep, John Malcovich, Glenn Close, Judy Davis, Anne Bancroft, Vanessa Redgrave, Richard Gere, Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, Susan Sarandon and many many more. His stage work has been seen in New York on and off-Broadway, in London’s West End, Paris, Tel-Aviv, and Tokyo.
