LEIGH McCLOSKEY: <>
HARRIET HARRIS: <>
BRANDON MICHEAL HALL: <<I remember I walked into the building
and I was, I was shocked because I had never seen anything like it. I grew up
in South Carolina. I'd never seen anything like the lobby
or just like the vibe of the city.>>
ROBERT SCORE: <<It was really quite a rarefied atmosphere,
and I was at that time 17 years old.>>
DEBORAH ZOE LAUFER: <<Yeah, I was an actor for 15 years. I actually
auditioned for Juilliard and broke my nose at my acting audition many, many
years before I came for playwriting.>>
STEPHEN MCKINLEY HENDERSON: <<This is 1968 and, and so...after it was
over, John asked-- it was, I was the last
one before lunch, and he said, "Would you like to go to lunch
with us?" It was he and Michael Kahn, and I said, "No I gotta--I can't, I got to go
get back to the airport, go to see my teacher." And I get back to Kansas City, my
teacher says, "How did it go? How did it go?" And I said, "I think it went okay." "But what
did they say after?" I said, "They didn't say anything. They asked me to go to
lunch with them." And she said, "They asked you to go to lunch??!"
ADAM GREER: <<Everyone meets for that
kind of pre improv where you had to be an animal.
KEVIN DANIELS: <<Yeah, right, right you'have to be an animal and
crawl around on the ground and try to find your breath and how are you
express yourself.>>
GREER: <<I chose a seal and got my suit all dirty, because I'm crawling around
304 dusting the floor for everyone.>>
DANIELS: <>
GREER: <> DANIELS: [laughing] <>
BEN BODE: <<And Michael Langham saying, "Would you please
sing Happy Birthday?" and I was like, "I'd rather not." Because...I tried to make
some joke about the fact that I lost a job because I couldn't sing Happy
Birthday. And Michael Langham was, [gravelly voice] "You weren't here
for the warmups. Just sing the song please.">>
JO MEI: <<After having class with Moni during the
audition weekend, I thought, "If I don't get into this school, I've learned more in
this one day than I in the last year anywhere.">>
JOANNE TUCKER: <>
MICHAEL JAMES SHAW: <<So I'm at the grocery store in line
with, like, all my groceries and I get a call from Kathy,
and I literally start yelling in the grocery line.
ADAM DRIVER: <<And then Kathy Hood called me on my cell phone and asked me if I
wanted to be a part of Group 38, then the next class and I said yes. And I was
working in the back of a Target distribution warehouse where they just
shipped goods around, checking the seals of semi trucks, there was a lot of semi-truck
drivers, and I'm in a shack with this other security guard for like eight
hours. It's...all kinds of smells and things, and I remember running up and
down the parking lot of the back lot just kind of yelling, being very excited
that I, you know, now had a place to go in New York and do the thing that, you
know, you kind of dream... dream of doing.>>
SAM GOLD: <<It was a sort of impossibly small program
to get into too, so I was just incredibly lucky.>>
MARIANNE RENDON: <<When I came it was, it was so different
from what I expected. I expected it to be very
morose and serious and intimidating, and it was exactly the opposite.
STEVE HARPER: <<It's really exciting to sort of be in that space and
be like, "Oh, wow" and..and part of what I'd
said before is I spent a lot of my life as an actor. I trained as an actor first,
and went to drama school elsewhere and all this stuff and was doing a lot of
regional theater. I wanted to put writing in the driver's seat of my
creative life, and Juilliard really helped me do that.>>
LAURA LINNEY: <<I mean, people ask me a lot, "What was your big break?"
And they, you know, they want to hear a movie or this or that, and it's
getting to Juilliard. Hands down, getting into Juilliard.>>
KATE RIGG: <<Yes, I would come here now. Oh my god, when people like walk out that
door. I've seen these new graduates smiling--smiling!!--
proud of themselves, looking forward to their lives as artists, yes I would come here.>>