Posted June 10, 2009 Below are a couple of photos from my secret cigar-smoking/fake psychiatrist project. In its final stages, I plan to unleash it on the Interwebs later this summer. This spring I performed in a reading of Jeff Galfer's (www.jeffgalfer.com) play Viaticum, playing a securities-obsessed waitress. I’ve been auditioning to play Samantha Ronson look-alikes and robot-terrorized redux Hedda Gablers. In January & February I taught two after-school animation classes at Edison and Muir/SMASH elementary schools in Santa Monica. This spring I continued with live-action filmmaking at Muir/SMASH and returned to The Academy of Music at Hamilton High School to teach an on-camera acting workshop for the fabulous junior and senior theater majors. Posted December 13, 2008 Claire appears in this entry for Coldplay's ‘Lost’ Video Contest (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6NRgz4iygY) , which made it onto the band's Favorites page. The video is directed by Lale Arpaci, shot by Rick Bakewell, and also features Jesse Thomas. Claire taught an on-camera acting workshop to the high school drama students of St. Margaret's Episcopal School in Orange County and spoke at a panel discussion on teaching artists at The Actors Work Program (www.actorsfund.org) alongside the LAUSD's Carolyn McKnight, UC Irvine's Jasmine Yep and The Music Center's Leonard Bravo. She published the second of three articles on teen actor training – this one on life in performing arts high schools – in Intercut Magazine Claire continues work on her secret cigar-smoking/fake therapist film project and of late has auditioned for various Jello-eaters and Shakespearean good girls and bad women. Posted 9/21/08 Claire is currently directing and acting in a super-mysterious film project involving cigar smoking, kissing, and playing a fake psychiatrist. She is joined by the talents of Andrew Fleischer, Marcos Novak, and Allison Youngberg. Claire participated in a developmental reading for playwright Yvette Farrow, playing a real psychiatrist, and the Freshi Kids Film Festival Screenplay Showcase, playing a (real) mean orphanage owner. Recent auditions include a well-rested mattress spokeswoman and a tired Oklahoma spinster. In July Claire taught a weeklong filmmaking intensive at The Freshi Film Camp. She coached a fabulous team of young filmmakers ages 8-12, The Longshots, on the writing, acting, directing and editing of Lights Out!, a ten-minute 'noir-comic-detective-thriller' about the energy crisis. Entering the intensive, Claire intended to break her habit of strong-arming her students into casting her, but ultimately their work turned out to be too good an opportunity to pass up. Citing 'liability issues' (ie, being the only available actor with a driver's license) she convinced them to cast her as the graffiti artist who makes a Honda-helped getaway. While a time constraint prohibited shooting the drive-away, the students were sufficiently satisfied with her performance so as to not replace her with their first choice, intern extraordinaire Jessica. Claire also taught on-camera acting workshops at Laguna Beach and Reseda High Schools and published the first article in a three-part series on teen actor training in Intercut, a quarterly magazine for young people interested in the film industry. The next installment, on performing arts high schools, will appear in late October. Posted June 30, 2008 After weathering threats of failing grades and the withholding of the wrap party candy, Claire's students at Ellen Ochoa Learning Center finally agreed to let her play Ms. Stewart, a troubled and somewhat self-absorbed fourth-grade teacher, in their short film No Child is Forgotten. As the school's "filmmaker-in-residence", Claire coached the students through writing, directing and editing this story of the mysterious new student John, the resident bully Angel, and their aforementioned teacher-with-a-secret. The students did wonderful work (as did Assistant Principal Mr. Manza in his cameo as Assistant Principal Mr. Manza). Her recent auditions include one half of a cute (and rich!) couple in a lottery commercial and an evil scientist masquerading as a nun in a great television show. This winter Claire revived the West Coast chapter of the ACT alumni organization Home Base. If you're a member of the ACT community and would like more information on the monthly meetings and special events, email lahomebase@gmail.com. In April, Claire taught an on-camera acting workshop at The Music Academy at Hamilton High School, the Los Angeles magnet school for the performing arts. She has written a three-part article on teen acting training that Intercut, a quarterly magazine for young people interested in filmmaking, will publish in August. Posted March 6, 2008 Claire acted in the Screenplay Showcase at the International Family Film Festival at Raleigh Studios in Los Angeles. In this reading of scenes from finalists in the feature and short screenplay competitions, she had the pleasure of playing an altruistic foster child, a worker in a pantyhose factory, and of making her household appliance debut as Hurricane Jane, a discarded, dump-dwelling vacuum cleaner. Check out www.iffilmfest.org to learn more about great upcoming family films. Posted January 12, 2008 Claire relocated to Los Angeles in November and is currently teaching filmmaking workshops in the LA County schools with arts education company Freshi (Fresh-Eye) Filmworx (www.freshifilmworx.com). Highlights of 2007 included playing the Machiavellian Madame Fenel in Jonathan Leaf’s The Germans in Paris (about which Terry Teachout wrote in the Wall Street Journal: “I can’t imagine a more apt companion piece to The Coast of Utopia…Don’t dally: the run is short and the theater small.”), and WWII resistance fighter Sophie Scholl in Lia Denae’s solo piece In the Mouth of the Wolf. The latter was performed for Save the Children’s benefit for Iraqi children residing in the Rewayshed refugee camp. Over the summer Claire taught several courses in acting for film at The Lee Strasberg Institute’s Young Actors Program. She also acted in developmental projects for directors Barbara Rubin and Abigail Anderson and played the scheming (is there a theme here?), smoothie-drinking wife in a reading of David Yezzi’s On the Rocks at The Bowery Poetry Club.