Greetings. We have exchanged messages already on Facebook, but I want again to introduce myself, as I discern an engaging multitude of manners in which our interests overlap. For nearly twenty years, I have been a Republican activist (most recently the Chairman of the Sonoma County GOP). I have been as well a campaign manager (state legislative races) and fundraiser of some merit. My political endeavors nevertheless tend more to the theoretical: I think, speak, and write prodigiously from an earnestly Whig disposition (friend of John Adams, Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt). By the standards of our day, I would be considered a "Progressive Republican," which notwithstanding the protestations of personalities like Glenn Beck I regard as a most honorable stance. It is also the Constitutional one, since the Federalists indeed defeated the Anti-Federalist, secessionist, loose money Jeffersonians (or as they came to be known, Democrats), even if it took a very bloody Civil War so to do. My thoughts in such regard, as in fact played out in topical matters of our own day, are to be found in my blog (www.rniamerica.org), but I digress. Beside the mutual, political interest, I also aspire to the graces of the muse. I followed my law degree with Masters degrees in philosophy and theology; and while so pursuing, I became a stage actor at ACT in San Francisco - a diversion, which in the pursuit became a passion. I have since studied the craft with a number of good teachers in the SF Bay Area, though apart from a stint on the stage at ACT I have yet to pursue acting on stage or film as of yet. I love the arts; and my wife and I are most especially fond of the music and style of the Art Deco period. Indeed, when we married in October of last year, we followed our traditional, Anglican wedding (as I am also a Priest with the Anglican Catholic Church, having been raised as a traditional Roman Catholic) with a Gatsby party; and our intention is to join soon the Art Deco Society within San Francisco. Again, I beg pardon for my digression; I am hopeful that, in so doing, you may discern a bit of my fairly eclectic (though in its own manner grounded and decidedly traditional) orientation towards the graces afforded in this lifetime. Now for the query: My wife and I may be relocating in the near future to the Los Angeles area (though of course to maintain our home near San Francisco), because of a very real possibility that I may obtain a position there behind a microphone (as I have done voiceover work in the past and am now pursuing the goal of on air news reads and political commentaries). While my wife would continue her work as a professional interior designer, I would hope that, in working in the Los Angeles area, I might also pursue acting there as well. To that end, may you recommend an acting teacher in the Los Angeles area? Thank you for your time in reading my wordy email here, though I anticipate that as a fellow lover of the word you may be well enough inclined toward my divergence from the "newspeak" of internet protocol.

Thank you for sharing more details about your political history and overall orientation. I share many of your own views in that regard, as I too regard Theodore Roosevelt as my political hero and as the finest exemplar of Progressive Republicanism in the twentieth century. We must remain vigilant in defending those limitations on government enumerated in the Constitution, as you well state. At the same time, I would emphasize as well a return to the Declaration of Independence, which Lincoln very properly referred to as the "apple of gold" for which the United States Constitution existed as the "case of silver" (or words to that effect, as I do not presently recall his actual quotation). It is the piety as enshrined in that Declaration that informs how we may exercise our Constitutional prerogatives in such a manner as to secure our liberties; apart from such piety, I suspect that even a strict adherence to the very letter of the Constitution will not save us from an inevitable decline into tyranny. After all, even the most fanatical of utopianists, the least "pious" of men (in that they presume to be able by will to create forcibly their utopia, without recourse to the "laws of nature and of nature's God"), may pursue their policies more or less in line with "Constitutional" form and measure, depending upon how they interpret the same (referring here to the "living document" manner of interpreting the United States Constitution and its Bill of Rights). Indeed, it is a very reflection of impiety, of hubris in the affairs of polity, that a "living document" may be conceived. Note that I am not here advocating for some sort of theocracy. I am quite fine with a disestablishment of religion, as indeed the establishment of religion tends more to the harm of the Church. But piety, as the Founders would have understood, and as conceived very distinctly in the Declaration of Independence (in the sense of avoiding the presumptuous pursuit of utopia or empire), is imperative and, as articulated by Abraham Lincoln rather often in his debate with Stephen Douglas and others on the matter of slavery, a founding basis of Republicanism. I view such piety, as rightly conceived (and, again, not as such to be confused with theocracy), to be then the basis for what we may call a "checked progressivism," a forward thinking Americanism kept in line by a lack of hubristic overreach in the undertaking. TR is perhaps the best exemplar of such progressive resolve in our past century, as differentiated in substance and form from laissez faire libertarianism on the one hand and social democracy on the other (both of which are impious overreaches, in their own manners). His is that good "middle way," that "Whig way," which we should strive to replicate in our own day, since in my mind it is truly at the heart of what it means to be a Constitutional Republic edified by the Declaration of Independence. Regarding my request to learn of acting teachers in the LA area, I am very thankful for your willingness so to advise. I look forward to our future correspondence on that and other matters.