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| Actor John Mossman wants to return to filmmaking after a 3-month run of “After the Fall” |
Actors John Mossman and his wife, Kathy Scambiatterra, deserve all the praise heaped on them lately.
The hard-working theatrical couple filled their 35-seat The Artistic Home Theatre every weekend for three months as critics raved about their presentation of Arthur Miller’s “After the Fall.”
The play starred the versatile Mossman and Georgann Charuhas, and was directed by Scambiatterra, who had the idea to direct the Miller play a few years ago, but lost the intended performance space.
“I think God sent down a thunderbolt to stop me then,” she said. “This time around the lines are more powerful and relevant, considering what is going on in the world today.”
Returning to Chicago five years ago from Los Angeles, the couple founded The Artistic Home Theatre. Scambiaterra runs the acting school and Mossman, who has BAs in film and theatre from the University of Wisconsin, is one of the teachers.
The goal of the school is “to encourage actors to hone and trust their instincts and to use who they are to create something compelling and unique,” Mossman said, “which I think has had some influence on me as a filmmaker.”
With the successful run behind them, Mossman can return to filmmaking and perhaps start the feature he wants to produce one day.
“My films tend to be personal, but what else could make someone be a filmmaker?” he philosophized. “We’re all so obsessive and unable to repress this compulsion to tell whatever story that’s stuck in our heads.”
Last September, Mossman directed what he calls a “Cassavetes-style” short. Shot on DVcam for a $3,000 budget, “Space Man Dan’s 343rd Flight” stars AHT ensemble actors Georgann Charushas and Tom Dietrich.
Most of the story takes place in an abandoned 19th century farmhouse in rural Baraboo Bluffs.
Both of the earlier films he produced and directed were award-winners. “Jello-Ohh Lady,” a 22-minute 35mm short produced for $18,000, convinced Chicago Community Cinema to name him Best Director of 2002.
The earlier short, “Draggage,” had the distinction of winning a Best No Budget Film award among its other prizes.
“Lady,” starring Amy Pietz (“Caroline in the City”) and her husband, Kenny Williams, is based on the mother of an actress friend of the Mossmans, who wished she had been a cowboy. The story explores her decision whether to lead the carefree cowboy’s life or remain in an uneventful 1960s suburban life.
Mossman and Scambiatterra met when they acted together at the Center Theatre in Rogers Park. Theatre writer/critic Jonathan Abarbanel liked Mossman’s work and recommended him to an L.A. manager who agreed with Abarbanel’s assessment and signed him.
Mossman was acting in “a very bad Aaron Spelling TV movie” when he realized 99% of all the actors in L.A. work in very bad films and he was going to be one of them.
Furthermore, he realized he’d rather work on sound design for one of his short films than to go to auditions. “I had to face the fact that my own film production would make me happy,” he said.
After five years in L.A., he and Scambiatterra packed up their two children, now nine and 11, and returned to Chicago where they bought a house and an acting school.
In 1998 they moved their thriving Artistic Home school from Piper’s Alley into considerably bigger space in the Cornelia Arts Center on Irving Park Rd. “We went where the actors are,” he said.
Mossman doesn’t miss Los Angeles, but he does miss the desert where the family spent most of its time camping (and where “Jell-Ohh Lady” and “Draggage” were filmed).
“The West represented freedom, openness and potential and had a tremendous effect on our works. We saw L.A. as a strange growth in the midst of a desert. It’s hard not to be affected by the wide-open landscape.”
Mossman again worked with writer Tim Miller, his collaborator on “Lady,” and producer Terry Mayday, on “Choices,” and educational video.
The 2001 Telly award-winner was based on a true story about a middle-school student who finds a bag of marijuana at school and decides to keep it, turning his life into a surreal experience.
They had 16 minutes in which to tell a story kids would buy, said Mossman. “It turned out pretty good considering we were working with 50 extras, had one day of prep time and three days to shoot.”
The Artistic Home Theatre is at 773/404-1100; see www.theartistichome.com. ?Alexis Maislen
