Stan Cahill has already made numerous appearances on television and in movies. Now, the star is teaching Pep’s actors the ropes.
By Jen Clay
A&E Assistant
Los-Angeles based actor Stan Cahill may be best known for his guest-starring roles on such popular television shows as “Judging Amy” and “The Drew Carey Show,” but his newfound role as Pepperdine professor has proved equally memorable for his theater students and the Pepperdine community.
Cahill, who teaches Intro to Acting, found himself teaching at Pepperdine after a little family intervention.
“Oddly enough, my brother [Edwin Cahill] works in OneStop and had mentioned me to the Fine Arts department,” he said. “They tracked me down, and I met with Cathy [Thomas-Grant]. I studied in New York and taught different places, and I was able to jump right in. It was sort of serendipity.”
Last semester, Thomas-Grant approached Cahill about guest-directing a Pepperdine PHOTO COURTESY HOLLIE TUCKER
production. Cahill provided the Cahill stands with “On the Verge” star
department with a list of five Hollie Tucker.
different plays he would be
interested in directing, and Thomas-Grant and Cahill ultimately decided to produce contemporary playwright Eric Overmyer’s “On the Verge.” Cahill had always identified with the play as an actor.
“I pick plays I would want to be in. It’s a play I would chew my right arm off to do.”
He continued, “I had seen a couple productions of it — some good, some bad. It had always stuck in my mind as an incredible opportunity,” he added.
“On the Verge” tells the story of three Victorian-era women who travel through time and space and find themselves in the most imaginative and wacky of circumstances. The play, which starred Pepperdine students Hollie Tucker, Anaka Shockley, Nicola Hunte and Brian Jones, concluded its five-performance run at Lindhurst Theatre last month. The cast had six weeks to rehearse for the performances. Cahill said his favorite “Verge” scenes changed with each performance, but that he did continually admire the intensity of the less boisterous moments.
“The quiet moments with the women were some of the nicest. [The actresses] brought so much to it with a show that was just so big and loud,” he said. In addition, the play required a lone actor — Brian Jones — to play no less than eight characters, a motivation Cahill cites for recommending the piece in the first place. “It’s a very high degree of difficulty for the actors,” he said.
Although acting as guest-director and professor for Pepperdine, Cahill is obviously best known for his work in front of the camera. He finished up his bachelor’s of fine arts at the University of Detroit, studied at the Moscow Art Theatre School and received his masters of fine arts in acting from New York University’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts. He has played a variety of characters during the years, but lately it seems that Hollywood has branded him a villain.
“You know, it seems that lately I play more bad guys than good guys,” he said.
“Sometimes you find yourself playing a whole lot of teachers, and all of a sudden you are playing a whole lot of dopey husbands,” he added. “It goes in waves.”
Still, there is one project of which Cahill is particularly proud to have been a part.
“I had a show that was short-lived but acclaimed that was probably my favorite,” he said. “It was called, “Frank Leaves for the Orient,” — just a madcap thing with music, cartoons,” he recalled. In 1999 Comedy Central ran six episodes of the live-action comedy starring Cahill as Frank, a disillusioned American who moves to Japan to escape his monotonous life.
For now Cahill plans to continue teaching at Pepperdine but hopes the future might take him back to the East Coast. “I’m slated to take over a theater department at a school in New Hampshire called St. Paul’s School. They are in the process of rebuilding it. It’s bittersweet because I’ve had a wonderful experience with the students [at Pepperdine],” he said.
Cahill’s passion will once again carry him to a new destination, but he is ultimately content with the sometimes uncertain path he navigates as an artist.
“That’s the life of an actor. You never seem to set roots down,” he explained.
So even when the day comes for Cahill to leave Pepperdine, the Pepperdine community can always catch him on the small (or big) screen.
November 06, 2003