"Anybody here ever have a dog?" Raymond Parker, an actor, stand-up comic, writer and acting teacher, calls out to his class. The hands of roughly 20 of the 30 students fly up. "Did you ever wonder what your dog was thinking?" he asks.
Let's face it. Who hasn't?
So he tells the three students on stage that they're all playing dogs, two-legged dogs. "Don't close your mind," he says. "Show me what they're thinking."
It's as though a light bulb goes on over the head of student Nick Weiland, and he laughs, and says, "Yeah. I love it," and starts claiming his territory on stage as royalty: Prince, king of the dogs.
From the curb, 438 S. Market St. in Inglewood looks like a warehouse, with barred and heavily curtained windows and dingy glass on the front door that allows only scant light inside. The building is uninviting.
But walk through to the open space inside, and it's a hive of cheerful activity. About 30 people are practicing dance steps in front of a wall of mirror. In the back room, another 30 or so are taking turns at improvisation skits. And in the tiny music studio, a couple of students are listening to chords and dreaming up lyrics.
The place is Performing Arts Studio West, a privately owned and state-funded acting, music, dance and production studio staffed by entertainment-industry professionals. The studio's clients are people with intellectual disabilities, including Down syndrome, autism spectrum disorders, mild retardation and seizure disorders. It's the realized dream of John Paizis and Randy Klinenberg, longtime friends and entertainment professionals.
Over the decades -- especially when between jobs -- the two of them fantasized. "We wanted our own studio," Klinenberg says.
Now they've got it, though not exactly the studio they envisioned. Rather, it's the one that opportunity presented, and they say it's even better than the dream.
Paizis is the founder and director, and Klinenberg is the managing director of the studio, a training and career management center for performers with intellectual disabilities. It's a one-of-a kind shop in the entertainment and disabilities services industries: Where other centers in the county and the state might have music or dance therapy, the Inglewood studio has daily acting, dance and music training. It has a production studio to record the songs clients write and a management team that places people in jobs in the entertainment industry.
