Theater

Ralph Eastman

Phone: 909-274-4338
Office: 2T-126
E-mail: reastman@mtsac.edu

 

Ralph teaches sections of both Principles of Acting classes and directs mainstage productions. Further, he teaches Public Speaking and has been a member of the Survey of Western Humanities teaching team for the past twenty years.

Eastman trained and performed with experimental theater companies both in the United States and Europe during the Sixties and Seventies.  He holds an M.F.A. in acting/directing from U.C.L.A.’s School of Theater.  An original member of the planning committee for the Mt. SAC Performing Arts Center, Ralph helped to oversee all stages of the facility’s development and construction.  As an acting coach, Professor Eastman has twice (2000 & 2001) coached winning student actors in the Region VIII KC/ACTF Irene Ryan Acting Competition to the National Competition Finals at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Eastman recently finished editing From the Dead, the theater memoirs of Rick Cluchey, leader of the San Quentin Drama Workshop and a frequent actor/collaborator with Samuel Beckett.

Additionally, Ralph has always loved American popular, folk and vernacular music.  During the Summer of 1985, he was an N.E.H. Fellow at the Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College, Chicago, Illinois.  His seminal research into the development of jazz and rhythm & blues within the Los Angeles nightclub scene of the Nineteen-Thirties and Forties has been widely cited over the past decade in books and articles on both African-American music and Los Angeles cultural history.