Returning to the Ancestral Homeland

Though I’ve announced this in sev­eral places (Face­book, Twit­ter), I haven’t really made the update here… Ear­lier this year I accepted an offer of admis­sion to the grad­u­ate act­ing pro­gram at the UCLA School of The­atre, Film and Tele­vi­sion. It’s a 3-year M.F.A. pro­gram, and it means that almost 11 years after mov­ing to New Haven, I’m headed home to South­ern California.

I’m really excited about the pro­gram. Liv­ing on the east coast, I wasn’t really aware of it. (Their show­case is just in Los Ange­les and I gather that most of the grad­u­ates stay there—and why not?) I was more aware of UCLA as a film school.

But they kindly offered to fly me out for a tour after I was admit­ted, and I was blown away by the tal­ent of the stu­dents, the qual­ity of the instruc­tion (srsly… I sat in some absolutely incred­i­ble act­ing classes), and how nice and wel­com­ing every­one was.

So. I’m bid­ding farewell to the East Coast, and, for the most part, bid­ding farewell to life as a work­ing actor (there won’t be any time for it amid what I’m told is a very intense sched­ule. Except for summers.)

This www.matthewwrather.com site and mail­ing list will prob­a­bly become much less of a brochure site/blog for my act­ing career and more of a lifestream aggre­gat­ing the var­i­ous things I do all around the inter­net. (Here’s the pro­to­type.) I hope you’ll stay sub­scribed to the RSS feed or mail­ing list, which will prob­a­bly be updated a lit­tle more often. I hope you’ll stay in touch. And if you hap­pen to be in the LA area, I hope you’ll stop by!