Hi James, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I have been fortunate to have worked non-stop in show business since I graduated college. First in Georgia, then New York City and Los Angeles, now back in Atlanta. Mostly in theatre, my first love but also in film as a director, writer, and actor.
I grew up in Franklin, TN. Moved to Valdosta, GA after my father passed away. Went to Valdosta High and Valdosta State and graduated with a degree in theatre arts. Went to Grad school in NC-Chapel Hill but was kicked out for being disruptive about the lack of training in the program. I am a bit of a troublemaker and outspoken sometimes.
Worked at Opryland in Nashville for a year. Moved to NYC and worked in off-Broadway and summer stock. Followed a girl out to LA, we broke up, but I stayed for 40 years.
I have worked with several stars – Mitzi Gaynor, Mel Gibson, Don Cheadle, Seth Green, Noah Wyle, Charlene Tilton and many, many others. Many stories – some funny, some sad and many I am not able to tell.
Took over a theatre that Patrick Swayze helped start and ran it until 2012 as Producing Artistic Director with my partner Denise Ragan Wiesenmeyer (who passed in 2007). Along the way, got my Master’s in Theatre Management. Then in 2012 started my own production company, Attic Studios to produce my own work, which includes writing and performing two one-man shows that have toured the USA and Africa – Coming To Zimbabwe and Mi Casa Su Casa, directing several award-winning short films such as A Cost of Freedom, Fancy Meeting You Here, and Divorce During Pandemic, and awarding winning jukebox musicals – Come Together, A Beatles Cabaret, and The Bitch is Back, An Elton John Cabaret.
I did consulting work in Southeastern Africa from 2012 to 2015, and I taught at several universities in the LA area for 12 years.
In 2018, I became the Artistic Director of SkyPilot Theatre in LA for three years and really enjoyed that experience, but the Pandemic closed all show business in LA for a couple of years. I had other businesses as well during this time like real estate management and an AIRBNB business, but the Pandemic forced the closure of all that in LA. After much thought, I decided to move to Atlanta in 2021 full-time. I had been working here off and on for a few years since my family is still in the area.
I did my first Atlanta Fringe Festival in 2017 and returned in 2019 for another Fringe Festival and also appeared in a play called Blackbird at the Alliance Theatre. Since moving here full-time – I have appeared in several movies and commercials, and co-directed two feature films Madly and Alternate Endings both on the film festival circuit right now and a short film, Love Potion which is kind of a psychological horror film. I am currently trying to get a full-length feature off the ground called Love and Pandemic, which is a sweet romantic dramedy about living and dating during the pandemic.
In 2018, I started a travel blog called www.tripswithjames.com
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Has it been a smooth road? No! It’s never a smooth road for a creative person whether that’s in music or in film or in theatre or visual arts. Being an artist is an extremely hard thing to be especially in the United States. But if your soul tells you that it’s what you have to do then that’s what you do!
I think the first struggle is always trying to convince your family that what you want to do is what you should be doing. At least that was my experience. My mother wanted me to make sure that I had a fallback job just in case this whole thing did not work out. And my thought was well if I’m spending all my time trying to have a fallback job I won’t be focused on what it is that I really want to do so I didn’t follow that advice.
The second biggest struggle is just convincing yourself that you are following the right path. You know when you’re in film, theater, any of the arts, there’s always that moment where you feel like you’re not moving forward or you’re not getting the breaks that you need or the work that you’re doing is not very good. You become your biggest critic and your biggest obstacle to yourself moving forward. It is hard to get through that. Self-doubt stops a lot of people. Even if it does not stop you there are those times where you really question what it is that you’re doing.
Third for me is I’m sometimes my own worst enemy. I am very opinionated. And I am very passionate about what I do. And when I was younger, I probably opened my mouth too much when I should have just been quiet. But I’ve never really been able to do that. So, I’ve cost myself some jobs or I have angered some people that I should not have or walked away from opportunities when I thought the people I was working with were not as dedicated to it as I was. Some of those people and some of those opportunities I should have stuck around for because they would have led someplace. My own ego or my own self-importance got in my way.
Yet I can honestly say for the last 30 years I have not worked for anybody but myself unless I wanted to and while there were a lot of things that I could have done in a different way, here I am. You do not get a repeat in life, so you are where you are. Overall, I’m very satisfied with the career that I’ve had, the people that I’ve met and the places that I’ve been able to go. I think if you can say that than your life has been pretty successful!
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I don’t know that there’s anything that sets me apart from others. And I don’t say that to be humble because I’m not very humble. I have a large ego and I am very protective of my professional work and reputation. But I also realized that I’m not the greatest actor, writer or director that ever walked down the road. I’m talented and I have a good eye and I know how to tell a story, but I think what sets me apart if anything does, it’s my determination and my passion for the things that I do.
It wasn’t until I moved to Valdosta GA as a junior in high school and decided to try out for a play that I found my place in the world. I remember as clear as if it happened yesterday. I walked into that theatre and all of a sudden it all made sense. Like somebody who just understands music instinctively or someone who understands math instinctively, I walked into that theatre, and I just understood all the rules and regulations of that world. It just made sense to me. And since that day, that was the goal or the world I have wanted to be part of, and I have pursued that all my life. Because of my skill or talent or luck, I have been able to make a living for over 40 years in show business. There are times that I have taken other jobs or worked for other people that were not show business related, but that was always the driving force in my life.
There are many things that I have accomplished in my life that I am proud of. Some of them are shows that I have directed or produced, people that I’ve worked with, or places I’ve gone but I believe the single thing that I’m most proud of is an education program that I developed for rural teachers in Zimbabwe in 2013 and 2014. I had been fortunate enough to be asked to come to Zimbabwe and judge a national drama festival which was a life-changing experience for me, and the basis of my one-man show called Coming to Zimbabwe which has played here in Atlanta a couple of times. But one of the things that I noticed when I was judging the festival was that the children who were from the city were much better educated than the children from the rural areas in the areas of drama and speech. The very things that these kids were supposed to be trained in for this national competition. I came to find out that was because the rural teachers had no supplies or they were never trained in anything that had to do with the drama festival that I was judging. So with the leaders of that organization, we developed a program where we would go out to the rural areas and actually give workshops and teach these teachers how to teach drama. We did that for two years. I traveled back and forth to Zimbabwe several times over those two years, and it had a significant impact on the grades of the kids from the rural areas. Unfortunately, money ran out and Zim is a dictatorship and I had brought in a couple of Americans to help with the program and that caught the attention of the government so they shut it down. However, going out into those small villages and schools and working with the teachers and the kids watching their enthusiasm of those kids was magical. There are other things in my career that have brought me joy, but I am most proud of that.
What do I specialize in? Well, first and foremost, I would say I was a director and that includes both theater and film.
When I first graduated college, I thought I was going to be a big Broadway actor or a movie star, and the head of my theater program told me that I was going to be a director. And I was OK, whatever. But one of my first jobs out of college I was the children’s theater director of the Albany Little Theater in Albany, GA. While I was there, I directed four or five shows. And then I went to Graduate School, then to Nashville and then New York and I didn’t really get a chance to direct but I certainly got a chance to work with some really great people. So, I followed this girl out to Los Angeles, and I pitched a theater on a project and they accepted it. It was three Anton Chekov one acts, and I was shocked at the quality of the talent that came to audition for me. I had somebody who had graduated from Julliard acting school, someone from the National Theatre in London and I ended up with three old-time movie stars from Hollywood in my cast. There was a guy named Henry Brandon who had been in Hollywood forever. He played Fu Manchu in the movie serial in the 1930’s and been Chief Scar in The Searchers for John Ford. I had a woman who was a child star about the same time as Shirley Temple, but she grew up to be a movie star as well and her name was Edith Fields. And I also had Bill Lantu who played the post office manager on Bob Newhart’s second TV show do a solo piece. And they all thought I was a great director! Our show sold out for the entire run, and we were nominated for a few awards and Bill actually won one for best actor and he toured his show around the country for about the next 10 years. Of course, he didn’t give me any of the royalties. But I was a director!
So I really started directing in Los Angeles, but I felt the producers I was working with weren’t promoting my shows correctly, so I became a producer. And after a while, I thought well I’m producing and directing but the theater is making all the money so I might as well do that job too. My partner Denise and I took over the Attic Theater in 1987 and I ran that till 2016 when I sold it. During that time, I directed or produced over 400 plays and eventually that led to directing films. I’ve directed 15 short films and two features.
It takes a long time to learn a new craft. Directing theatre is completely different than directing film. The principles are the same but they are completely different skill sets. So it took me a while to learn that plus I made sure that I hired really good people to help me do the things that I didn’t know how to do. My last three films have done very well award-wise. You don’t make a lot of money directing short movies, but my films have been accepted into over 50 film festivals and we’ve won a bunch of awards such as best of fest, writing awards, editing awards, acting awards so I am very sure now that I know what I’m doing. If there’s anybody who wants to be a financial Angel Investor on my next film please give me a call.
The other thing that I have a lot of passion for is teaching acting. I’ve been doing that since I graduated college a million years ago. When I first started the Attic in Los Angeles in 1987, I opened up an acting school at the same time. Tons of people passed through those doors both famous and not famous, but the two most famous students were Courtney Thorne Smith, who was Jim Belushi’s wife on his television show, and Hill Harper who’s been on several television shows. Most of the students did not become big stars but many of them are still working in the business today. When the dust finally settles of me moving to Atlanta, I am thinking about opening up an acting studio here and getting that part of my career going again.
In the meantime, I’m still doing private coaching with clients both online in Los Angeles and starting to get a few here in Atlanta and I also do on set coaching when somebody has a part on a TV show or a film and feels they need help on set. I am always open to new clients and so someone can always reach me at jrc@jamesrcarey.com.
Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
Well after that long story about directing and teaching you think it would be those two things. I do enjoy them and they often make me happy but they’re also a lot of hard work. Happiness can be tied to hard work but it can also be tied to a lot of other things as well.
So probably the first thing that brings me joy is traveling. I love to drop into a country or a new part of the world where I never been and just figure things out. I don’t do tours and I usually don’t hire private tour guides. I like to just move around by myself. Yet I am getting older so that may not be something I can always do but I really enjoy traveling.
Playing music. I’ve been playing guitar for over 50 years and I was pretty decent. I had an accident about three or four years ago where I lost feeling in my left hand and it took a lot of therapy take get used of my hand back. I can play guitar again, but I can’t play anywhere near as well as I used to, but the sheer joy of being able to play music again when it looked for a long time like that wouldn’t happen really makes me happy.
Being around family. I moved to Los Angeles 40 years ago and I was the only person in my family that was out there. I missed all my nieces and nephews growing up and that part of their life. It brings me a lot of joy to be in their life again and get to know them as adults yet also get to know their children.
And finally, being creative. It is a gift from God that I am just now appreciating. I have always been creative but as my end is closer now than the beginning, I deeply appreciate that I can still direct, teach and write. And that makes me incredibly happy.
Pricing:
- Online Acting Coaching – $40 per hour
- In Person Acting Coaching – $50 per hour.
- On Set Professional Coaching -$100 per hour
- Consulting on Productions, Shows or Scripts – $50 per hour
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.
jamesrcarey.com - Instagram: @tripswithjames
- Facebook: https://www.
facebook.com/Attic-Studios- 111449576344 - LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/
james-carey-74581a3 - Twitter: twitter.com/
attictheatre1 - Other: http://www.
tripswithjames.com
Image Credits
1. Poster of Divorce During Pandemic, copyright Careyon,LLC 2. Me directing Divorce During Pandemic, photo by Kirk Bruner, copyright Careyon,LLC 3. Blackbird at the Alliance with Allison Dayne Smith 2019 4. Performing Coming To ZImbabwe at Atlanta Fringe Festival 2019 5. Mi Casa Su Casa at San Diego Fringe 2017 6. Film Laurels and Awards for Divorce During Pandemic 7. Poster for Coming To Zimbabwe performing in Harare, Zimbabwe 8. James Carey on the Set of Madly, 2021
