What was your first LA experience like?

Loved the beach. Couldn't get in the door everywhere I wanted to, but the Pacific Ocean let me in. Nice waves.

You have worked in both theatre and film. Where does your passion lie?

The easy answer is film, but you know, I work with a group of actors at a house of two married directors on a lake in Rockland County, New York every year. The first year we did The Seagull. I played Konstantin. We rehearsed for six days and had one performance for the community. Living and working in the environment outside there by the lake allows you to sink into the belief of the world of the play in a magical way, the way you imagine it's going to be when you're younger, for film and for theatre, and we're starting to introduce the camera to the process and I think it's going to get more and more innovative and exciting. It's already the best artistic achievement that I've been a part of. The feeling of it happening with out you making it happen. That's what I look for. Theatre or film. When that happens that's where I feel I belong and when I feel I'm doing my job.

Tell us about your most recent projects.

I did a show with classmates based on the children's book "The Geranium On The Window Sill Just Died But Teacher You Went Right On." Which was a trailblazing work by a pioneering educator named Albert Cullum. The play was kind of a physical, symbolic exploration of the sense children have at a very young age of how the education system often times drains all the greatness or uniqueness or (in the case of our interpretation) actual life out of a child, and the sense that in order to build a healthy, creative society, you have to help each other to re-find that inner life and bring it back out to the world.

What is best and worst part about being an actor in New York?

Working. And not working. When you're working and it's good work, it can be a wonderful place to live. When you aren't working and you aren't sure how the next job is going to come or sometimes how the next audition is going to come, it's a deathly atmosphere. Restaurants and even sometimes bad talent agencies can really become snares when you're in those ruts. And they're sometimes hard to get out of. You have to be able to remind yourself what you're in the city for and make sacrifices.

What was the training experience at The North Carolina School Of The Arts like?

Wonderful, at times astonishingly illuminating and at other times tedious and soul draining. I liken the worst of the times at NCSA to the parks around Winston-Salem, which have all been built in pits that literally sink inward on themselves. That is what your sense of reality can feel like at the worst of times there. At the best of times, it's a small opening to a greater self discovery or discovery about the craft of acting. But even then it's tough because the importance of the discovery is reciprocated internally more than externally. You've got to have some strength, or learn to get some. But in a way, the business is the same.

Tell us about an actor you have worked with which has left an imprint on you.

The actor that has left the biggest imprint on me was an actress named Cigdem Onat, who was a teacher of mine at NCSA and taught me both from the seat and through demonstration. To be shown how, and to be guided in how, imagined circumstances can be stepped into through energy that focuses out on the world for information instead of racing through the mind to find a correct image to display that information upon the world, was eye opening, and when I get stuck, I try to remember this.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Hopefully making movies, being a part of innovative theatre, and seeing some of my screenplays getting made. We can't get everything we want, and if I couldn't get what I want out of acting but I was able to get these screenplays made correctly, I would feel I had accomplished something. You have to work and work and persevere and then maybe you get to place where you can influence your dreams more.

Star Stats:

Full name:  Edward Michael Schneider (Ted Schneider)
Birth date/place: March 24th. 1980/Arlington, VA.
Sign: Aries
Training:  NCSA 4-year Actor Conservatory Chicago Academy for the Arts, 4 years, high school.
Where you have seen me:  OFF-B'WAY: Ghosts at CSC, Birdy at Women's Project, Now That's What I Call A Storm with Edge Theater Company, Bacchanalia at Bay Street Theater, Men Without Shadows at The Flea.
FILM: Clear Out and The Beach Party At The Threshold of Hell will find their way onto the screen in 2006.
Favorite Actor or Singer:  Sean Penn, Leonard Cohen
Favorite Movie:  Amelie, Spirited Away, The Big Liebowski
Last Book you've read:  Kafka On The Shore by Haruki Murakami
Future Aspirations:  I'd like to get to a final table at the World Series Of Poker.
Email me: ted_schneider@yahoo.com