1975 John (Danielich) Van Wyden

After graduating in '75, Daryl and I won fellowships to Case Western Reserve and the Cleveland Play House. I stuck it out for three years and got my MFA and Equity card.(which led to the name change, but that's a long, complicated story) Daryl got married to a woman he met in Cleveland and then enlisted in the Army. I, on the other hand moved to NYC and stayed with John Amplas and Fred McCarren in their apartment on West 84th. St. for a few months (McCarrens home for wayward boys) I tried auditioning and acting off, off, off, off Broadway and eventually got sick of doing Shakespeare in places like the basement of a Karate studio. I never lost my love of the theatre in whatever capacity I thought I could be of assistance and worked a lot of front of house jobs ( House manager, box office, etc). I met my wife in '89, got married in '90 and had a beautiful daughter in '93. It was about that time I decided to make some use of the education that Point Park (and Alan Clarey) had given me and got job at NYU, and the Strasberg Institute as a Speech and Dialects teacher. Since then, in addition to teaching, I've been coaching dialects for many NYU and studio shows and have thoroughly enjoyed being a teacher and a father.