Stiff competition has long been an issue flanked by actors trying to embark on a career in sitcoms. Though, lately, it seems the networks' fanatical affinity to reality shows is a bigger hurdle standing in their way. Nevertheless, TV veteran Mary Lou Belli knows a thing or two about getting your foot through that proverbial door. After receiving a BA in theatre from Penn State, Belli acted in musical theatre and soaps in New York, and then decided to pursue a career behind the camera.
"Directors are treated with more respect," she says. "I was an actor and I am married to an actor [Charles Dougherty]. I love and respect how difficult it is to be an actor--let alone to be an artist and craftsman who is good at acting. But I left acting because I felt it was powerless unless you were a star. I also acknowledged that being cast in Los Angeles is very much based on how you look. I happen to be 4-foot-11. This proved very helpful to my early career because I played children into my 20s. I hope that it will also be helpful when I want to play little old ladies at the end of my career. I also looked at what I liked about acting. It was "solving the puzzle"--answering those questions like: Who am I? What do I want? Why do I want it? Where and when does this scene take place?
"I liked rehearsing," she continues. "I loved when the scene worked but really wasn't crazy about performing--let alone doing it multiple times."
Belli directed her first play at Theatre West in Los Angeles. "It's a wonderful membership theatre that has existed for over 50 years," she says. "Betty Garrett was one of the founding members. I was accepted as an acting member, but it was a place where you could try new things and expand as an artist. While I was there, Chazz Palminteri developed his one-man show, A Bronx Tale. It was an exciting, vibrant time. I directed and/or produced over 50 plays there."
She has more than 75 play productions to her credit, mostly world and West Coast premiers, including Cecile Callan's controversial Angels Twice Descending. The production garnered 10 Drama-Logue Awards, the Women in Theatre Playwriting Award, and three L.A. Weekly nominations. It was also optioned by Orly Adelson Productions as a television movie for FOX. Other notable stage work includes her direction of the world premiere of Will Calhoun's The Balcony Scene, co-produced Off-Broadway with her partner Ian Praiser at New York's Circle Rep, starring Sex and the City's Cynthia Nixon, and then placed in development as a feature at TriStar. Another production was the Los Angeles premiere of James Duff's A Quarrel of Sparrows, currently optioned as a feature film for ER's Anthony Edwards.
Belli's first TV directing job was on Charles In Charge, starring Scott Baio. "Al Burton was the executive producer who at that time gave a lot of women directors their first chance," she says. "I was working on the show as an understudy and coaching the children. Since they trusted me with the acting part of the job, the only thing I had to prove was that I knew how to shoot in a multicamera tape format. I dry blocked my camera shots [on paper] for every show I worked on. I was tutored by the generously and wonderfully talented director Phil Ramuno. I was invited back to direct the following season."
Belli currently directs UPN's new fall comedy series Eve, starring the award-winning hip-hop artist. Other TV directing credits include the pilot Amber Amber for Nickelodeon; Abby; One on One; Girlfriends; The Hughleys; Sister, Sister; USA High; and One World. For the Emmy Award-winning Belli, part of her attraction to directing is that it is, in some way, less taxing than performing. "There is a lot of pressure and responsibility being a director, but you're not out there emotionally as an actor is every day, naked so to speak, putting yourself on the line with your emotions," she explains. "Directing is an emotionally safer job because you're behind the camera. I do think that directing requires more man-hours, but I can do my job even when I'm exhausted. I'd be pretty pissed off at an actor who came to my set looking like he or she had been out partying the night before and was too tired to remember his lines."
Yet Belli admits her acting experience is the most important thing she brings to the table as a director. "I know how important a safe environment is to actors. I know how to give process-oriented rather than result-oriented notes. I understand that there is a layering process to finding the heart of a scene.
"For example," Belli continues, "I was directing Jenifer Lewis on an episode of Girlfriends. Jenifer played the mother of Jill Marie Jones' character, Toni Childs, who has a slip from her sobriety and gets drunk at Toni's engagement party. This was the first time I had ever worked with Jenifer. She asked me to trust her. She explored the boundaries this character had to push every day in rehearsals, sometimes with choices that were too big and sometimes with choices that were too subtle. I gave her the space and trust to do this exploration. She came up with a multi-layered, deeply moving, yet funny performance. The lead actors and other guest actors on the show had to do a lot of exploration, as well, in terms of their reaction to this event. It involved a lot of talking." Belli's directing efforts on this particular episode were recently recognized with a Prism Award nomination.
Belli is also known as an acting coach. She has been on staff on more than a dozen feature, episodics, and sitcoms. Among the many people she has worked with are Academy Award winners Faye Dunaway and Louise Fletcher, as well as actors Annie Potts, Tim Curry, the late John Ritter, Michael Richards, Billy Dee Williams, and Jamie Lee Curtis. Known for her work in children's programming, Belli coached on NBC's Saturday morning series Saved by the Bell: The New Class.
With all of her industry knowledge, Belli, along with her friend and director Ramuno, decided to co-author the recently published The Sitcom Career Book. She explains, "We decided to write a book because Phil and I see really talented actors and newcomers coming to a sitcom set ill-prepared. I'm not saying that these actors were being unprofessional in any way. Life on a sitcom set is like being a part of a family. We want them to fit into this family as easily as possible. This book tries to fill in the gaps: to give the reader an insight into the sitcom lingo or vocabulary, to advise actors as to what they should expect on the set day to day, and to fill them in on the structure of sitcom jokes. We believe knowledge like this can only better prepare an actor for this very specialized art form. The book details how we inherited a sitcom techniques class from a wonderful actor/director named Richard Marion, who died way too young. He was one of the directors on Everybody Loves Raymond. But a lot of the instructional part of the book comes from our experience teaching this classed we called, Louder, Faster, Funnier."
In addition to the pointers Belli provides in her new book, she also offers this advice for those actors trying to break into sitcoms. "Watch sitcoms everyday. Learn the rhythm of jokes. Understand the structure. You only get one chance to be funny at an audition. You either nail it and get a laugh, or you don't. You have to bring everything to the table. And aside from good acting, being right for the part is at the top of the list." BSW