Actor’s Industry Workshops

Eric Rajaniemi began performing at the age of eight with his elementary school choir. At age eleven he was cast in his first musical and he fell in love with it. In high school he began professional training in short form improv from Comedy Sportz LA. By his high school graduation he had performed in multiple plays and musicals.

Eric’s professional level of theatrical productions began immediately after graduating high school. Eric began working with performers in youth theatre programs. This included working with the El Segundo High School, El Segundo Middle School, and Puttin’ On Productions (POPs), a private youth theatre company, as their Assistant Director and Stage Manager.

In 2013, Eric enrolled in the Young Americans College of the Performing Arts, receiving additional training in singing, dancing, acting, and teaching. He has since toured with the Young Americans on their outreach program teaching young performers nationally. Eric continues to tour with the Young Americans and is taking time off from POPs Productions to work with SSPI in our current projects. He resides in the Los Angeles, CA area.

Kisstrin Cozier is from Northern California. She has an AA degree with an emphasis in Theater & Voice from Santa Rosa Junior College. Kisstrin sang in many choirs and performed in several plays while at SRJC. She also stage managed for Masque Unit Children’s Theatre of Marin. After her years spent in Northern California she moved to LA to pursue a career in entertainment.

Kisstrin’s film, television and theater credits include Cross Grain Films’ “Rhapsody on Rails”, Sleeping John Productions’ “Luminarias”, CBS/Bell-Phillip TV Productions’ “the Bold and the Beautiful”, Lifetime Television’s “Moms of a Lifetime”, ABC/Triage Entertainment’s “Disney’s 101 Dalmatians, A Canine Tale”, as well as industrials for Bank of America, Pacific Bell and Xerox. She has also been a prop master at the American Conservatory of Performing Arts in Pasadena, CA… and dabbled in costuming and craft services.

Upon returning to Marin County, she began her family, produced school talent shows, wrote and produced original children’s skits and plays, developed performing arts children’s summer camps and formed SSPI. Kisstrin is the incorporator of Shining Star Productions Incorporated.

Kisstrin developed “Singing Servers”, a fun, student-based community show choir that serves food as it performs. She also developed the Actor’s Industry Workshop series designed to showcase local youth talent to industry professionals as well as orientate youth and adults about the entertainment industry. She is a member of Novato Community Television, serves on many community committees and is an animal lover. It is her vision to bring highly entertaining, original, low cost and therapeutic theatrical productions to youth (and adults) of her community. Kisstrin resides in Marin County, CA.

Alan studied with Sal Dano, one of the great geniuses of acting in Los Angeles. With 30 years of work and time, he achieved what many people do after they break the code – he makes the process, “The Method”, look simple.

This “Method” traces its roots back to Stanislavski and later to Elia Kazan, Lee Strasberg and the Actor’s Studio. There is no time spent on old school “sense memories” – though any rehearsal technique is valid if it leads to telling the story as written and doing the primary job of the actor – to be real and to be believable. The goal is to work on understanding the scene and getting the appropriate emotion for the character in context of what is written.

There are many roads to get the magic, but as Shakespeare has told us, “The Play’s the Thing”. The actor’s time is better spent understanding the play, the scene and the character. When the actor understands the story, the character and the actor are melded together as one and in the moment, there is no need to fight for emotion – the actor is fighting to control the emotion – and we have magic!

But simple does not mean easy. Like all things worth having, the art of acting requires work. For those who are serious Alan can help. He can help actors nail auditions and take beginners from zero to hero. He can take good actors and make them better if they’re open and willing to break old habits. Success usually follows hard work and it follows the truism that the harder you work the luckier you’ll get!

Alan has worked since 1980 as an actor in Los Angeles and San Francisco and started coaching in the mid-1990s. He has done local theater at the Ross Valley Players (one of the oldest active Theater Groups West of the Mississippi), Industrial films, and was even eaten by a trout in a major Hollywood production. His main passion is helping young actors achieve their goal of becoming a better actor and artist. But it is also his desire to inspire those who have the audacity to want to become a star!

Sean is universally known for his role as the crippled Captain Pike in the original Star Trek TV series. He went on to star and guest star in roles on TV and in Film throughout the 60’s and 70’s.

He also has always had a love of photography. Sean’s keen eye for photography, his sense of style and his warm personality earned him a reputation of one of Hollywood’s top photographers. His photographs helped many young actors to get their starts in show business including John Travolta, Christian Slater, and Molly Ringwald, just to name a few.

Both he and his wife Taki, produced a series of seminars for children interested in getting into the entertainment industry.

Currently Sean has several of his original screenplays in development to become feature films. In 2014 he starred in the feature film, Unbelievable, soon to be released.

He makes appearances at Star Trek conventions nationally. He is the author of, “Captain Pike Found Alive,” which is the story of his life and times as an actor and has a five star rating on Amazon. In addition Sean is still actively photographing actors.

Sean and his wife Taki have a flourishing photography business that specializes in the real estate industry. He currently resides in the Woodland Hills area of LA with his family.

Taki Kenney has written screenplays with her husband Sean and managed child actor’s careers in show business. Nathan Nishiguchi, her nephew was one of the kids she booked as a manager for many commercials, film and TV roles. His most popular was a reoccurring role on Full House as Harry the boy next door and friend of BJ.

Taki, along with her husband Sean, have previously produced a series of workshops in LA designed to help children break into the entertainment industry.

Taki was born an entrepreneur. She has always owned her own businesses. Starting at the early age of twenty she began her retail shops, importing from India, designing and manufacturing clothing, and providing interior commercial and residential design.

Today she owns a marketing company targeting realtors and providing promotional products for their advertising needs. Taki resides in the Woodland Hills area of Los Angeles with her husband and son.