Today we’d like to introduce you to Arden Teresa Lewis.
Hi Arden, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Well hello, I am Arden. I am a director, writer, and educator in film, theatre and public school. Today I feel I am living three lives at the same time. I just had my first feature film, Leveling Lincoln, screen at over a dozen film festivals nationwide and win 8 awards, along with a grant from the Chimaera Project in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, I teach Kindergarten full-time at LAUSD five days a week. I am developing a screenplay, Gravel Road, for a feature that is a feminist road trip comedy while directing two one-act plays in a play festival at Theatre West in Hollywood.
I raised two children, three cats, a dog, and one husband. It is a busy, sometimes chaotic schedule, but I intend to keep it going for as long as I am able. Back in the day, I began life more quietly in Washington DC, but within a few years, my family moved to New Rochelle, NY which is the place I think of as my hometown. It is a city amongst suburban villages and towns that has a unique urban feel to it. Raised by a Painter Mom and a Public Relations Dad, my home was full of oil paints, turpentine, and the sounds of a clicking Royal typewriter. The range of my interests in life is as wide as the combined talents and ambitions of my parents. With a love of writing, acting, directing, and creating beautiful images, it was inevitable that I would lead a “hyphenated life” in the arts. I began acting with the Girl Scouts at age nine, continued all through high school, and went on to study design and theatre at UCLA. After playing Jennifer in “Paint Your Wagon” at La Mirada Civic Theatre (my first paying gig), I dropped the design major and graduated solely with a theatre degree. On a trip back home to New Rochelle during a blizzard one April, I booked a gig with Surflight Summer Theatre and spent two seasons performing leads in 28 shows.
That led to many best friends and an apartment in Manhattan—plus more musicals, more tours, and more dinner theatres. A production of Inherit the Wind at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey got me a little closer to my Actor’s Equity card. But it was when Park Overall allowed me to go on for her in an Off-Broadway production of Joe Pintauro’s “Wild Blue” that I finally got my union card. Somewhere around age 25, I was in a group called Drama Project, one of many theatre groups I’ve joined. Then I had an epiphany. Every writer who wrote plays in our workshop wrote 5 roles for men and only one, maybe two for women. Play after play was cast, and most of us actresses sat on our hands while one woman got up and read a part each week. So, I started writing monologues for women. That led to my first play, Baby Dreams, produced Off Off Broadway, directed by Emma Walton, and starring Veanne Cox. My next play, Little Rhonda, was produced in an evening of plays by a man named Tony Sportiello.
Somewhere in between these two productions, I met and married my husband Charlie Mount and performed in his plays produced by Tony as well. Charlie is a “hyphenate” as well and wanted to hyphenate into sitcom writing. So, we moved to Los Angeles, where we actually ended up doing more theatre. Little Rhonda and Baby Dreams were published in anthologies, and I began running the writers and actors workshops at Theatre West in Hollywood.
Charlie joined TW later on, and we made it our West Coast theatre home. Once we began having children – just two, Dillon and Emily – I started teaching theatre for children.
My principal at Canterbury Elementary School thought I would make a good teacher. So did the parents. So, I went back to school at CSUN and got the credential and a job. Landing in Kindergarten was an unhappy accident that quickly became a happy career move. It is my favorite grade and I am proud that I got almost 66 of them to start reading over the last three years of the pandemic. In 2016 I went back to school at Los Angeles City College and started Cinema classes. My first two shorts, “Monday’s Child” and “Trellis and Vine”, led to a few festivals. I decided to try a feature and discovered a Civil Rights Case that happened in my hometown of New Rochelle that I had no idea existed; it had been swept under the rug after the case was resolved. A school integration case that directly caused the integration of my school and my own classrooms? I had to explore how that happened. I started to ask my classmates from Elementary School through High School. These first interviews led to five years of work on the feature documentary Leveling Lincoln. Released in 2022, Leveling Lincoln has been accepted for distribution by an educational distributor and will be on local PBS stations later this year. Whew. This is a lot. But every project is worth the effort and brings me great joy and a sense of purpose. With purpose comes hope and with hope comes the belief that anything is possible.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
My struggles were mostly inner struggles. Believing that life in the arts was possible is hard to maintain in the face of rejection. I spent time on many projects where I was the understudy, standby, and replacement. In other words, being in the position of the second choice and having to prove myself worthy.
An injury in my left foot caused me to stop dancing professionally at 25, which led to fewer and fewer musical gigs.
Without musical comedy gigs, I had to reinvent myself as an artist. I started writing. That led to renewed confidence, but even today, I would say that keeping my belief in myself going and my belief in my purpose is probably my greatest challenge.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
What I am best known for and requested is directing the actor. Working each tiny moment with the actor to pin their moments to the arc of their character. Mining each moment of the text for its purpose and detail. Creating the previous action, the point of attack and the crossroads the character has reached before they enter the current scene.
One should enter full of that previous action and let the scene happen to you, and then fight for your life inside that scene, that act, that entire script, to reach your objective. When those small moments of words and silences connect to the greater arc of the scene, the act, and the play, it makes my heart sing and my throat catch with joy, inspiration, and love of the art of acting.
Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
We are in the process of preparing Leveling Lincoln for Educational Distribution through NETA and PBS Learning Media. Find out all about the film and how you can get involved at www.levelinglincoln.com
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ardenteresalewis.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/atlewisfilms/
- Facebook: AT Lewis Films
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK1HLPrc–B7DauG3pmu6AA/featured
Image Credits
Arden Lewis, Leveling Lincoln poster designed by Charlie Mount, and AT Lewis Films
