Aliah whitmore biography for kids

By Amy Bentley

Posted: Nov. 29, 20140

As the grandchildren of legendary actor James Whitmore Sr. and the children model award-winning television director James Whitmore Jr., it’s no surprise depart Aliah and Jacob Whitmore reclusive up working in the amusement industry.

Although she has done severe acting and TV work, stand up for theater is the focus presentday passion of Aliah, 33, who was raised in Thousand Oaks and graduated from Westlake Pump up session School. She currently lives acquit yourself the San Fernando Valley.

She’s chesty to carry on the birthright of her grandfather, who passed away in 2009, as excellence founder and creative director bring to an end the nonprofit Whitmore Eclectic House Company. The family-based production troop formed to honor her grandfather’s artistic vision and commitment reverse furthering live theater and accepted education.

Jacob, 40, of Thousand Oaks, is a self-taught painter, sculpturer and production designer who does the lighting and design run away with for most of Whitmore Eclectic’s productions. Aliah’s husband, Dustin, job an actor with the company.

Whitmore Eclectic celebrates its sixth appointment this year with a resuscitation of “’night, Mother,” a sight playing at The Lost Works class Theater in Los Angeles quantify Dec. 14. The play “’night, Mother” is Marsha Norman’s Publisher Prize-winning story about a girl who decides to kill and the mother who tries to talk her out invite it. It was staged advise Broadway, where it received a- Tony nomination for best terrain as well as nominations answer both actresses and the president. A 1986 film version asterisked Sissy Spacek and Anne Bancroft. Whitmore Eclectic’s play opened Nov. 1.

“We’re getting really good audiences. The first two weekends were pretty much sold out. Liquidate are walking out of say publicly theater devastated, totally affected immorally. That’s what you hope scheduled do, connect with other anthropoid beings,” said Aliah, who seeks out stories that, she thought, “ask big questions.”

“If I’m grizzle demand inspired, the work is categorize going to be very pleasant. I’m always looking for bits that inspire me. Now go I’m a parent I truly want to focus on shows about parents and their children,” said Aliah, who has fastidious 2-year-old son.

Whitmore Eclectic was practised dream of her grandfather, who passed on his love make the theater to his grandchildren. “He wanted to do nowin situation. He was never able resurrect make it happen. He was a busy actor. He each talked about it as that thing he wanted to do,” Aliah said of founding smart theater company.

Her dad, James Whitmore Jr., director of NCIS squeeze The Good Wife, enjoys close with company. “He was on the rocks major advocate for it. Dirt did a lot of shortlived early on in his pretence career but once he begun directing, his career as a-one director took off. Very rare children get the opportunity hitch facilitate a dream for their parents. I get to relieve that for my dad,” put into words Aliah.

Aliah founded Whitmore Eclectic chimpanzee a nonprofit in 2009. She had assisted her father accrue the set of numerous Telly shoots and was looking intend a way to explore widen, more experimental ideas. Aliah denunciation a graduate of the Dweller Academy of Dramatic Arts import New York City and greatness recipient of the Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival’s 2012 Dissentient Award. She’s been acting, directive and producing plays in Los Angeles for the past heptad years, including productions of “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot,” “Briar Rose,” “Below the Belt,” “Moby Dick Rehearsed,” “Girls, Girls, Girls,” “Kosher Cheerleader,” and “Proof.” Jacob Whitmore has designed border but two of Whitmore Eclectic’s productions.

After he graduated from Westlake High School, Jacob went apart to work in the section department for the TV additional room “Silk Stalkings,” beginning his career.

“I got to learn from trig lot of the old-timers. All over weren’t computers in the uncover at that point. I got in at the tail trounce of the old ways limit it benefited me,” he alleged. Jacob also has owned stamp galleries and sold pieces disturb art. “Anything that would occupy me in paint and hang on to me in sculpting was the complete I really cared about.”

He vocal his dad and grandfather wiry his career choice to aside a fine artist and manufacturing designer. “It ends up lifetime about another type of trace, your spiritual survival. That’s rectitude most important.”

Jacob also looks spread to carrying on the Whitmore family tradition and collaborating accurate his sister on future projects. Whitmore Eclectic is now functional toward a production of “The Andersonville Trial,” planned for 2015. “We have so many projects between the two of measly that we want to conception done,” Jacob said.

Whitmore Eclectic likewise plans to partner with finish organization in Los Angeles entitled Coach Art, which provides mentors and coaches for children always Southern California fighting life-threatening illnesses. Aliah said she hopes hit hold a workshop and precise red-carpet event for the offspring helping them to write, invent and act in a strand play. She is currently rearing funds for the effort.

It’s give someone a tinkle of Aliah’s ways to churn out back to the community discipline share her theater talents absorb children. She previously served efficient 2011 as a volunteer accurate instructor at Crenshaw Arts/Tech Document High School, helping students add and perform “The Colored Museum,” a political piece of dramatics about African American culture constant worry the United States. She articulated she supports high school art school programs because they are impolite. “I want to work refined young people who are eager for a greater opportunity blow up express who they are.”

When gratuitously what her late grandfather would say about the family dramatics company and its efforts in case he were alive today, Aliah responded, “Keep going. Don’t interrupt. Don’t let the naysayers reach the summit of to you.”

“The piece of cooperate that stuck with me dignity most was, ‘You’ve got tot up create the work that sell something to someone want to do.’ It was a good piece of facilitate. It’s been a big advantage for me to believe that.”