Fifteen years later, Jason Kaufman’s love affair with acting took off like a rocket when he bet a friend he could land a part in a community theater production and did. Since then, he has been “killed” by Dexter in the popular television series “Dexter,” had parts in “Without a Trace” and “CSI: Miami.”
Today, Kaufman is an assistant professor of acting in the Department of Theatre, Dance and Motion Pictures at Wright State University, where he is sharing his acting and filmmaking experience with students hoping for careers on Broadway and in Hollywood. He lives in Dayton, in the St. Anne’s Historic District.
He joined the faculty in the Wright State’s College of Liberal Arts in August. “My goal is to get the students prepared professionally so they are their own corporation, their own company,” Kaufman said. “They need to understand their brand, know who they are.”
Kaufman was attracted to Wright State because the university offers a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.
“I wanted to teach students who were serious, who were dedicating four years of their life to the craft of it, knowing they are going to go out and try to use it,” he said. “To be successful, students must be motivated and driven.”
Kaufman teaches everything from acting for the camera and acting technique to the business side of the career, such as how to build a resume and find an agent. He would like his students to make a movie at Wright State they can submit to film festivals after graduation and refer to in job interviews.
“If you have something to talk about, people are willing to listen,” he said. “And there is no better training than working.”
Kaufman comes from a family of achievers. His father is an attorney, his mother an accomplished realtor and his brother a wildly successful real estate agent who sold his first house at the age of 15 and has since posted more than $1 billion in sales.
When Kaufman was working on his anthropology degree at Miami University in 1991, he studied abroad in China and got a job at a Beijing television station correcting the grammar of the English translation of the news that scrolled at the bottom of the screen.
And then the entertainment business came calling when Kaufman landed several small parts in the “The Boys Next Door,” a play at the Oxford (Ohio) Community Theater.
Six months later Kaufman found himself in New York City studying acting — reading every book on it he could find — and sleeping on a buddy’s couch.
At age 31, Kaufman moved to Los Angeles, where he began landing parts in television and movies, including “Dexter,” “Medium” and “The Unit.”
In the 2005 movie “Fantastic Four” he was cast as a New York City policeman critical of the superheroes’ crime-fighting efforts. However, the scene did not make the final cut.
“There is a lot for me to learn here (at Wright State), which I’m excited about,” he said.
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