Looking peaceful and tan, husband and wife Brad Silberling and Amy Brenneman relaxed on a couch on the porch of their West Tisbury home, their dog, Pablo dozing nearby. With an osprey nest about 100 feet away, a blue pond in view and fragrant flowers sprouting up from the soft ground, it’s no surprise that this is their favorite place to unwind.
Ms. Brenneman is an actress who has starred in numerous television series including Judging Amy, Private Practice and The Leftovers. Mr. Silberling is a film director whose credits include Moonlight Mile and the adaptation of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Away from Los Angeles, Ms. Brenneman and Mr. Silberling have found the Vineyard to be a place of both rejuvenation and inspiration.
“It becomes this very creative place where the stakes are artistically high and financially low for me to just mess around,” said Ms. Brenneman.
Her one-person show, Mouth Wide Open, premiered on Island at The Yard in 2010 before moving to A.R.T. in Cambridge. “I am very drawn to the spoken word stuff,” she said. “When I’m here and I’m not drawn by the pressures of anything, that’s where my spirit goes.”
Mr. Silberling first became enamored with the Vineyard because of the movie Jaws. As a 12-year-old he visited the Island for a day with the explicit purpose of seeing the filming locations for the thriller.
“Really, for all of my interest in the movie, I was sort of knocked out by the Island,” he said.
The couple bought their first home in Chilmark in 2000 and moved to their current West Tisbury residence four years ago. Now, they try to spend a month to six weeks on the Island with their two children, Charlotte and Bodhi. Charlotte recently played Swan #4 in a Summer Stars production and Bodhi loves to jump off the Big Bridge at State Beach.
Last week, Ms. Brenneman and Mr. Silberling taught a free class for kids on acting and filmmaking as part of the Cinema Circus wing of the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival. About 25 young aspiring actors, directors and a few kids whose parents made them come gathered in the Mayhew Schoolhouse in Vineyard Haven. They started with silent movement exercises and then sat in a circle on the floor.
“What does it mean to tell a story?” Mr. Silberling asked them. He then helped the kids explore storytelling through actual scenes, display emotions through actions and choose various camera angles from which to shoot a scene.
Ms. Brenneman worked with the children from inside the scenes, providing acting lessons and then performing with the kids. When they were finished, even the parents watching had learned a lot.
Mr. Silberling feels that the younger generation’s increased access to storytelling tools helps facilitate creative growth in young minds. He shared how their son Bodhi had recently shot a video on a friend’s phone, edited it with iMovie and sent it to him and Ms. Brenneman, all during a spell of boredom one afternoon.
“I was just mind blown,” he said. “So I think you need to jump in early because, hopefully, if you can instill some of these key thoughts about storytelling into their minds, you’re ahead of the game.”
At heart, both feel that the essence of their craft, and what they want to pass on to others as teachers and audience members, is storytelling.
Ms. Brenneman said her introduction to acting encouraged her to contribute to the construction of the story. In college, she founded a theatre troupe that adapted classics and wrote their own plays.
“So it was actually a rude awakening when I got to Hollywood and I was ‘just an actor,’” she said. “I was like, wow, not only is this kind of weird, there is this entire creative process that I’m not a part of, and it was less interesting. I am more interested in my acting when I can contribute to the storytelling. Producing sort of brought it all together.”
She said she hopes to diminish the idea that acting is a people-pleasing task, and that the earlier aspiring actors discover that their thoughts matter, the better.
“I always say, whose story is this? Sometimes it’s going to be my story and you will help me tell it, and sometimes it’s going to be your story and I’ll help you tell it,” she said.
Mr. Silberling said people often don’t realize how collaborative the work of filmmaking is. He likened directing to being the conductor of an orchestra. Sure each section and individual is important, but they would be nothing without the other components. They both also dispel the myth of glamour surrounding their movie-making lives. Ms. Brenneman said a four person, two page scene can take six hours to shoot.
“The tedium is always a shock,” she said.
But she also finds peace in front of the camera. “When I began doing Judging Amy, because of having kids and producing the show, the most relaxing time was when they yelled action. All I had to do was be with the other person in the scene. And it was beautiful, it was like Zen meditation.”
Mr. Silberling said it doesn’t matter the size of the movie, the director always ends up in the same place. “You can be on the most expensive set on the most elaborately budgeted movie and you know what always happens? You’re in a corner with the camera, stuck.”
As audience members, Mr. Silberling and Ms. Brenneman said they enjoy shows and films that cross genre lines, as opposed to straight dramas or comedies. Mr. Silberling also observed that a breakdown in categories is occurring on the work side of the industry. Everyone is becoming a “content creator,” he said, with more of the on-screen familiars becoming directors and producers, while the off-screen creators bounce from TV shows to feature films to streaming services.
“It’s such a fluid world and it will become more fluid,” he said. “You can’t just say I’m a picture maker. Like okay, but what does that mean now? It does bring you back to the real essence of what you do.”
The couple recently ventured out as co-executive producers on the NBC show Heartbreaker, which premieres in the fall. This is their first “job share.”
“We share a fairly fundamentally similar sensibility and we get excited about a lot of similar storytelling and moments,” said Mr. Silberling. “We would definitely love to do more of it. Somehow, it’s like you’re more than the sum of the parts.”
Though their business relies on audiences, they both said that trying to pander to the audience is a disservice to creators and viewers.
“I think it’s a little deadly to be honest, to let the market drive your interest,” said Ms. Brenneman. “You can be smart, you can be a good worker, you can be wise about your choices and respectful and all that, but I think it’s really deadly.”
She said the moment creators try to use a formula to make a show, it dies.
In addition to producing Heartbreaker, Jane the Virgin and Reign, Mr. Silberling will be filming a movie he wrote, An Ordinary Man, in Serbia this fall, traveling extensively for the first time for his career.
“So far, for essentially 20 years, the television and movies that Amy has done, for the most part with a couple of small exceptions, and all of the movies I’ve done, have been in Los Angeles, and it just doesn’t happen that way anymore.”
Ms. Brenneman’s upcoming projects include filming for The Leftovers and Reign. They also hope to see workshops like the one they put on last week continue and expand on the Island.
“I think if they did some of these workshops for adults they’d be surprised by the turnout,” said Mr. Silberling.
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