Meet Your Instructor: Chi Muoi Lo

At the age of 10, Chi discovered his love for acting. By the ninth grade, Chi knew that acting was in his blood, and he entered the High School for the Creative and Performing Arts as a drama major. At Temple University, he was a theater major but grew restless after one year and decided to accept a full scholarship from San Francisco’s esteemed American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.). It was unprecedented for an eighteen year old to be accepted to the Master’s program there. By the age of 20, Chi had studied with 64 acting teachers. For over 30 years now, Chi has been acting, writing, directing, producing, and managing (see some of his acting work here).

Chi Muoi Lo is the owner of the production company, Black Hawk Entertainment and the CEO of the talent management company Allen Edelman Management.

A Career In Front of and Behind the Camera

Chi’s debut as an actor-writer-director with the feature film Catfish In Black Bean Sauce was met with great success and made Variety’s “Top 50 of 2001 Limited-Release Winner At The Box Office.” His next project is a television series called Life in Threes, inspired by a true story, written to span 7 seasons with 13 episodes each season. He has also written a half hour comedy TV pilot, Catfish In Black Bean Sauce inspired from the feature film by the same name.

As an actor, Chi had great success right out of the gate after he landed in Los Angeles. Chi left his mark with his outstanding performance starring in the critically acclaimed and highly rated Vanishing Son mini-series and starred in MOW Faith of My Father, Sucker Free City and Shannon’s Deal. Chi has also appeared as Guest Lead on numerous shows such as on Nip Tuck, Cold Case, Murder in The First, The Player, CSI, NYPD Blue, In The Heat Of The Night, Northern Exposure, Night Court, China Beach, Equal Justice, Tour Of Duty, Quantum Leap, and The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.

His film credits include The Relic, Indecent Proposal, Hot Shots! Part Deux, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Kindergarten Cop.

While Catfish In Black Bean Sauce was a career achievement, Chi realized that he may have jumped into directing too soon, as it caused him to neglect his acting career. To get things back on track, he was determined to accomplish two things: purchase Allen Edelman Management, and create a non-profit acting group that gave him a place to seriously work on his craft.

With his purchase of Allen Edelman Management, as a manager, he nurtured the careers of countless clients over the years. Through this nurturing, he has participated in well over three thousand phone calls- listening to actors de-brief him on their auditions, pitching, dealing with talent agents and casting agents, and negotiating series deals and film deals with studios’ Business Affairs representatives.

To achieve his second goal, Chi soon became the founder of the acting group entitled Actor’s Consortium, a private, not-for-profit, professional, ethnically diverse actors group. It was created in July of 2002 to provide its members with a productive and nurturing environment to polish their craft and sharpen their skills. Chi served as Artistic Director from July of 2002 to May of 2005. Chi remained an active member until 2019.

Chi the Acting Instructor

Chi taught a master class in acting, once a week, from 2004-2006. Later, Chi created a 14 week workshop entitled Audition & Camera Acting Master Class where he taught a limited number of actors a set of skills and techniques he developed over his own acting career. This 14 week workshop was first held once in 2007 and once in 2012. One final workshop session, initially planned for the summer of 2019, has developed into a seven episode streaming educational video project called Mastering The Business of Acting.

Chi has always felt it is simply unacceptable for actors to spend thousands of dollars on training and still not know anything about the acting business. With all the knowledge he gained as an actor, writer, director and manager, something “clicked.” The need to get this “knowledge” on tape to share with others was too overwhelming to ignore.

Mastering The Business of Acting has compiled in its seven episodes, thirteen hours of invaluable industry information rarely discussed so candidly. Mastering The Business of Acting is in many ways a lasting legacy he is able to share with generations of actors to come.

Most industry professionals have one perspective to draw from. However, his eclectic mix of professional achievements allowed Chi to see situations from not just one, but multiple angles. This in turn gave him a unique insight and understanding of the industry few others could match.