Under our Career Advancement Program we have launched this new virtual Q&A Series “Sunday Tea with AWD” featuring many of our incredible Advisory Board and Honorary Board members. This series will also be open to the general public. 

Join us for talks on all things directing, featuring a different leading industry speaker(s) each week who will share their expertise on a wide range of topics related to the art of telling stories in film, television, and new media. Each talk will last an hour. 

Our first guests are prolific directors Bethany Rooney and Mary Lou Belli. 

AWD Members register here to attend for free.
Non-AWD members can register through Eventbrite for $10 tickets.

Upcoming guests include: Lesli Linka Glatter, Rachel Goldberg, Marc Guggenheim, Rosemary Rodriguez, and Aisha Tyler.

Mary Lou Belli, a two-time Emmy award-winner, has been directing television for over 20 years. She has done ground-breaking work on web-series and her award winning short, America, just won The Hague Fest. Through her teaching, she supports many of the vibrant diversity programs including the DGA, ABC/Disney, CBS, Sony, HBO Access, AFI’s Directing Workshop for Women, and Warner Bros. Directing Workshop mentoring the next generation of directors. She is the co-author of four books: “The NEW Sitcom Career Book,” “Acting for Young Actors,” “PERFORM: Acting for the Screen” and “Directors Tell the Story” which she co-wrote with fellow DGA member Bethany Rooney. She taught directing at USC for 10 years.

Bethany Rooney has directed over 220 prime time network television shows, including many critically acclaimed series such as Desperate Housewives, Ally McBeal and Brothers and Sisters, as well as the American long-running classics NCIS and Criminal Minds. In 2018 she became the producing director of the CBS drama Bull, following her similar stint on the CW show The Originals in 2016. She serves on numerous committees at the DGA, including co-chairing the Diversity Committee, and shares her knowledge of the craft by teaching the intensive Warner Brothers TV Directing Workshop. Her book, (co-authored with Mary Lou Belli,) “Directors Tell the Story: Master the Craft of Television and Film Directing” is being utilized at multiple studio and network directing programs, and in directing classes on many university campuses. The second edition of the book was published in 2016.