FOUNDATIONS

Felix Ruiz built Assembly Yield around a simple observation: actors preparing for demanding roles go through an intense process of research, immersion, and practice before the embodiment of character. That process changes them, not just the work itself. Most people never get anything like it for their own lives, even when they're facing something just as consequential: a career pivot, a creative project they can't move past, a sense that what they're doing no longer fits who they've become.

Assembly Yield adapts that process for individuals, but not in isolation. No individual prepares alone, and no creative work becomes more than one person's effort without others gathered around it. Each client here is supported the same way - by a roster of collaborators, assembled specifically for what their work requires.

Read more about Felix's path to this work.

The work draws on two specific influences, working in tandem rather than in sequence

  • Joseph Campbell's writing on the creative process opens the work: before structure, before a plan, there's room for incubation and preparatory groundwork, where something genuine has a chance to surface before being shaped.

  • Robert McKee's principles of story structure then become the spine running underneath every stage that follows: real insight comes from a character's own point of view rather than outside observation, and growth happens specifically at the gap between what's anticipated and what actually occurs.

This Framework is independently designed by Felix Ruiz. It draws inspiration from two bodies of published work, adapting their ideas, not their text, into an original five-stage practice. Neither author nor their estate is affiliated with or has endorsed Assembly Yield.

Two currents. One practice.


A full moon with one hand above and one below as if about to hold the moon together.

in collaboration

The direct work. One-on-one engagements with Felix, moving a client through the Assembly Yield Framework. Each stage, especially the Immersive Field, is supported by a roster of collaborators matched to what a given client's work requires: individuals deep in their own discipline, brought in at the point their attention is most useful.


Two unoccupied wooden chairs in an empty concrete room

In conversation

The conversation series. What the Voice Carries gathers people from many fields for unhurried reflections on what they have lived and learned. Every year, the series culminates in a Round-Table discussion featuring curated guests alongside clients who have completed the Assembly Yield Framework.