Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Week 10-11 Feeling Lucky?
Over the past few weeks, you have been working to develop and/ or enhance your audition skills.
You will now be called to use improvisation to help you access your tools to respond to the different demands and scenarios
that you will face at auditions. Ask yourself, how much time to you dedicate each week to your craft? Are you reading
periodicals about theater and performance? What opportunities have you created for yourself? Are you pleased with your tools?
Identify a list of things you are confident about and things that you have to work on. Make a commitment to spend the next few weeks
polishing your tools, setting small goals and putting an action plan into place to achieve what you want for yourself.
Luck is when opportunity meets preparation? How lucky do you want to be?
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As an actor and based upon my time constraints, I think I dedicate the maximum amount of time I can each week to my craft. When I am not doing homework, in rehearsal, in class, or working, I am reading, searching, or getting ideas for work that has to be done. The one thing I do feel I could improve is my material. I have been using very similar material for the last while and I am sick of some of those pieces; in light of this I just learned a new 'Edmund' and a new contemporary piece that I particularly love and think i'll be able to use for years to come. I am pleased with my headshots, resume, and music (musical theatre). I did learn a new pop song to sing (just in case) as well, so I am pleased with that.
ReplyDeleteWith my new pieces I am very confident about auditions and spending the next couple weeks polishing them will bring that to the level of the rest of my tools.
I have been doing a lot more research lately and reading up on interviews with accomplished actors. It is interesting to see the advice that they give. There are actors and then there are wannabe actors. I really respect the people who take their craft seriously and even go to the point of living out their character's life to get even more in depth and connect with the role they are playing. I think I could definitely devote more time to getting to know the characters in my monologues and exactly what makes them tick. I realize now more than ever how limited my knowledge of the theater world is. I know what's playing on broadway but not off broadway. I need to know all these things. I am working on enhancing my knowledge and becoming a better actor.
ReplyDeleteI think overall I will never be satisfied as an actor, I will always be looking for improvement in one area or another. However I am satisfied with my own drive. If I absolutely want something, I have no self-doubt.
ReplyDeleteI would very much like to work on a solid set of monologues that fit me well and I am confident about. Then I will feel much more prepared as I chose to audition.
I also would like to work on my person theatre knowledge. I have gotten behind in the past year and I think that it is very important to not only keep up with the world and local news but entertainment news as well.
I think another thing that would help me would be more long term work such as getting into a dance class or a voice class and actually following through. I need more skills in order to sell myself to a broader audience.
I like how Bria put it, and I totally agree, that as an actor you should never be fully satisfied with yourself. You should be constantly working on your skills and refining them as your career goes on. All of the best actors are still take acting classes so that they stay on the top of their game and that's what us young actors must do. Not just take acting classes, but reading books and working on your technique. Being able to know what works for you and making sure that you have all of the right tools is key. It's all a continuous process and finding new material, and updating head shots, and working on technique, etc. That's why we look up to all of these amazing actors and actresses like Denzel Washington, George Clooney, Johnny Depp, Daniel Craig, Viola Davis, Meryl Steep, etc. It's because all of these actors work their asses off and found out what works for them to bring truth into their work. It's not a bad thing to watch what other actors do and how they do it. I feel that the reading that I've done lately has gradually been helping me out with the work that I do. The more I keep on reading and working on new material will only increase my skills as an actor. It's such a incredible journey that an an actor goes on and I'm just at the beginning of my journey, but as I go along I have hope by looking at these actors. I am constantly reminded why I love to act
ReplyDeleteThis isn't actually a reply to Caiel but I can't seem to post any other way.
DeleteI dedicate a great deal of time each week to my craft. I heard a saying once that was something like, “Do one thing every day that puts you closer to your goals” and I try to consistently follow this advice. Adhering to this philosophy is made significantly easier by being a theatre major because every day I go to class and learn new skills, which certainly improves and develops my acting abilities, which gets me closer to my goal of being a working actor. In addition to going to theatre classes every day, I go to rehearsal for several hours a night almost five days a week, I have rehearsals for scenes for acting classes, and I rehearse for various scenes and monologues by myself outside of class. Besides these school-related activities, I try to improve my ‘marketability’ a little bit each week as well, such as updating my resume, checking and improving my blog/website, looking up new monologues for auditions, etc. I’m confident in my ability to cold read, my ability to break down a script or a side, my ability to present myself positively to a casting director, and my ability to take direction, among other things. I know I need to work on learning about regional theatre companies and their productions, and I need to read more plays and see more movies. I also need to pick and polish a really good contemporary monologue because I’m not really satisfied with the ones I have now. My new goals are: to update my blog/website on a weekly basis, to read a new play every week, to research area theatres, and to see a professional show before the end of the semester. Luck favors the prepared mind.
I honestly try to work as much as I can. I'm always looking for new materials. For some reason right now a lot of my focus has gone to reworking songs for auditions. I've been finding songs that I know fit my voice and changing them a bit to make it my own. I don't know how far I want to go musically, I don't have the strongest or the best voice but I would love to be working on something that involved music numbers. I'm also constantly looking for monologues that fit me because its something I have the hardest time doing. I really do need to work even harder. I always feel that no matter how hard I am working at it, I'm never doing enough. I do need to just dive into it and start putting myself out there. I'm confident in bits and pieces of my audition material but I don't think I will ever be completely confident in every single part of my audition tool belt. I don't know how much it counts, but what I do is watch a lot of movies and television and watch what working actors are doing. I love watching behind the scenes on shows or movies to see how everything is made and how the actors prepare or how the directors chose the the actors. I feel like it gives me insight to what directors want when they look for ctors. It gives me ideas on what I want to do.
ReplyDeleteI am not reading periodicals yet, I suppose, but I do look around for auditions quite a bit. I've already learned that I can't trust my agency to send me stuff that often, and I've basically been networking since I arrived at KU. A lot of the time the work I do doesn't pay, but frequently I meet someone who hooks me up with a project that has some exposure or some perk to it, or an introduction to another project that does pay.
ReplyDeleteI am not completely pleased with my tools. As websites go, I can always direct one to my talent page. I have a voiceover reel that is professionally recorded, and I have films online to show to prospective casters. But I'm never pleased with my monologue material. I've been asked to use monologues for a film/TV audition maybe twice. But I feel like it could be useful to grab a film monologue that theatre actors aren't likely to have, so I worked one from Blood Diamond this week.
This semester I've really learned the benefits of airing material for other actors and professors. Someday I won't have as many of these feedback-givers at my disposal, so I'm going to put them to good use. It's like when you start college and everyone tells you to go to your professor's office hours, but then you never do it because you think it'll be awkward. It totally isn't! It's helped me a lot with my monologues. They're already way less scary. They can only get easier from here.
As for songs, I have several musical theatre songs I could use, but I never even thought to pick a pop song. When I did a jazzy Cat Power song, and someone told me to sing a pop song, my mind went blank. I know plenty of pop but I don't actively listen to it. The other day I started a list of songs and genres that I can sing. I want to have this list committed to memory in case anyone asks for a certain type of song; I can have a couple of options for each genre.
These are all great questions to ask myself because they make me realize how much I am hurting myself. I definitely dedicate more time to singing than acting. I read more articles and interviews about accomplished singers than I do actors. I always say that I love acting as much as singing but I guess my actions don’t really reflect that. Overall, I’m not that pleased with my tools. I am way more confident singing than I am doing a monologue or cold-reading. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, I am totally lost when it comes to finding new auditioning material. I don’t know many playwrights or plays and I’m still trying to find out what my strengths are. I really just need to start doing more research and put as much time into developing myself as an actor as I do with my voice.
ReplyDeleteI will be the first to admit that my preparation or time spent on my career is weak. I would like to start putting more time and effort into developing my tools so when I graduate this summer I will not feel as helpless and scared as I do now. Something that I am constantly doing is reading plays. I went to The Drama Bookshop in New York over the summer and bought tons of new scripts that I had never read and have been reading those. I don’t read the periodicals often but I do on Sunday in the Kansas City Star while I’m at work. I think it’s a good way to keep up with what is happening in Kansas City. While I have newspapers available to me for free I should start to take advantage of it and begin reading the Times and other more national newspapers. I do try to keep up with what is on Broadway and Off-Broadway. I’m always online checking everything out. I’m always looking for new monologues but I think the ones I have are great for me. The only problem is I’m having a hard time connecting to them. Classical monologues are the hardest for me. I need to get my website up and really refine my resume. I don’t think I’ll ever feel like my skills are fully refined and I feel like I need more training right now. I hate saying this but I feel like I’m walking away from KU with very little training and I would have liked a stronger training from day one because I found Acting I and II a waste almost. The things I need to start working on is spending more time working, not just running, my monologues and doing homework on acting. Something I do think that helps me is that I do spend time researching what is going on with TV, Film and I like to watch commercials so I know what’s going on even on those.
ReplyDelete