Unscripted - A Blog for Actors - Backstage

Actor Website Phase 1

Here we go-- website time. Very first, I used the super helpful tips from Bonnie Gillespie over at actors access: Bad Websites, Good Websites, Bad Websites, Good Websites II, and Bad Websites, Good Websites III

Youch

Prior to this week, I hadn't been to the hospital in 14 years, not since I broke my left wrist during a high school soccer game. That all changed wednesday night. I was at work, which was my saving grace, polishing glassware, when a glass broke during mid-polish. Yeah.

Thanks, Julliard! Love, NYU

Our showcase went great. It was short and sweet. Brilliantly staged and we had the audience laughing for most of the hour. We were on performing on 42^nd street in front of people who could potentially help us get work – casting directors from NBC and CBS, agents from Abrams Artists, Henderson Hogan, and managers.       

Unfortunately, our showcase was also the same night as Julliard’s 4^th year show, so our reception afterwards was empty. Everyone had to peace out to catch the 8 pm Juilliard show! We were all a little bummed about that, sitting there eating a Dean and Deluca hor dourves platter all by ourselves. Who was the genius who scheduled our showcase on the same day as our competition's? We figured that instead, we get phone calls and emails in the days to follow.

Well, it’s Thursday and I have not received a phone call nor an email. My 3 close friends who also did the showcase have received emails – from Abrams Artists Agency. Hmmmm. Okay, patience is my friend. I will be patient. It’s not the end of the world if I don’t get any response from this, but boy does it make me feel like s***.

Birth of the Little Mighty

So it's been a lucky fall season of getting to see myself on screen. Apparently, three's the magic number.

First there was "How to Seduce Difficult Women", then "The Brooklyn Heist".

And last Friday night I attended the private screening of "Carla", the indie short about American female Iraq War veterans coming home with post traumatic stress disorder.

This one is not a comedy.

This is a huge social-political statement of what is currently taking place in the midst of the Iraq war on our side of the fence and nobody wants to fully acknowledge it.

I was nervous. I knew my scene encapsulated the short's heavy subject matter.

And like any actor, couldn't help but wonder which take made the film and which were left on the cutting room floor; or I guess, in today's age...the digital 'recycle bin'. 

Wow! Isn't that funny? It's 'Recycle Bin' now, and not 'Cutting Room Floor'.

As in, "Did you make it into the movie or did you end up in the 'Recycle Bin'." Okay, I digress...

A Sign

This is a picture of a big bright sign I passed while walking around in Toronto one evening.  It stuck with me.  

The Playwright

It's so ironic that I am serving as a reader for this playwrighting class right now as I have just joined forces with one of my most beloved playwrights wo work on a piece. I've always been into writing and done it on the side/for myself and playwrighting is such a different, huge beast than what I'm used to. I'm not sure exactly how our collaboration will manifest, but happily we have such a great relationship that I'm sure it will naturally evolve for us. It was brilliant to be able to sit in a class full of up and coming playwrights and listen to their work and read their characters and hear their concerns and ideas. It totally put me in a space where I'm ready to jump into my own project with a bit of perspective.

Grad School Diary #2:Recommending myself

    I've picked out the three theatre professionals I'd like to write my recommendations. They are all game for it - but one of them is a very busy broadway casting director. Busy enough to ask me to write a draft of the rec for him, just to get him started. I told him I could totally do that for him.

    I can right? How do I write a draft of a rec for myself? What do I think he'd say? He's taught me in a few classes, cast me in a reading and remarks on my talent pretty much every time we see each other. I guess I should just go for it, and let him reel it in. It's still a little weird. But this seems to be somewhat par for the course as this stuff goes. Anybody worth writing one for you is going to be busy, and the best way to get it done is to start it for them, and I have to do it THIS WEEK.

    So I have quite a bit on my plate. Start two rec's, write my personal statement, start choosing my monologues so I can work with my coach. All this for grad school that I'm not even sure I want to go to! But that's okay, it's an option I do need to investigate. Although lately I've been doing so many other things, event planning, teaching - that I'd hate to give them up to go to school for three years. C'est la vie. I'm changing my life over the next year, so things will...change, and that's what I want. LA or Grad school, the battle rages on.

--  Shawn Dempewolff

Post-Show Malaise

The Mystery Plays closed on Sunday. My parents flew down to see it closing weekend, which was awesome (they hadn't seen me act in a long while). The final performance went very well (as did the whole run, actually). And now that it's over... Well, it's bittersweet. It's nice to have a little more time in my week, and less pressure. But I already miss it. I loved this show. And I loved getting a chance to act on stage again.

To be honest, without the show, I'm not sure what to do with myself.

Surprising Journey

Get me out of the car.  NOW.  I've been stuck in the always hair pulling experience of LA traffic... for over two hours.  My right leg is completely numb and my favorite driving mix is not having its usual "life is beautiful!" effect on me.  It's time to disembark the nightmare train.  A cheap parking garage appears on my right like a desert oasis and I willingly drive down into its concrete catacombs.  Engine off.  The traffic monstrosity has ended, but the agitation is lingering like a mosquito bite: I'm still itchy.  I throw on my leather jacket (which somehow makes me feel like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator - don't you even THINK of messing with me!) and storm towards the escalators.

Early Thanksgiving

This weekend, five very important things happened in my life:

1. Picnic opened on Friday night...these are pictures from Acts 1 and 2!  (no Act 3 ones yet)

2. Richard Fisher of Abrams Artists Agency in NYC came to UNCSA this weekend to see Picnic and St. Joan.  Studio IV also did monologues for him on Saturday, and a few of us sang as well.

3. Ayo Davis, the Vice President of Casting for ABC primetime, put all 20 members of Studio IV on film.  The tape will be edited down to 3-5 people and will be shown in the casting office!

4.  My dad's father made the trek from Kentucky to North Carolina to see me in Picnic.  This was the first play he'd ever seen me in at school!

5.  My boyfriend travelled from New York and saw me work for the first time ever.

Bloggers and Beers!

Last week, a few nights before Actorfest, a lovely editor and some multi-talented blogger/actors got together for some custom roasted peanuts, frothing beers, and animated conversation at my favorite birthday locale in West Hollywood.

Though we all knew a bit about each other from our blogs, most of us had never met before.

I had been looking forward to this night and had a minor hand in party planning it myself, now that I"m a locale Los Ann-geleno.

The SpokesWoman Spot

When you take a commercial class, the teacher is bound to load you up on spokesperson type copy, which makes for good workshop material because those spots are usually dry and difficult to make both personal and technically good.  In reality, the spokesperson audition is quite rare.  Buyers are pretty hip to hard sell advertising tactics, so when you see the spokesperson approach, you tend to see it more in low-budget local commercials and regional spots.  Which doesn't mean that commercial students shouldn't study the mechanics of them, but it's maybe not the best use of time and money considering commercial auditions tend to be more diverse and way less text heavy.

That said, in the last two years, I've been called back for a couple of big commercial spokesperson gigs.  I wouldn't say that I "got close" to getting them since I wasn't put on hold for the jobs, but the gals that did?  Cha-ching.  You know them.  You love.  And you will probably always associate them with a certain product.  Which makes me wonder, how would I feel about being the face of a product (a la "the Verizon dude") as opposed to being "just an actor" seeking a little commercial money and exposure on my way up to the "real gigs?"  

In any case, I think my agents now think of me as a spokeswoman player, and I've got a big ol' audition tomorrow for a guaranteed 4 spot (and maybe more) spokeswoman character directed by a super cool film director.  

What Is All This Burpin' About?

A few years ago, I did a play with an insanely talented and recognizable working actress who was plagued by pre-show burps.  I'd waltz in early, do some pre-show stretches and vocal warm-ups, set my props and say hello to everybody in the cast while she'd be hiding under a table backstage belching away.  We'd get our final call for show time, the lights would dim and she's still be under that table belching away, and alternately laughing at herself and then insisting that she was too fearful to do the show.  Of course, she would always go on and be her brilliant, confident (sans burps) self and this pre-show performance remained endearing, if rather bizarre.

Well guess what?

I've started burping like a mad woman before I perform!  OMG!  What is this burp bandwagon and what does it mean?  I'm not a belcher in real life.  No, no!  I'm quite lady-like.  I would never burp in public on purpose.  

Just today I found myself in an audition situation more than 3 hours after eating breakfast which certainly did not include the consumption of carbonated drinks, belching away and wondering what the heck I would do if I got into the room and still couldn't stop.  Of course, they stopped when they needed to but...

What the heck?!?  This is happening with alarming frequency.  Does this happen to anybody else.  Oh, acting...

--Stacey Jackson

Everything old is new again

Last year I went on this audition. It was for a role that I absolutely LOVED, dug into, wanted. Bad. I felt good walking out of the room. And indeed I got called back. For another role. One I was not right for and everyone knew it. Thus I did not book the play.

The Law&Order : Delayed Flight = Amtrak (?!)

Alice and her freakin' Wonderland haven't had half of the adventures I've had in the past eighteen hours.

Last Night:
8:04pm -- email from Emmy/Oscar winning producer.  Directing an L&O.  Asks me to come in to last-minute producer session for guest star.
8:05pm -- I curse the fact that I'm in Florida for the day
8:09pm -- Get email from Fabulous Manager re: L&O
8:10pm -- Get text from Fabulous Manager re: L&O
8:13pm -- Get & take call from Fabulous Manager re: L&O, stain phone with wing sauce.
8:29pm -- Re-route plans to fly to LAX, have [the morons at] U.S. Airways schedule ticket to NYC.