CLASS INFO

CAREER STRATEGIES FOR THE ACTOR

PHILOSOPHY OF THE CLASS:

Whether I’m teach the Career Strategies work in one-to-one coaching, a 2-3 day intensive, or as a weekly class over the course of a semester, it’s all the same approach.  It’s one I’ve evolved over years of experience as an actor and a teacher in the business.  It’s not only about discussing career nuts and bolts of the moment (current trends in headshots and resumes, currently relevant sites, etc.).  This class is primarily about cultivating a paradigm in which the actor really embraces the idea that, as far as the forward movement of their career goes, “the buck stops with them.”   While agents (and in some situations, managers) are ultimately important and necessary, there is no magic agent or manager that is going to make it all happen, certainly not at the beginning of your career.  In many of today’s books and classes, it’s become very popular to say to actors beginning a career, “You are the CEO of your own company.”  And I agree. But I’ll take it further. I’ll help each student embrace the idea that three things will move forward and maintain their career in the long term:

• their vision for themselves

• their willingness to take full creative responsibility for that vision

• the specific/scary/exciting/empowering actions they take toward that vision.

I also share through storytelling (with a good dose of humor) many of the ways my friends and I have “gotten on the radar” of casting directors and creatives over time, and why those relationships are arguably more important than the ones we have with agents and managers.  Then we look at how we can apply what we’ve learned from those stories, as well as a “thinking outside the box” creative approach, to each student’s specific goals as an actor.  The “biz of the biz” does not have to be drudgery, it can and must be fun and creative.  If we are not in touch with our creativity and having fun when we are, say, writing a letter/email requesting an audition, how good or effective is that letter really going to be?  

Further, I encourage everyone to look at possibilities for generating their own work, both live (theatre) and digital (film/TV/internet). The easy and inexpensive accessibility of digital video production (smart phone anyone?), along with the explosion of platforms for the delivery of digital material has quickly turned short- and long-form film/series-making into a democratic creative opportunity for ALL of us.  That smart phone in our pocket also makes “pre-auditioning” for theatre and TV/flim projects (in an attempt to obtain an actual live audition) possible if one is willing to put in the time and effort.

SCENE STUDY: THE PROFESSIONAL REHEARSAL

PHILOSOPHY OF THE CLASS:

This class is best taught in universities and conservatories and looks to imitate many of the elements of professional rehearsal when working on scene work. Actors prepare to work on a scene in class as if they were preparing to come begin rehearsal for the entire play, with all that this entails: reading the play, researching character/situation/period, learning their lines, etc. They do not rehearse with each other outside of class (unless it is to simply run lines). Each work session on a scene in class is treated like a professional rehearsal, with me as director. The first time we work on the scene we do “table work,” and then subsequent work sessions on the scene are treated as a continuation of rehearsal process, with choices, relationships, business and blocking all being discovered, refined and eventually set over the course of time. Actors are expected, eventually, to be able to repeat their choices in the run of a scene, just as they would in the long run of a play (or on set doing take after take of the same scene with the need to match takes enough for continuity in editing). In some instances, finished scene work might presented to an invited audience.

The idea for this class is based on my observations after years of work as an actor, director and teacher:

Traditional scene study classes, in which (usually two) students prepare/rehearse a scene alone together in a studio, or even at the home of one of the actors for presentation to a teacher on the day of class, may be helpful in exploring character, circumstances and elements of a particular acting technique/approach to a point, but they are not fully preparing students for the professional world as it is…

Professional actors in a rehearsal situation do not, as a rule, work on their scenes with each other outside of rehearsal (with the occasional exception of running lines together).  Woe to the actors who are caught by their director renting a studio or going to each other’s homes to “work on the scenes” before, during or even after the rehearsal process of a play (during its run).  Directors (and any fight choreographers or intimacy coaches working with them) in professional rehearsal situations do not want their actors working together on their own to find or change intentions, block themselves, or direct each other in any way, since changes without the director there might very possibly be at odds with the director’s vision for the piece/production. It’s also very confusing for one actor to be directed by another actor in the scene (and you can rest assured that, when actors work without a director, one of the actors always emerges as more “directorial”).  

Furthermore, we have come to a place culturally in which actors-in-training have become very sensitive and even confused about appropriate boundaries in a such a situation, especially when the nature of good scene work contains a wide range of emotional (and often physical/sexual) vulnerability and intimacy.  This is, after all, what we are looking for from ourselves as actors.  It seems to me that programs encouraging this kind of work outside of class sessions are both putting students in potentially difficult situations and inviting unwanted legal troubles in these litigious times.