Learning from each other

This week in an all-staff meeting, the Development Department got up and explained to the company what they do. They each took a segment of their job and spoke about it to the whole company.

How often have you been sitting around and talking about work and saying, “Why do they need so many devo people? Or lights people? Or whatever?” We often take for granted the departments we work with less. When you don’t interact with them, it may seen like there are just too many in xyz department.

Each staff meeting we will have another department talk about what they do. I just thought it was a good idea to keep in mind how important every part of the organization is.

Be Aggressive

I was talking to a good friend in New York, and she was in a rut about her career. She decided she wanted to break into Broadway. My response was, "Okay, go and do it."

How can you go from not knowing many people working on Broadway to working on Broadway yourself? I told her to connect with anyone she knows who has ties. Turned out I even had someone for her to meet. I told her to follow up. Have people introduce her or introduce herself and have her connection make the follow up call and talk about how great she was. And fortunately for her, she is one of the best.

This business is about connections. It won’t just land in your lap. As I was talking to her, I thought about my connection. I send out about 15 cards or letters every month. I get about 3 responses a month to those notes. That’s a 20% return rate. Not too good. But that’s three more contacts per month that I get than someone who sends no notes.

And some of those notes that don’t get responses pay off later. The job I have now, for instance. I was at a Technical Cattle Call for DC and noticed a new person in the room. It was the Director of Production from Shakespeare Theatre, and she had to take off before I got the chance to meet her. So I thought this was the perfect opportunity to make a connection. I collected all the resumes she missed. Then, the next day, I wrote a note welcoming her to town and included all the resumes she missed. I never heard anything from her, but when I interviewed it was one of the first things we talked about. She thought it was sweet and forgot to send a note.

I don’t think it got me the job, but it made her remember my name and sure didn’t hurt. So when you are looking to change things up or even just looking to improve your network (which you should always be doing), be aggressive and send notes. You never know when it will pay off.

Ask My Frends - Going Back To School

Today we have a person who recently came back into my life and I can’t wait to hang out more often. Jennifer Hopkins and I both attended Webster University in St. Louis which is where I fell in love with her sweet personality and passion for the art. We haven’t seen each other since college but she was recently accepted to the Academy of Classical Acting here in Washington, DC. Many of us think should we go back to school? I have noticed a large number of my friends are returning to school so my question to Jenn is, “Why, after 5 years, have I made the decision to return to my studies at a graduate level acting program?”

“You could say I wasn’t getting to where I wanted to be artistically and felt that I needed more schooling in the illustrious ways of acting on stage. But this might be too pretty a picture. You could say that no one goes to get their Master’s degree if they don’t intend to teach one day (as my best friend so accused) but this would be…an unfortunate assumption. You could say I needed to reformat the hard drive of Me: That so-called vessel of my character work and the tool which allows me to do what I love. Above all, this would be closer to the truth. I once heard a (relatively) wise man say that actors wanted to be told the truth. I do. And I need to be told some truths right now.

I returned from a tour this January and immediately began to re-access the avenue in which I was pursuing a performance career. With a musical theater BFA that I have never used in the 5 years I’ve lived in New York since undergrad, which is to say I have not been a part of one musical since college, I knew something needed to change. Have I been going about this in the wrong way? Or am I simply not truly “musical theater” material? Every singing audition felt like a knife twisting in my gut. I would shower myself with excuses and reasons not to walk out my door to that MT audition. The same excuses every actor conjures when facing something that tests their nerve or lacks personal inspiration. So – here we have it – 2009 and a new president telling me, “Yes we can!” so heck, I suppose I must Do. I discovered The Academy for Classical Acting through George Washington University and the Shakespeare Theater Company of DC by a few fortuitous strokes of my keyboard, and the audition date was set. No question. Over the last three summers I have been employed (quite luckily) as a teacher of Shakespeare at various programs for 15-18 year olds in England and France. The sudden impulse to immerse myself in iambic pentameter as a student was powerful and doubtless.

I auditioned on February 28th. The audition, the people, the atmosphere felt overwhelmingly like home, and I left feeling successful in what I’d set out to accomplish. Sometimes, as an actor, that is simply all you can ask for. Within 5 minutes I was stopped by a phone message on my way to buy a celebratory latte. My dad had been in a near-fatal car accident, hit by a drunk driver that Saturday morning at 8:00 a.m. Everything changed – and “To be or not to be” became quickly replaced with nothing but prayers. I immediately flew to my hometown and no thoughts of my own future really prevailed. It was three weeks, countless tears, broken bones, and a big leap in the right direction of my father’s health later that I received a phone call as I sat by his hospital bedside. [Freakin’] A, I was actually accepted to ACA. I tell you honestly and without self-indulgence that, aside from my father’s improving health, it is the only grand thing that has happened to me this year.

After months of taking care of my favorite person (Daddy) and teaching students over the summer, I find myself immersed in daily activity that is selfishly about Me. My own alignment is important. My voice. My stretch. My intent. I have no delusions of being an axis, but it is a beautiful thing to remind yourself, actor or not, that Your health matters. We spend so much time as performers trying to please directors and those who cast, as people we have others to take care of and to appease. I’m here in DC now to speak the speech I long to speak. To retrain myself out of bad habits, both metaphorically and realistically. My apartment in New York is empty and will soon be the stage of someone else’s life, whilst mine continues on this new adventure. I believe everyone is entitled to a period of time when they are allowed to focus in and take care of themselves. I can’t wait to see what it does to me this year amongst a group of talented fellow students and leaders of this profession as my instructors.”