Just Waiting for Someone to Wake Me Up

Over the last couple months, I’ve been working as a reader at a feature film casting office.  What was interesting about this particular experience was that we were working on only one role for 6 weeks.  I read with over 200 hundred actors all doing the exact same 5 page scene.  Trust me, at this point I know every line in that scene inside and out.   I can do the scene in my sleep and I hate to admit it but there were times when I was pretty much asleep during the session.

If good acting is listening and reacting, then I fully admit during these auditions I was not always a good actor.  But every once in awhile, an actor would come in and really draw me out; these few would force me to pay attention.

It reminds of something a casting director once told me: in auditions he was usually just waiting for an actor to wake him up.

I started trying to figure out the difference between the boring actors that have now all run together in my head and the few that forced me to notice them.  Honestly, the ones that really woke me up were the ones that I could tell were truly paying attention to me.  In the scene they weren’t just talking at me but were listening to me and making sure that I understood them.

The ones that were good were more concerned about me than how they looked or if they were acting “right.”  It made them live truthfully in the situation, which is something actors are wonderful at on stage or on set, but for some reason find nearly impossible in the audition room.

When you go into an audition, take the pressure off yourself and put all the attention on the other person.  It will help you relax and one thing a casting director always likes to see is a relaxed, confident actor.  Those actors make the casting directors job so much easier.

What Makes Art so Important? (or why I became an actor.)

Right after 9/11 happened the whole world seemed to stop.  The only thing on television and radio was the news.  I hated leaving my living room because I was afraid to miss a minute of the coverage and even refused to turn my TV off when I was going to sleep.  For days we became a nation of news junkies.  No one seemed to know when was okay to start airing something other than the images of the Towers and the Pentagon that are now ingrained in everyone’s collective memory.   

In the days following 9/11, entertainment seemed so trite and unnecessary.  But, eventually all the stations went back to airing their regular programs.   

And as much as I can't forget the footage of that terrible day, I also remember Jon Stewart on the Daily Show a week later asking “Are you okay?” and Dave Letterman getting choked up explaining why he decided to put The Late Show back on air. 

Today, it seemed silly to write a blog about how to be a better actor because after yesterday’s news how trivial does that sound?  But, then I remembered that it was the entertainers, the actors, the comedians, the writers, and the musicians who helped mend a very wounded country 10 years ago.
 

I believe the entertainers helped to bring us back from the brink.  They became the ones we looked to on how to go back to our lives after the tragedy.  They showed us that what we were feeling was the same as everyone else in this country.  They helped us grieve and even begin to heal. 

The world needs artists as much as it needs scientists and doctors.  Art, whether it’s a painting in the Louvre, a musical on Broadway, or a crime drama on CBS, provides people with a way to relate, reflect, and give meaning to the world around us.

So, today's blog is for all you artists, writers, actors, musicians, comedians, and entertainers out there to remind you that what you do is important!  Don’t ever let anyone tell you it’s not.   

**Dedicated to all the brave men and women fighting for our country and protecting our freedoms.  I promise we will do our best to keep entertaining you.**