Old Acting Blog

This past Saturday was Actorfest.

I left my place by 7:45am and was there to stand in a line, the ‘pre-paid’ line. They let a few of us in at 9 am and most people went straight to the audition line. The audition line-up was for mostly live stage shows or Disney cast members and stuff like that, so I skipped it and went straight to the tables on the floor below. It was nice to wander around that early. Although everyone was still setting up their tables. I skipped the tables I wasn’t interested in.. the training schools and the Scientology 4 table corner setup.

Most workshop session groups and such had an email/phone list for a free class raffle. I signed up for several of them, so I hope I don’t get inundated with spam texts or calls.

The table for Second City gave me a chance to chat with them and I told them my experiences with improv with Groundlings, ComedySportz and Monkey Butler. They knew the Monkey Butler name and I mentioned how I’m an instructor and one of the girls said I was awesome. I think she mentioned it right after I said that in February I’ll be visiting Melbourne Australia and teaching a workshop there. Then I realized how awesome that DOES sound. The main reason I’ll be there is to see my girlfriend of course, and the teaching there is just a bonus, but still..

Anyway, they told me that there is a drop in class I can take on Thursdays so I may do that since it is usually my day off.

Then I met the guy who made the accent cd I bought at Samuel French. I complimented his talent and then thought to myself that I could be practicing this again instead of listening to Pandora.

The first session with Robert Martin Jr was great! He was funny, and had so much energy. He was super honest with his opinions, so no wonder my agent likes him.

The next session was entitled “How to Get Cast in Comedy: Being Funny IS a Skill: Dorian Frankel & Todd Rohrbacher”. The session was mostly about how important it is to know the tone of the comedy you go in for. I think the biggest lesson I gleaned was to do research by seeing a taping of a show. It is so obvious, but I haven’t done it for a comedy show.. Which is what made it good advice. = )  Now to narrow down which shows to watch.

The final session was “Getting Ahead in Voice-Over: David Wright” who works for Disney. His main message was that Disney doesn’t accept unsolicited artists, have a good professional demo, and they work with union only for legal reasons.

Then for the Meet and Greet I met up with Robert Jr. and we chatted for a few minutes. He suggested I move that I’m an instructor with Monkey Butler to the top and then said everything else looks in shape. He likes my agent and me.

Cool.

Now it’s just a numbers game. All I can do is continue to sharpen my skills and one day I’ll be booking stuff left and right.

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So for the next few days I’m going to make a simple action list. I’ve spent too much time making to do lists and getting few things accomplished so I’m “doing” now.

This morning/afternoon I worked on a storyboard for taping the next The Retro Kids Show episode. Now to tidy my room. How quickly things get messy when you don’t set aside moments to clean. ; )

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