Thursday, April 15, 2010

So slooooooooooow

Man oh man, is the audition world in NYC slow or what?  One of my friends works at a high powered advertising firm, and he says that broadcast work has literally come to a standstill. They are "buzzing" with printwork, but in terms of broadcast (on camera and VO) there's nothing.  This backs up what I've heard from veteran (30+ years) actors.  One guy in my acting class tells me "This is the slowest it has ever been, a lot of us don't know what to do."  He assured me that if I was his age when he was his age (follow me?) that I would be booking commercial work left and right.  This is a veteran actor who could retire on a nice pension if he wanted to.

I never thought I'd say this.  Ever.  But thank goodness for real estate work.  It at least keeps me busy and provides some sort of an income.  I like that I can come and go from this place.  I finally closed that deal for good, that I mentioned a post or two ago.  I wasn't expecting it to take so long but it did.  Oh well.

Class went well last night.  I revisited my Gobbo monologue from "The Merchant of Venice."  My teacher had me perform it while another set of classmates were setting up their set.  (I just fulfilled my life-long dream of using "set" in three different ways in one sentence.)  The monologue can be very captivating, however, that goes out the window when people are moving around furniture to the left of you.  Ha.  My teachers notes were that my version of the monologue was "for you" (meaning me) and that necxt week it has to be "for us" (meaning the audience).  This relates to his other piece of advice from last week: "...you want to 'give' a performance, rather than 'take one.'" And while I hear that totally, and agree - what is an actor to do when there is other stuff going on the stage at the same time?  Am I to simply speak louder or ham it up to the nth degree?

I think I am going to call him up for clarification.  It's tough to figure out how to word my question.  I don't want to say "Well  how do you expect an actor to command attention when other actors are on stage setting stuff up?"  I think I will ask: what is a remedy for a moment that is being upstaged?  Is there a way to command attention while not coming across as just simply speaking louder?

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