Phoebe and Bebe grew up in our program, interned their last year, and were about to leave for Columbia College Chicago and USC. Shea and Joey sat them down: why go, what the degree does and doesn’t buy you, what an editor really wants from an actor, and the only thing in this business you control.
Joey’s first audition ever, told on air: Walgreens headshots, a cold read where he hadn’t seen page four, a callback the same day, and the job. What we found in it, and why the way you nail auditions is to audition every day whether you have one or not.
What the first night of an acting class is really like: the phone goes in a box, you’re on your feet in minutes, nobody gets the same note, and the parking lot is the hardest part. For the person who has been meaning to do this for years.
Five rules for a rehearsal that gets somewhere, and a one hour template you can set a timer to: warm up, speed memorize, run it at half speed, pick the problem, work it, run it for real. From twenty years of watching partners waste three hours.
One of our teachers stopped me at the door with a question about the improv curriculum, and the conversation that followed was the lesson. Why every improv scene needs a want, why life already works this way, and how a want creates subtext.
A scripted character doesn’t know what’s coming; the character is improvising. An exercise from our masterclass that takes two actors from a cold read of a great play, through improvising as the playwright, and back to the script with the spontaneity intact.
Not the paycheck, not the review, not the reel. An actor’s purpose is to get better, and to choose every piece of work by whether it will. Three words I’ve used for twenty years, and the night a French accent caught me short.
How to set acting goals that can’t fail you: begin with ten years, refuse any goal you don’t control, work backwards to today, and start smaller than you want to. With a twelve month plan built on skills instead of bookings.
Civilians often ask us “professional actors”, How To Memorize Lines. To many people memorization can appear to be some sort of magic trick. Today I’m going to unveil the actor’s secret to memorizing effectively so you don’t forget when it matters most. Why is it so Important to Memorize my Lines? Memorization for an actor …
Destination is how and why your character moves, what Glenn Close calls how they disturb the air. Why emotion without behavior is half a performance, two ways to find your character’s physical life, and Leeann’s Desdemona waking up like a Disney princess.
Andy Cooper booked his 500th voice over job a few years after being too nervous to say he wanted to act. In his own words: the resources worth trusting, the home studio he built for under a thousand dollars, how he finds work, and why voice over is acting first.
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