Audition Coach

Many of you have e-mailed me about audition coaches. And, amazingly, some folks think they don’t need a coach. Here’s the deal, if you’ve been sent out by an agent on several auditions and you’re not getting callbacks, you need a coach. Don’t skimp, it’s your career.

I highly recommend Jay Russell, he’s got a great acting resume -- having done everything from contemporary, classical and musical theater (B’way, Off-B’way and National tours) to film and television.

You can contact him at 917-664-9708 or e-mail at JARUW113@aol.com

Tell him I sent you!

Call For Short Solo Works

I got this e-mail and thought I'd pass it on to you, I think it sounds kind of cool. Let me know if you apply.
-Sheila

Call for Entries

As part of our development program, Artistic New Directions will host a Works-in-Progress of Solo Short Works at Shetler Studios, Theatre 54. Artistic New Directions is a not-for-profit company that supports, assists and encourages performing artists and their projects.

These solo shows should be polished, off book, ideally with a director attached, and enough along in their development that a public audience viewing will be helpful. Any genre…..comedy, polished sketch, clown work, storytelling, monologues, character pieces, etc. are welcome. Maximum running time for an individual performance is 10 minutes. These pieces can be stand alone or part of a longer version. If part of a longer version, they need to be coherent in their shorter form. In another words, they need to make sense for an audience not seeing the whole play.

Works in Progress is a bare bones presentation, i.e., minimum set pieces and light cues. Theatre 54 is a black box. There is a CD player. There is no storage at the theater and you will be responsible for any props and set pieces.

The dates are as follows: December 1, 2, 3 (Monday – Wednesday), with a possible tech rehearsal on Sunday, November 30.

Each entry will perform twice over the three nights.

There will be a meeting for all participants on Thursday, November 6th.

Please email proposed material to ANDJanice@aol.com along with any specific questions.

Proposals should include:
* a description of the project, including an estimated running time;
* the script (or what serves as the script)

* bios of currently involved artists (performer, writer and/or director)
* history of the project's development;

* contact information including phone number and email

Please include a contact person to serve as "producer/project liaison”. This person will be responsible for communications between your project and AND.

Deadline for submissions is October 10.

The originator of an accepted piece is responsible for delivering the finished piece, of overseeing his/her/their own show. Artistic New Directions will facilitate wherever possible. We cannot provide rehearsal space (though we wish we could).

We do welcome and encourage any performer to take advantage of our regular Anything Goes/open rehearsal on Wednesday nights at the 78th St. Theatre Lab.

Artistic New Directions will provide the performance venue and technical staff.

Visit www.artisticnewdirections.org

Hey There

Hello my wonderful former students.

I’ve been enjoying facebooking, e-mailing and having a cup of coffee with you here and there.

I’m still not back at AMDA yet, and I sure am starting to miss the classroom. On the other hand, I’ve been writing for my character Sandra O’Day and gearing up to do shows again. I hope to pull off a once-a-month type of performance beginning late fall/early winter. (www.sandraoday.com)

And I’ll need your help. So please check this blog weekly if you can. (I can tell from an analytic program I have that I get about one hit on this blog a month. So I know that’s not covering much.)

I’ve found that sending out a group e-mail often leads to mail bouncing back, because my list is too big and many e-mail programs think I’m spamming. And when I break my e-mail into groups it takes much longer, plus mail still gets bounced back.

So do me a favor.

Check in.

Stay in touch.

And if I give you my number call me. Please don’t give me your number and wait for me to call you. That just gives me work to do, know what I mean? The ball is in your court. And I love stopping into a Starbucks between appointments – coffee? Oh, yes. I'll buy you a cup as long as you don't buy that complicated frozen crap. Get an ice cream!

I was thinking back to when I first got out of school. I spent my first four months hiding in my apartment during a heat wave watching CNN. And I was really, really poor. Sad times, but hilarious.

So, for those of you totally freaking out wondering, “Cheese and crackers what do I do NOW?” I can only assure you – you’re on the right path.

Really. Trust me.

I’ll be posting internship notices, class information, news, and other great opportunities as they come in.

All the best.

Web Design

My friend Michael Alan Wells builds a great site. He just built my site for my ex-con motivational speaker character, Sandra O'Day -- www.sandraoday.com -- and he's done many, many others.

He will also be the person to build SheilaHead.com -- I'm compiling the elements right now. His rates are reasonable, and I can forward a rate sheet to you if you're interested. (His most basic design being $300 - $400 bucks. Not bad!) Keep in mind you have to provide your own domain name and host. He can even walk you through that if you need him to.

Check out his site at michaelalanwellls.com

Hope you are all well. As always, feel free to drop a line at teachersheila@aol.com

Spam Blockers

Hello Everybody,

Long time. So much for that "I'm gonna post every week" thing I was shooting for. But after Labor Day, I'll be back in the saddle, posting weekly or at least bi-weekly. For now, I just have to give you a heads-up about some of your e-mail accounts. If you have hotmail or msn or any other microsoft based e-mail application my e-mails from teachersheila@aol.com aren't getting through. So check your spam folders, or check the blog here, or dump hotmail and go g-mail. Or something.

Big things coming up.

More on that later. Wishing all of you a great summer -- what we have left of it. Enjoy it!

John's Book

OK, I like to post every week. I like to observe and write clever things and try to make sense of it all and apply it somehow to being an artist. But a crazy person just spit in my hair.

Spit. In. My. Hair.

You can read all about that event at www.sandraoday.blogspot.com

In the meantime, I'm going to flat-out steal from my brilliant friend John Clancy. This is from his blog, which I really think you should read -- and he posts every week day. EVERY WEEK DAY. Now that's something. His is the "Scrappy Jack ..." link on the right.

Folks, meet John Clancy:

I've been working on an Acting Textbook for awhile now. Thanks to the Riders of Rowan, I had some time in the trenches with young American actors last year.

Most of the training they were getting was the same confused, dishonest horse-shit I got 25 years ago.

Not the fault of their teachers, either. Just the lack of clarity and definition in the field.

Here's a section from the beginning of the book, any and all comment is welcome.


A Simple Test

You need a performance space for this test. So if you’re not in one right now, go find one before you read the rest of this. Ideally it’s an old proscenium space, raised stage, wings, etc. but any space will do.

Stand offstage left. Breathe a little bit with your eyes on the stage. Get a good base and walk to stage center. Stand there. Then walk stage right until you get into the wings.

What happened to you, physically, when you were out there? Did your spine lengthen, did your breath slow down, did you feel a tingle in your palms and on your thighs? Did your vision get sharper? Anything?

If you didn’t have a physical reaction, not a mental or emotional one, (this test isn’t about thoughts or feelings, it’s about what happened to your body when you were in the charged space of the stage), if you didn’t feel the charge, then you’re not an actor. Maybe you’re a director or a writer or a producer or a designer or an agent. We need everyone on this ship. Maybe you’re an architect who will go out and make money and come back and give it to the theater. But if you didn’t feel the clarity and the potential and the current that exists on the stage, then you’re not home. Actors need to be home when they’re standing there in front of folks. It’s the only way they’ll have the courage and humor and strength to do the work out there.

Serious People Doing Serious Jobs

Watch how a scientist moves in the laboratory. Watch the way a soldier patrols a street in Falluja. No wasted movements. No wavering focus. No sighing and flopping about. Now watch most actors on our stages.

You see the problem?

The three cancers of American stage acting are subtlety, informality and lack of courage. The last one is different from fear. Courage is not the opposite of fear, courage is what you wish for when you have fear. Courage isn’t possible without fear. I’m not saying that American stage actors need to get rid of their fear, on the contrary, they need to seek it out and dance with it every night. What they need is more courage.

Again, watch a professional doing a physical job. Watch a paramedic checking someone’s pulse. Watch a cop patting someone down. You’ll see focus, you’ll see efficiency, you’ll see no wasted energy. The important thing is, you’ll see no tension. They are relaxed and engaged. If you’re out there under the lights pretending to be Romeo in front of a bunch of silent strangers and you’re tense or worried or stiff, you need to stop right there and breathe. And then say the lines and listen to them while they come out of your mouth. And then eyeball whoever’s pretending to be Juliet and look at her or him, not at “Juliet”. Human to human, simple, two people doing a job.

Base and Pace

The Audience Already Speaks English (Your Job is Not to Express the Meaning of the Words, Your Job is to Say the Words)

Have you ever heard anyone say something like “this wine is delightful” and their voice gets all weird and high on “delightful”? Or “He was a horrid man.” And again, their voice gets all shuddery and low and weird on “horrid”? What do you think of these people? What’s your first, base reaction?

It’s probably something close to:

What a fucking phony. What a fake.

That’s what the audience feels when you get all emotive on a good play, or a bad play for that matter. Mamet calls it the school of Funny Voices. Stop emoting. You’re already “emoting” whatever that means, as soon as you speak. You’re an emotional being. We all are.

When You're The Piñata, Give 'em Candy

I had a chance to work with a really great guy last week. His name is Todd. We booked a radio spot together, and it was a fairly straightforward script. But there were more than a few people directing us and Todd was taking the brunt of the contradictions. One person would tell him to do it one way, then the second person would tell Todd he missed this or that and would totally redirect him. Then the first person would redirect him again, and it went on and on like that. And it wasn’t as if the “directors” were battling between themselves in the control room, they just didn’t understand that they didn’t want the same thing, and couldn’t figure out why they weren’t getting what they wanted from the actor.

Meanwhile, the actor was trying very hard to please two contradicting directors. Todd was basically being a piñata. They just kept hitting him with more and more contradicting ideas, and he kept giving them candy.

Now, frequently, the actor in the “piñata” position would be rolling his or her eyes, getting snarky and making faces at the other actor, silently screaming, “Can you believe these idiots.” Personally I don’t like working with people like that. They make me feel uncomfortable and I think it makes them look like an ass. True, it’s hard to keep your cool when it’s so obvious that the clients either don’t know what they want, or don’t know how to communicate what they want. But it’s your job to do what you’re told, and if asked, help the client figure out how to define their direction. Usually, the people who do the impatient eye-rolling thing are people who don’t work that much. They have an idea in their head of how it should be, versus how things really tend to work. I often want to say, “Folks, you’re being paid to read. Buck up. It’s not like you’re digging holes during a heat wave.”

But Todd is a pro. He knows how good he has it. He makes fantastic money by talking. He’s been doing it for years, and quite frankly, this kind of thing happens all the time. During our session he was patient, he always did what they wanted, and he never got ruffled. Instead, when we were between takes while they were figuring things out in the control room, we talked about life stuff -- his son who’s in high school, our houses, our spouses -- and we had a great time. And when it was time to do another take, we did it. No attitude, just did our job.

Two days later they called us back to do a rerecord because of a mistake that had nothing to do with us, and we did it all again.

Class act, that Todd.