Acting Workshop Day 6 Final Session
Jun 11th, 2009 by Alan Yu
Well, that’s it for this particular workshop. The day started out in a very unorthodox fashion where we all had to stand in a circle and go through a routine as a way to open ourselves up to each other. The exercise involved things such as blurting out words without vowels to trying and channel your energy to another person.
Besides that, for the most part the day was the same as other days where we performed a scene and got feedbacks. There was one interesting comment of the day that stuck out for me personally. The acting coach was giving feedbacks to another Asian person and he specifically encouraged him to keep at it even though there aren’t many opportunities for him.
That immediately made me think because I am Asian too, of course, and have been prepared since the beginning knowing that my opportunities will be limited and to try and find ways around that as a result. Speaking of which, I was surprised to see many people doing scenes that they wrote themselves. Afterwards, he talked about his new sessions that were taking place in the future and that was the end of this experience.
Was this worth it overall? Again, I base my value on the results I get in getting auditions/roles and so I can’t judge that yet. But overall my feeling about this particular workshop is that it seems to be more beneficial if you are already out there in the industry such as casting directors being aware of you.
I say this because when it comes to the acting work in this workshop it is definitely very thorough. The coach does a lot in trying to get you to do things a certain way while challenging you to go deeper. So if your goal is to become better at your craft of acting then this would definitely be a top choice in the city I’d say.
However, I know most actors take workshops like these to try and find a way to even get that first opportunity to showcase themselves in the first place. So when you think about it, in that sense these types of workshops may not be right as you would want more focus on audition techniques as well as ways to better promote yourself.
Interesting experience overall. For my next journey into various acting workshops, I have chosen a place that seems to specifically focus on audition techniques while the instructors seem to emphasize that they want to see you get work as a result of taking its workshops. This won’t start until next month, but I will be doing an audit of sort next week.