Actor Growth

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.

Today I got an interesting e-mail as a person that I auditioned for a few months back contacted me and was interesting in having me on his film. While it was a volunteer film and sounded fun, unfortunately I couldn’t accept it in the end as something came up that conflicted with my schedule.

But the thing to take away about this one though was that although I didn’t get the part when I audition for his other film, because I auditioned for it he remembered me for future roles. That can be the case many times too where when you audition for a part that you don’t end up getting it can still open up new opportunities.

The important thing is that you get your name and face out there while portraying yourself professionally so that people remember you for other potential opportunities.

One discussion that was brought up during the workshop was the question on whether or not joining a larger agency gives an actor an advantage over joining an agency that has a very small roster. Usually from an actor’s point of the thought is that the large agencies get most of the attention from casting directors and hence people who are represented by them get more opportunities.

Therefore, the assumption as well is if the agency that you joined has a very small roster, or often referred to as boutique agencies, then most likely you are being overlooked for a lot of potential roles as the agent doesn’t have as much power/influence.

For the most part, what was told to us is that generally speaking many casting directors could care less who your agent is as they mainly care about the talent. The message was that casting directors would be doing themselves a huge disservice if they only limited themselves to auditioning actors from specific agencies only.

In fact, one thing that was mentioned is that casting directors sometimes like to find new and promising talent as that way they can have bragging rights that they discovered them first in a way. Was useful information I thought as this is definitely a question that crossed my mind.

One topic that came up in the actors group yesterday is how one person in the group is well into the 60’s to 70’s age and how he mentioned hat there is extremely fewer roles for him compared to people like myself who are young in the group.

While I suppose that is true, there are just so many factors that come into play in regards to the amount of opportunities that one can get. For example, as a visible minority I could just as easily say there is less opportunity for myself. Interestingly enough, some people even say that I look too young and that there are more roles for people with an older look.

As you can see, it is mostly matter a perspective. Depending on where you go and who you talk to, there are usually plenty of opportunities all around you. Example, I may be a visible minority, but that means if I do better then odds are I will have a better chance in landing future roles that require say a Chinese person of my look range as people will remember me.

Same thing with the age look I’d say. If I listened to people before I would have probably missed out on a lot of the opportunities that I have had thus far. So in general, while I’d say that starting at a young age has its benefits, you can still make something out of it very well regardless of your age.