Sunday, December 6, 2015
Booking the job
Hello blog-o-sphere, long time no post. I really ought to be putting more of my New York stories into blog format, but let's start with this new development. The punch line is that I booked my first commercial and I'm enroute to Providence, RI to shoot it. The interesting part is that I actually booked it in my hometown of Boston. In case you don't know my origin story, I've only been in New York for a year. After finishing college, I spent about five years in Boston doing first student films and community theatre, then some paid gigs and eventually some very well received productions with small and fringe theaters. The feathers in my cap were two principal parts I booked in smallish features (both with movie stars and budgets under 10 million) from which I secured my SAG card and a relationship with the local casting office. After moving to NYC, I still will take the bus back to Boston for the day when auditions come up. Which is frequently a crap shoot, sometimes I'll be at a casting call with half a dozen other actors, other times I'll realize I made the trip for a cattle call. One time this fall I misread a casting notice and realized I went all the way out for what was literally a cattle call of 20 something male actors. Even though it was meant for young actors to introduce themselves to the head CD. Theoretically, this might have been a waste of time, but I successfully reminded her that I existed and I think it resulted in my getting called in to more castings than I would have otherwise. Including an audition for a Mass State Lottery commercial last month, which was additionally serendipitous since I've been taking a great commercial acting class with David Cady. I didn't book that commercial, but I did good work and it lead me to being called in last week for another commercial which I'm now on my way to shoot. It's a SAG job, and if all goes well, I'm looking forward to a 52 week buy out for internet usage. I'm not all the way up on my SAG contracts, but I ought to be paying rent off it for the next few months and it's a huge feather in my cap in my search for a commercial agent. I guess the moral is to put yourself out there whenever possible and you never how or when it might pay off, cheers and thanks for reading.
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Reflections on a 10-ish year career (When does one start counting?)
After taking a hiatus of several years from blogging, in which time I ended a five year relationship, moved to a new city, appeared in small but pivotal role in a feature film with several credible movie stars, spent a lot of time on stage making music and acting in plays, during which time I mainly focused on writing pithy or insightful Facebook status updates... I return to blogging.
What brings me back, you might ask? Insomnia. I can't sleep. So I figured, why not write? And indeed, why not write. It's occurred to me on various occasions to revisit this blogging project. What's stopping me from putting my thoughts into text and sharing it with the world?
My own selfishness! These thoughts cry out to be shared with dozens of people who already read the crap I write on Facebook and will click on a link because they are bored at work or on the subway or whatever!
Or maybe you miss me. I miss you too.
Today I am reflecting on ten years in the theater (imagine a British accent for emphasis). Ten years is an absolutely arbitrary number, but it was ten years ago or so that the idea of being a professional actor planted it self in my brain and I've been running with it ever since. I think the phrase "he wants to be an actor when he grows up" even appeared in my bio in the fall production my Sophomore year of high school, when I was sixteen. I'm now twenty six... that makes ten years, right? Then again, in that same bio I also wrote "he is a distant relative of Godzilla" and that's not something I ever bring up at parties or on first dates.
Unlike many professions, all you need to "be an actor" is a headshot and a resume. For all intents and purposes, that could be a selfie and a piece of paper stapled to the back with your name, phone number, email address and that acting class you took at your local adult education center, or that time you were in Godspell at church or your local community theater.
Do not think for a moment I am disparaging adult education or community theater. During my ten years of acting (imagine a faux British accent for emphasis) I've met lovely, insightful and gifted human beings who cut there teeth in those very places and whom I'm better for having met. Churches are OK too...
Moving on.
I was reflecting because I find myself in a new city, embarking on all kinds of new relationships within this new acting community I find myself a part of. Like, right now I'm doing a production of King John. King Who? Oh, you know, the bad guy from Robin Hood. Shakespeare wrote a play about him. It's hardly ever done, but I'm in it right now, in the ensemble. We're performing in Central Park. No, it's not "Shakespeare In The Park" like John Lithgow or whoever is doing right now, it's Shakespeare in a park, and I'm pretty excited for you to see it.
I feel very privileged to be sharing the stage with these particular people. Being a part of this cast, and the several other casts I've been a part of since moving here (including an industrial, a student film and several other Off-Off Broadway productions) you meet a really wide range of different types of folks, most of whom are here trying to be actors. Boston, where I was before, gets knocked around a lot for being sort of homogenous. Which isn't really giving it credit, Boston isn't homogenous, it's deeply segregated. I found it's art scene to be a very particular kind of animal, a mixture of Boston natives and people who went there for college and stayed. What linked everybody more than anything was the place where we were. The most compelling reason for living in a place like Boston (or Cambridge, or Somerville, or Allston or the various other communities people called home and where I performed) was the place itself, it's people and it's culture. New York is New York, and to me at least the most compelling reason to be here is because I'm an actor, this is where I have to be in order to achieve a certain level of success.
Eventually, it was then or never, and I left for New York, where I am now. It's striking to me comparing how I saw myself as a Boston actor versus how I see myself now, being a New York actor working at the level I'm currently working at. One trend I'm noticing, is amongst my collaborators will be people who have been doing for a very long time (for example, the director of the last show I was in has been doing this for forty years) and others who haven't been doing it particularly long at all, at least from my view of ten years in the theater (imagine an especially bad British accent, like if I was trying to be self defacing) and comparing how I see the work vs how I see them as seeing the work.
Existentially, it's all very sticky, because as I keep coming back to over and over again in life, I can only ever really know my own experience, everything else is just speculation. Hopefully it's based on good evidence thoughtfully collected through active listening.
But for example, the thought that spurred this blog post actually, is tonight I was sort of promoted, sort of volunteered, to be one of the percussionists for our production. This is not my first time doing percussion or making music as part of a play, and I was actually pretty excited when the opportunity came up, because I've always found it to be a different and enriching experience to be a musician in the context of a theatrical endeavor, especially at something that's not my main thing, like percussion.
And I was having the thought that, although the other people in the percussion section are definitely better and more experienced at percussion than I am, I have ten years of accumulated instinct and knowledge of being on stage to fall back on. A lot of those instincts have to do with knowing when to start and stop, how much is too much or too little, how to balance a stage picture, and also just being able to keep track of a lot of things, cues, scene changes, tracking props, etc, all of which I think will come in handy with making sure all of our percussion business will keep on track. Which isn't to say my fellow drummers (Hey Scott, hey Justin, if you're reading this) can't handle their own shit but they also have a bunch of acting to do, as do I of course but my parts pretty small, and this is one significant way I can contribute to our theatrical organism.
For my own work, this whole meditation relates back to my own inability to give myself credit. "But Mike", you might be thinking (I know who you are) "you give yourself tons of credit, all the time" and this is true. Maybe a better word is difficulty giving myself credit for what I know how to do, and what I've accomplished, because those arrogant tendencies are really just me overcompensating to be honest. I've been thinking a lot about personal quirks like that, since moving here I've met so many new people and have been figuring out how to best present myself from a place of honesty and self knowledge. And frankly, to take advantage of this fresh start.
Probably some of my new colleagues in New York are reading this! Hello friends! Welcome to my blog! If you want to read back, you can see the person I was earlier in my twenties. This is the person I am now. This is my effort to reflect, to pay tribute, and to remember.
What brings me back, you might ask? Insomnia. I can't sleep. So I figured, why not write? And indeed, why not write. It's occurred to me on various occasions to revisit this blogging project. What's stopping me from putting my thoughts into text and sharing it with the world?
My own selfishness! These thoughts cry out to be shared with dozens of people who already read the crap I write on Facebook and will click on a link because they are bored at work or on the subway or whatever!
Or maybe you miss me. I miss you too.
Today I am reflecting on ten years in the theater (imagine a British accent for emphasis). Ten years is an absolutely arbitrary number, but it was ten years ago or so that the idea of being a professional actor planted it self in my brain and I've been running with it ever since. I think the phrase "he wants to be an actor when he grows up" even appeared in my bio in the fall production my Sophomore year of high school, when I was sixteen. I'm now twenty six... that makes ten years, right? Then again, in that same bio I also wrote "he is a distant relative of Godzilla" and that's not something I ever bring up at parties or on first dates.
Unlike many professions, all you need to "be an actor" is a headshot and a resume. For all intents and purposes, that could be a selfie and a piece of paper stapled to the back with your name, phone number, email address and that acting class you took at your local adult education center, or that time you were in Godspell at church or your local community theater.
Do not think for a moment I am disparaging adult education or community theater. During my ten years of acting (imagine a faux British accent for emphasis) I've met lovely, insightful and gifted human beings who cut there teeth in those very places and whom I'm better for having met. Churches are OK too...
Moving on.
I was reflecting because I find myself in a new city, embarking on all kinds of new relationships within this new acting community I find myself a part of. Like, right now I'm doing a production of King John. King Who? Oh, you know, the bad guy from Robin Hood. Shakespeare wrote a play about him. It's hardly ever done, but I'm in it right now, in the ensemble. We're performing in Central Park. No, it's not "Shakespeare In The Park" like John Lithgow or whoever is doing right now, it's Shakespeare in a park, and I'm pretty excited for you to see it.
I feel very privileged to be sharing the stage with these particular people. Being a part of this cast, and the several other casts I've been a part of since moving here (including an industrial, a student film and several other Off-Off Broadway productions) you meet a really wide range of different types of folks, most of whom are here trying to be actors. Boston, where I was before, gets knocked around a lot for being sort of homogenous. Which isn't really giving it credit, Boston isn't homogenous, it's deeply segregated. I found it's art scene to be a very particular kind of animal, a mixture of Boston natives and people who went there for college and stayed. What linked everybody more than anything was the place where we were. The most compelling reason for living in a place like Boston (or Cambridge, or Somerville, or Allston or the various other communities people called home and where I performed) was the place itself, it's people and it's culture. New York is New York, and to me at least the most compelling reason to be here is because I'm an actor, this is where I have to be in order to achieve a certain level of success.
Eventually, it was then or never, and I left for New York, where I am now. It's striking to me comparing how I saw myself as a Boston actor versus how I see myself now, being a New York actor working at the level I'm currently working at. One trend I'm noticing, is amongst my collaborators will be people who have been doing for a very long time (for example, the director of the last show I was in has been doing this for forty years) and others who haven't been doing it particularly long at all, at least from my view of ten years in the theater (imagine an especially bad British accent, like if I was trying to be self defacing) and comparing how I see the work vs how I see them as seeing the work.
Existentially, it's all very sticky, because as I keep coming back to over and over again in life, I can only ever really know my own experience, everything else is just speculation. Hopefully it's based on good evidence thoughtfully collected through active listening.
But for example, the thought that spurred this blog post actually, is tonight I was sort of promoted, sort of volunteered, to be one of the percussionists for our production. This is not my first time doing percussion or making music as part of a play, and I was actually pretty excited when the opportunity came up, because I've always found it to be a different and enriching experience to be a musician in the context of a theatrical endeavor, especially at something that's not my main thing, like percussion.
And I was having the thought that, although the other people in the percussion section are definitely better and more experienced at percussion than I am, I have ten years of accumulated instinct and knowledge of being on stage to fall back on. A lot of those instincts have to do with knowing when to start and stop, how much is too much or too little, how to balance a stage picture, and also just being able to keep track of a lot of things, cues, scene changes, tracking props, etc, all of which I think will come in handy with making sure all of our percussion business will keep on track. Which isn't to say my fellow drummers (Hey Scott, hey Justin, if you're reading this) can't handle their own shit but they also have a bunch of acting to do, as do I of course but my parts pretty small, and this is one significant way I can contribute to our theatrical organism.
For my own work, this whole meditation relates back to my own inability to give myself credit. "But Mike", you might be thinking (I know who you are) "you give yourself tons of credit, all the time" and this is true. Maybe a better word is difficulty giving myself credit for what I know how to do, and what I've accomplished, because those arrogant tendencies are really just me overcompensating to be honest. I've been thinking a lot about personal quirks like that, since moving here I've met so many new people and have been figuring out how to best present myself from a place of honesty and self knowledge. And frankly, to take advantage of this fresh start.
Probably some of my new colleagues in New York are reading this! Hello friends! Welcome to my blog! If you want to read back, you can see the person I was earlier in my twenties. This is the person I am now. This is my effort to reflect, to pay tribute, and to remember.
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