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How Showcases Can Kill Your Acting Career Before it Even Begins
The problem with the actor showcase is that it perpetuates the same disempowering fantasy that we’ve been told is true for all of us: get an agent or manager, begin auditioning immediately, book a few theatrical shows, move onto ongoing film and television projects, and watch your acting career flourish.
Acting is Just a Job. Here’s Why That’s Empowering.
In my 10 years in this industry, I have learned (the very hard way) to treat what I do as a profession, not as some nebulous or mystical calling that I must abandon the moment inspiration runs dry. And rather than discouraging me, this realization that I am running a money-making creative enterprise, with good days and bad, has only made me work harder.
Want to be a Working Actor? Just Do this One Thing
Forget about all those expensive courses, activating frameworks, inspirational bootcamps, and acting seminars. As somebody who offers many of these resources, I’m here to say there’s no such thing as a silver bullet to make your acting life easy. There’s really only one thing you need to do in order to become a working actor.
Understanding the Acting Industry
Understanding the acting industry is absolutely a must, but you have to understand the right things...namely how it all works. It’s not an immensely complicated web of bureaucracy and red tape, it’s just about people.
Core Belief #4: You Have the Power
We love actors, obviously. We are both actors and have been around actors our whole lives. Though actors are creative beings, sadly that creativity doesn’t translate into how they run their business. Actors, who have such powerful imaginations, often lack a sense of scope when it comes to their careers.
Core Belief #3: Give.
When we talk to many of our actor clients about “getting better at their business,” whether by effective marketing or cultivating strong networking skills, something interesting happens: they they get incredibly negative and judgemental of the work we are doing. They associate targeted and strategic work on their business with being anti-artists, being false or untrue. But, there is another way.
Core Belief #2: Don’t Take it Personally.
“It’s not personal, it’s business.” How does that make you feel as an actor? Some of you may be groaning at your screen, others may be nodding in half-hearted agreement, and others yet may be throwing their device at the wall and plotting our downfall.
Core Belief #1: An Actor is an Entrepreneur
A few cultural dinosaurs remain in our collective psyches, mainly the idea of the “starving artist” and the eventual “big break.” However, embracing your responsibility as a creative business owner is essential to gaining a competitive edge and therefore ensuring you can do this for the rest of your life.
How Hard is it to Become an Actor?
This question comes up for many of our clients. They realize that their talent, their agents, what school they went to, their collective hopes and dreams are simply not enough. They then begin to understand what it really takes to “make it” in this business.
Is A Career In Acting Worth It?
Forget about international stardom; financial security and artistic fulfillment alone are difficult to manifest as an actor. To be a working and happy making a stable living is extraordinary for us, and for 100% of our clients, that’s what they long for.
How to Really Prepare for an Actor Showcase.
From the second you started school, you heard about the seemingly all important senior showcase. But the lack of preparedness students have going into these unique opportunities basically make them a big waste of time.
The “Bad” of Becoming an Actor.
Frankly, the mostly negative aspects of this job aren’t as sexy as “too much paparazzi” or the “starving yet fulfilled artist existence.”