Just wanted to let everyone know that I'm moving along...
the acting ingénue on wordpress!
Hope to see you there!
...but she was no longer there!
16 bars of an uptempo, 16 bars of a ballad.
I had another audition today! I have yet to find out if it went well or not. I mean, I was there and everything, but I haven't gotten word about callbacks one way or the other yet.
My (least) favorite part of the audition process is that they always want to hear 16 bars of an uptempo and 16 bars of a ballad in the style of [show you are auditioning for] but not from [show you are auditioning for]. I always feel as though I'll lose points for picking something that isn't quite in the style that they're looking for! Like, "you can't even recognize musical styles! clearly you are not cut out for this!"
I guess part of my problem is that I don't have a huge repertoire at the moment. That's part of what I want to work on with MP - having an uptempo song and a ballad for any such occasion. Legit musicals, Sondheim shows, Gilbert & Sullivan, pop-rock musicals... Although, if I may be frank, I don't have a voice that's suited to pop-rock musicals. (Which is what I auditioned for today!)
In any case, the audition seemed to go well. I had to psych myself up a little bit as I waited outside and listened to ten thousand girls belting as high as they can. ;) It was just singing the two pieces and then we'll call you tomorrow if we want you to come back tomorrow, so I guess I will wait and see!
courtesy is a lady's armor.
So yesterday, I had to set up a packet consisting of a headshot, resume and cover letter to send to a casting director to get an audition. I used a giant (seriously) padded mailer and my Mum told me to put a piece of cardboard in it and write DO NOT BEND on it so that my materials didn't get wrecked in the mail.
I hesitated before I could write "DO NOT BEND" on my mailer. All I could think was that I would be inconveniencing some postal worker and that it didn't really matter if it got bent in the mail, did it? I didn't want them to think I was some demanding jerk, wanting my mail to be treated differently.
And then I stopped myself and thought "really, j? Really? This is supposed to be what you want to do with your life. This is an audition you really, really want to get. You seriously think people will think you're a jerk for writing 'DO NOT BEND' on something? And even if they do, isn't getting your information to that casting director more important? Why bother sending it if you clearly don't have any pride or confidence in yourself?"
And then I thought to myself, "Self, you are correct." And I took a red marker and wrote on my mailer:
Because I am nothing if not polite.
dramatis personae
When I started writing here to record my impressions and my progress in trying to become a working actress, I just sort of jumped in with two feet. Which is, frankly, unlike me - especially in regards to projects of the writing or journaling sort. I'm the type that likes to have everything laid out neatly beforehand; a theme, a layout, tags, code names (yes, code names!) and ideas about what to write. And an introduction post, which I will belatedly start now!
dramatis personae
j, the acting ingénue - me! the tentatively-aspiring actress that writes this blog. (As an aside, I've thought to go by bluejay on this blog because it was a childhood nickname, blue is my favorite color, and I probably sound most like a bluejay when I sing (screechy).) (As another aside, I love parentheses.)
I live in Northern Massachusetts, as I have all my life, and I am definitely a Northern girl. ♥ Aside from singing and acting and performing, I am an avid bibliophile & love to read just about everything. I love to write - fiction as well as journaling of all kinds. I also enjoy drawing, photography, all things French, libraries and bookstores, beauty blogs ♥! (and yes, makeup and fashion!), and lots of other things that aren't pertinent to this blog. :D
MP - My singing teacher, who is tiny and British and adorable and sings like Julie Andrews. The MP stands for Mary Poppins, for the aforementioned reasons and also because I think she is secretly magical.
PC - My musical genius ex-boyfriend (and now good-friend). PC stands for Prince Charming, since he has always compared me to Disney Princesses, both jokingly and not-so-jokingly.
D - My BFF and platonic soulmate. (Here is her awesome blog!) D is the first letter of her first name. I wanted to call her SO for Scarlett O'Hara, but since SO usually stands for Significant Other people might get confused. (D&D refers to D and her fiancé, whose name also begins with D. This is very original of me, I know!)
L - One of my closest friends. L is both the first letter of her first name and the first letter of "Ladybug," my nickname for her. She is my hipster friend and Boston friend who I get to see when I have auditions in the city. She also plays the ukulele!
Regarding people that I'm in shows with, for the most part I will call them by their character's name simply because I don't go around disclosing that I'm writing about them on the internet. I try not to get too personal, but for someone that compares herself to others too much, other people tend to come up. (Is that redundant?)
Hopefully this is a bit helpful and makes my posts a bit more decipherable! Now if I can figure out how to make this a sticky post...
why'd I pick these shoes? why'd I pick this song?
...I think I just accidentally published this post as a blank. Oops.
So, last night's callback didn't go as well as I would have hoped. I didn't get called back for the part I really wanted, so I sort of mentally checked out about halfway through the callback process. I'd already decided that if I didn't get the part I really, really wanted that I wouldn't do the show - it's just too inconvenient to get to and from the place for a part I would be less than happy with. I did get asked to join the ensemble, which is great because it was a surprisingly competitive audition process, but I know I won't be able to commit to it.
Thankfully, I'm looking at it as more audition experience, which is always welcome! Auditioning is probably the scariest part of acting for me, and acting can sometimes go some scary places!
I do have a couple more hopeful auditions in the next few weeks, so I'm looking forward to those!
I'm climbing uphill, daddy. climbing uphill.
As I started this blog with the intention of chronicling my pursuit of an acting career (however small the steps I'm taking at the moment) (hey, at least I'm taking some steps?), I knew at some point I would have to talk about auditioning. I had my first audition since I started this blog tonight, so I figure now is a good time to talk about it as any!
I started off this paragraph with "I hate auditioning," but frankly, that's not true. I actually like auditioning - for straight plays. Auditioning for musicals is tougher for me, considering my singing anxiety. My intention at this point in life is to go on as many auditions as I can - for things that I might not even really want to do - just to get the experience of standing up in front of people I've never seen before and acting and singing for them. It's all very well and good to get established within a group of people, but I've done that before and I always end up staying there longer than I ought to, safe and comfortable, knowing that they know what I can do and not having to really prove it anymore. But that's no way to improve.
For me, predictably, singing is the hardest part. Tonight's audition was for a musical, and they had us come in and learn some of the music and sing it for them. I love - love! - cold readings (which we also did). But cold singing? Is more difficult for me. Way more difficult. I don't think I've ever gone to an audition where I had to cold-sing before.
Tonight's audition was interesting. I was a little nervous, as I believe it's a college group, and I definitely felt...old? Older than everyone else, anyway. They taught the girls a couple of songs, one in the higher range and another in the lower range, from the show. They gave us an aside to read and paired us up with one other girl and a guy to practice reading. And then they had us sing whichever song we wanted to sing and read the aside.
The two people I was paired up with were funny and laid-back, which was nice. My singing wasn't terrible - I sang the higher song - and my reading went well, considering it wasn't an aside for a character I wanted to audition for. (We all got the same aside.) The director was very considerate and chatted with me how to get to the space from the T and about the fact that I wouldn't be the oldest person in the show (haha) if I got in.
And tonight when I got home I had an email from them saying they wanted me to come to callbacks! :D So that's exciting. I have to decide if I really want to go into Boston for an unpaid show, if I do get in - though I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. :D
"get out of your own head. get out of your own way."
Sometimes it amazes me how things can come up over and over and over and over (and over) again when the Universe wants to teach you a lesson. I really do believe that this sort of thing happens when you are not paying attention to whatever lesson you're supposed to be learning; eventually the words get so deafening that you can't ignore it (or be ignorant of it) anymore.
In the past few weeks, the phrase "get out of your own head/get out of your own way" has come up repeatedly. I've had my singing teacher and director for ItW flat out say it to me. I saw The King's Speech (which I loved, by the way - Colin Firth deserved that GG he won for it!), which had a similar lesson. Not to mention the conversation I had with PC about it not that long ago.
It's not exactly a secret that I have this issue.
It's interesting, I've found this post to be the hardest one to write so far. I started writing it before tech week started, and now it's the Wednesday after the show and I'm still sort of stumped as to how to continue. Maybe it's because I don't know how to get enough space between me and this subject, it's obviously something that I struggle with and am having trouble distancing myself from.
I guess yesterday and the day before would be perfect examples of how I can't get out of my own head or my own way. Monday, I had something as simple and commonplace as getting lost deter me from doing something I actually wanted to do. Yesterday, I woke up feeling oversensitive in general, had a couple of things hurt my already raw feelings, couldn't keep it together at work long enough to do any extra hours (I really do need the money), and then got in a car accident on the way home and decided against going to an audition I really wanted to go to.
Now, the accident wasn't serious, but I still ended up in my second snowbank in less than a week. My car is going to need to be fixed. I could have made it to the audition, but instead I curled up in my bed and slept from 5:30 to 11:30. Because instead of sucking it up and going, I just wanted to curl up into a ball and sleep for days.
My singing is never up to the standards I want it to be because I can't get out of my own head. As soon as I start feeling the tiniest bit shaky or underconfident, I can hear it in my voice - and I'm sure anyone listening can, too. And then that starts the cycle: everyone can hear that I'm not any good, therefore they all know that I'm just pretending and what business do I have singing in front of people anyway? And so on and so forth until I'm a shaky little wreck who can barely squeak out her notes. It's terrible.
MP put it best, I think, when she said, "you have to not care so much." I'm too much inside my head at all times, and I don't let the love of it come through, just the anxiety that someone is listening to me. I hope that with practice that will get better, will instill somewhat more confidence in me.
I kept insisting during the last week of the show, when people were talking about the shows they've done and parts they've played and auditions coming up, that "I'm not a singer!" Because I don't think of myself that way. Maybe I need to own that too, as PC would say, and then I'll have to live up to my own promises?
That's the issue: I'm not really sure what to do about that. How do I get out of my own head (or way) when that's where I live? If that's the only way I know how to think? I understand the lesson, at least intellectually. I just don't know how to enact it, how to start doing what the universe is telling me. Do I have to fake it until I believe it? Am I some Trilby that needs her Svengali to hypnotize her uncouth tone-deaf self into a confident diva? (If so, where do I even find one of those...?) I just don't know.