Oh but that was in the past, when I thought that I could just waltz around town going to one audition every three weeks, and some casting director would inevitably take me under his wing and coach me into the next Patti LuPone.
THIS year however, I spent the day before ActorFest in Long Island seeing my good friend Evan as Franz in "The Producers" at Theatre Three in Port Jefferson. The train home got me into Penn Station at 2am, which got me home to Queens at 3:30am. I spent some time printing and cutting my resumes, and making sure I had absolutely everything I needed before getting dressed in the outfit I planned to wear to ActorFest, and going to sleep at about 4:45am.
When my alarm went off at 7:30am, I was up. Because this year I'd spent $92, and I had three workshops waiting for me at the Hammerstein Ballroom.
Got there at 9, which is when it technically started. My first class wasn't until 10am, so I figured I'd have a little time just in case there was a line to get in.
Holy Hell, was there a line. It stretched from the entrance on 34th between 8th and 9th, halfway down 34th street, all the way down 8th avenue and halfway down 35th Street as well. Thankfully I ran into a couple of current students at my college, so at least I had someone to stand with.
At 9:45am people started to come down the line pulling out the people who had 10am classes. That was really cool of them. I mean, it was my fault for not anticipating how many people would be there, they could have easily just let us miss our classes. Kudos. And I don't care how many people want to complain about it being disorganized, there must have been a thousand people on line outside at 9:45, let alone the people who were already inside. You try organizing that many people anywhere outside of Nazi Germany.
My first class was a voiceover workshop. Voiceover has just recently occured to me as a career path. There's good money there, and I enjoy doing voices, so I figured I might as well learn some more about it. There was a great panel, including Valerie Smaldone, who is the woman who makes the, "This is Seth McFarlane's third nomination and first win for 'Family Guy'" announcements at the Emmys.
Kind of make me not want to do voiceover anymore. Like most areas of acting, it's not something you do just on a whim. If you're not 100% dedicated to making it as a voiceover artist, then you shouldn't bother. Because apparently it's really competetive. And there's not much of a market for animation in New York. It's mostly L.A. for the kind of voice stuff I would want to do.
Oh well. Informative, to say the least.
Next up was, "The Casting Director's Master Class: On Screen with Todd Thaler." Todd Thaler is a casting director for film and tv. He was one of the only casting directors who came to the showcase my graduating class put on at the end of our senior year. First moment he came in he sat down on the back of his chair with his feat on the seat adorable.
I got the last seat in the first row. Feeling pretty good about, it. I wanted to sit in the front so that i could hear and see everything and be easily heard and seen. And then some Too Cool For School guy in a leather jacket takes a chair from the wall and plops in down right in front of me. I was PISSED. I was like, "Who the hell is this asshole? You can't just make your own row!" Who the hell does this guy think he is? And then he turned his head, and he was Jim Caviezel.
Oh...
Um... carry on.
An interesting thing about Todd Thaler: He's more interested in the person than the actor. Apparently he cast "The Professional" by hvaing conversations with the actors auditioning, and sending tapes to the director. None of them actually did any monologues. Luc Besson got the tapes and cast the actors based on the kind of behavior they showed in the interviews. He said that the ones who got cast were the ones who were the most themselves, and the least self-conscious about being on camera.
He picked some names out of a hat and had the people do a few lines of a monologue. I got picked, which was awesome. Didn't get tooo much feedback, but it was still fun!
After that I had two hour to walk around the ballroom, which was full of booths and tables with classes and headshot photogoraphers. Nearly everyone was offering some kind of deal and holding a raffle for something free. I met some teachers and put my name on some mailing lists and met up with a few more people that I knew.
The amount of people there was insane:
I got a ton of free stuff, most of which I haven't even looked through yet. It's all in my complimentary ActorFest tote bag on my kitchen table.
My last workshop was a cold-reading workshop, which was the closest I came to taking an actual acting class while I was there. The panel was made up of five top acting teachers, and they did the same, name-out-of-a-hat thing and had people do scenes and monologues. This time I didn't get picked, but I learned quite a lot from the feedback they were giving.
Got out around 5:30 and started to crash, since I'd gotten so little sleep and really hadn't eaten since breakfast. Stopped briefly to drop whatever headshots I had left in some of the casting director drop-boxes, and then I headed home, my head full of knowledge and my heart full of joy.
Fell asleep watching The Office at around 7:30 and I didn't wake up until noon.
Good day.
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