Help!  We need somebody.  Help, not just anybody.  Help!  You know we need someone.  HEEEEEEEELP!

It’s a tough life as a person.  Sure, there is a whole lot of good out there.  Puppies.  Rainbows.  Children.  Milkshakes.  Sausages.  Flowers etc.  It’s important to remember that and focus on the good, but if we’re being honest:  it’s a tough life!  Trying to make a living and support yourself and your family in this day and age is difficult.  Gone are the days when you could have just one job and live comfortably on that single job.  Most of us require a series of contract jobs to make ends meet.  They don’t’ last forever, and then you find yourself looking for the next job.

Finding that next job can be hard.  Sometimes it is nigh impossible!  There was a time when you could open the want ads in your local paper to find work… but have you looked in the newspaper classifieds recently?  Let me save you thirty seconds:  there’s not much there.  So that leaves Craigs List… but you always run into the danger of crazy there.  So how about any of the sites you can pay to post your resume to and hope someone finds it there?  Or maybe the sites that you can pay to send you auditions?  Or how about the sites you can pay to find you work?  It seems you could spend more money LOOKING for work than you may actually make DOING work.

Sigh.  But what other alternative is there?  Surely you couldn’t ask a friend for help or take help when it is offered could you?  What about your pride?  Gasp.

Pride?  Swallow it.  Pride does nothing but get in the way of you eating and having a roof over your head.  There is nothing wrong with asking for and accepting help.  Maybe I’m just talking to myself here, but I have a suspicion that it is more than just me who needs to hear this.  DON’T BE AFRAID TO TAKE HELP!

It seems that just applying for work is no longer good enough.  You have to network, know people, ask favors, give favors and be willing to move in any direction to get work.  If you are too proud to take the help that is offered, you are tying both hands behind your back while your competition is getting an extra hand up.  Use the extra hands, man!

It’s hard to swallow your pride; I get it.  It’s hard to take a job that you consider beneath you.  If you are an artist, it’s hard to take a job waiting tables to make ends meet.  If you are a lawyer, it’s hard to take a job as a clerk to work your way up.  It hurts your pride to not be able to get a job in the field that you trained in (theatre degree anyone?)  But guess what?  You have to do it.  One day you will move up into your field, but until then you have to eat.  Help comes in all shapes, sizes and forms; so don’t ignore it when it comes.

The caveat here is that you need to be ready to pay back that help when the time comes.  Seek and give help… because we are all in this together.  So come on in for a hug… that’s it… feels nice doesn’t it.  Now… can I borrow a dollar? 

I will be out of town next week teaching at schools on the east coast (thanks to Salisbury U. and University of Mary Washington) so there will be no blog.  See you in a couple of weeks!

We all live in fear.

Foreboding isn’t it.  But it’s true!  As artists we all live in fear that we are going to miss out on that huge, career changing moment.  Yet it never fails that no matter how hard we try to always be available to everything, the second we decide to go out of town for a vacation, family event or last minute road trip is when our agent or manager calls with the biggest audition we’ve had in months.  If you want to get an audition… leave town.

It happens every time.  You plan a huge trip, one that you have been dying to take for years and years.  You tell all of your agents and managers that you will be out of town for two weeks at the end of September.  They have lots of advance notice since you told them two months out and reminded them two weeks before.  The DAY before you leave you will get a call from one of them trying to confirm you for an audition in two days… the exact time when you are in barthelona… oooooooo aren’t we fancy in this blog.

Of course, you have a minor meltdown and wonder if you should cancel your trip.  Is your agent going to take this as a sign of you not being committed to the business?  Is the casting director going to take it as a personal insult and never call you in again?  Have you torpedoed your career?

A couple of years ago, a very smart actor gave me a great piece of advice:  live your life.  If you spend all of your time worrying that you are going to miss that big call or that big audition or that big interview, you are never going to do anything.  You will sit by the phone all the time just waiting for that call.  Part of being an artist is experiencing the world, learning about different people, places and things.  That simply can’t be done sitting by your phone!  So go, DO!

Of course if you are constantly leaving town at the drop of a hat your agent or manager might have a problem with it, but everyone understands the need to get away for a bit or a family emergency.  Just make sure you tell them and give them notice before you go.  They will probably forget, but that’s to be expected, they are really busy people, cut them some slack, Jack.

I’m just as guilty of this as everyone… I’m an actor… I’m insecure.  Right after I got out of grad school, I was scheduled to go on a vacation with my wife’s family.  It had been planned and our departure date had been set for months.  At the end of our studies, we did a showcase for casting directors and agents in NY, Chicago and LA.  As it always happens, the day before we left I got a call from a theatre company in Chicago that I had been dying to work with for years… they wanted me to come in for an audition two days after we left. 

When I hung up the phone from the casting director after telling her I couldn’t make the audition… I was devastated.  I had blown my one shot with that company.  I was done.  The second stage of my career was over before it even started. 

The week after I got back from vacation… the company called me in to read for another role.  Because people understand that we all have a life to live.  If we are not living our life, we are not doing our job as artists.

Since I constantly need to remind myself, I figured it would be a good thing to remind all of you as well:  get out there and live your life.  Don’t live in fear, live as if you had an entire world to experience, because you do.  Your career will be there when you get back… even if you did miss out on one audition.  There will always be another.

Thanks to Bill Crounse (@billcrounse) for the idea for this blog.  Since I’m planning ahead, I can give a bit of a tease for the next topic:  we get by with a little help from our friends.  Great song.

VIP 0r #PayDay

Where we are right now and who we are right now has everything to do with where and who we were.  Those moments in the past shape everything we do on a day-to- day basis.  Dwelling on the past, however, can be a dangerous trap to get caught in.  I think I spent a good amount of time last week talking about living in the now, and I would never want to contradict myself… tee hee.  That being said, there is ONE thing from the past that we should dwell on… our VIP section.

We all have people who have influenced our lives through advice, friendship, teaching or just by being around when we needed them.  These are the people that make up our VIP section.  A few weeks ago I talked about one such person in my life:  Geoffrey Long.  So I thought this week I might take a few minutes and pound out some words about some another important person to me and what the concept of the VIP means to all of us.

When I was doing my undergraduate work in Music Theatre at Shenandoah Conservatory I transferred out between my freshman and sophomore year.  The papers were signed, the money paid and the transfer was in.  I was going to be attending Otterbein University to study Theatre Education.  The week before I was supposed to start attending Otterbein, I went back to SU to visit my friends one last time during their first week of classes.  While I was there, I had a chat with one of the professors at SU that I greatly admired, Dr. Thomas Albert. 

He told me, quite honestly and directly, that he thought I was making a huge mistake.  There are of course no guarantees in the entertainment industry, but he told me he thought I should stick it out and that I may have a shot.  Since I did have such a high level of respect for Dr. Albert, I went for a drive and began thinking hard about this decision I had already made.  Was he right?  Was I throwing this away when I shouldn’t be? 

After some serious soul searching I concluded that he WAS right and I had made a huge mistake.  Unfortunately, the die was already cast and the transfer had already gone through.  So I packed up and started the drive from Winchester, VA to Columbus, OH with the knowledge that I had made a mistake weighing heavily on my mind.  When I got to the city limits of Winchester… I couldn’t leave.  I pulled over and looked at the mountains, my mind going a mile a minute.  I couldn’t leave.  I didn’t know how, but I had to fix this mistake.

I just.  Couldn’t. Leave.

I pulled into a gas station and made the call to my parents and broke the news… that didn’t go well.  They were of course not happy, but they were supportive and helped me get my ducks in a row to transfer BACK to SU, which was no easy task.  The next Monday I started classes again at SU.  Quite honestly I wouldn’t be where I am not if it were not for Dr. Albert.  I wouldn’t be married to my amazing wife, I wouldn’t have my amazing daughter and the fascinating and entertaining life I now have would look extremely different… and I’ve really enjoyed my life.  So thank you Dr. Albert. I know I’ve said this to him before but I want to make sure that those people in my life who have had such a profound effect always know how much they mean to me.

So, gentle reader, what does this all mean to you? 

Chall-ange!  The gauntlet has been thrown!  I challenge you to identify someone in your life who has made a huge difference and let them know about it.  Recently Chris Hardwick (@nerdist) started a hashtag called PayDay.  Here is the idea:  every Friday call someone out on twitter and compliment them on their work or just their general them-ness.  This is a great idea, because we all have up days and down days and sometimes, just getting that piece of positivity coming our way can turn a down day into a up day.  So figure it out… who is your VIP?  Tweet them, facebook them, send them an email, a text or even a carrier pigeon to tell them how important they are to you… and #PayDay 

Let’s get into the habit of #PayDay.  It can only make the world a better place.

Moments

It’s now.  No, now.  No… now…  and… Now.

This phrase came to me in the middle of the night last week while I was feeding my beautiful daughter, Indigo.  That’s her name, not what I was feeding her.

Anywho, as I rolled it over and over in my head, I realized that it was a subtle reminder to myself to “enjoy my burrito” (thanks @nerdist).  A reminder to enjoy every moment as it was happening and not focus too hard or get too uptight about the past or future.  Those things have already or will eventually take care of themselves.  In any event, it made a very nice moment to ponder as I stared down into Indy’s peaceful, sleep eating face.  Her face wasn’t eating sleep; she was eating in her sleep.  Hence:  Sleep eating.  Man, you sure are literal today. 

But there is more to it than that. 

Today I had a great audition.  I won’t tell you what it was for, but I will say that it was at a casting directors office and that it was two commercials that were long and copy heavy.  Anyone who knows me, and who has worked with me, knows I believe in the “one-take” rule.  IE:  you should be able to read a commercial through to yourself a couple of times and then when you step to the mic, the result should be able to go on the air with no direction.  That’s how you know you are ready to compete and book in the acting business.  Direction is always helpful, and will make a good read even better, but you should be able to give a good read without it.  What this DOESN’T mean is that you read through without stumbling.  We are all human and we all stumble. 

So, after reading it through twice to myself in the waiting room, I walked up to the mic and proceeded to read through the spots.  I am happy to say that I made it through both of those copy heavy spots without stumbling… even the heavy lifting bits at the end.  When I finished, the casting director commented that I was the first person to be able to do that since she first started auditioning people at 10 AM in the morning (it was now 2:00).  “Not only that,” she stated “but those were great reads!”

The pat on the back is nice, but we all know what matters is if I book the job or not… and I have no idea if I did or didn’t.  The spot doesn’t book for a couple of weeks.  But as I walked out of her office, I was reminded of that night last week, enjoying the moment of feeding my daughter.  I lived in the moment.  I walked up to the mic and followed the moment wherever it took me, I didn’t think about what I had just said and whether I had said it right or not, I didn’t think about the next moment and what I wanted to do with it, I only dealt with the moment I had and the words that were coming out of my mouth. 

Often, when we are on camera, stage or mic, we are constantly judging ourselves, the script, our partner or just the overall situation.  This is a surefire way to trip yourself up.  We all do it, but none of us should.  When I am directing someone I can always tell when he or she is thinking about the last thing they did/said.   Something won’t sound present and when I ask what happened at that moment, 90% of the time the answer is:  “I was thinking I might have stumbled on that last moment.”  Whether you did or didn’t isn’t important, the only thing that matters is THIS moment that is happening RIGHT NOW. 

Living with a theatre degree (or as an artist in general) makes it extra hard to live this way.  Most of the time we don’t have “regular jobs” that ensure we get to eat next week.  And if we go out into the workforce to try to find one of those “regular jobs”, we hold experiences and job skills that don’t even ensure we CAN find one of those.  That’s scary.  Believe me, I know.  I’ve been there, I am there and I will be there again.  But we can only live in and make the best of the moment we are given right now.  So… what are we going to do with that moment?

It’s now.  No, now.  No… now… and… Now.

If you can’t play by the rules… change the rules.

OK, this is gonna be a long one so strap in.

Before I started teaching, writing and directing, I was in a tough space.  As it says in the header above me, being an adult with not one but TWO degrees in Theatre makes me uniquely qualified and also not qualified at all.  I was in a place in my career where things had stagnated.  I was doing a lot of VO auditions and booking some here and there, auditioning for on-camera work and booking low to no pay jobs every once in awhile and to make ends meet I was working at a local coffee shop.  I was tired, frustrated and unsure what to do to make the future look a little brighter.  I had always had a desire to teach but had no idea how to go about it.  In fact, I had just gone through an unsuccessful round of applications to universities as a teacher.   It seemed that schools weren’t interested in someone who had a semi-successful career in the performing arts; they were only interested in someone who had prior collegiate teaching experience.  Harrumph.

So it was at Disneyland that I related my problems to one of my best friends:  Mr. Geoffrey Long.  Not only is Geoff the smartest person I know, he is a rock star.  Seriously.  In his field (transmedia storytelling, writing, world building etc.) there is hardly a soul who doesn’t know his work.  Currently he is working at the Annenberg Lab at USC, but at the time he was working at Microsoft Game Studios.  Seek out his website (www.geoffreylong.com) and follow him on twitter (@geoffreylong), you’ll be glad you did.

In any event, he gave me the best advice I have ever received:  “If you can’t play by the rules… change the rules.” 

To be fair, at first I dismissed the advice as nothing more than a nice sounding platitude.  Change the rules?  I can’t change the rules; I can’t even get in the game!  How could I possibly change the rules to a game that no one will let me play?!?  Yet the more I tried to dismiss that thought, the louder it kept rolling around in my head.  “Change the rules.”  What did that even mean?  More specifically, what did it mean for me?  The more I thought about it, the more it started to take shape in my mind and give me some guidance.

“Ok,” I thought to myself “if they don’t think that having success as an actor is good enough to teach at a university maybe they will be more interested if I start teaching on the professional level.” 

So that’s exactly what I did.  I started coaching people on VO privately, and some of those clients, became interested in monologue coaching as well.  Before long, I was teaching more and more and had garnered myself a reputation as a good coach.  Soon, one of my students asked if I would be interested in making their VO demo.  I told them that I had never done it before, but if they would be willing to give me a chance, I would love to give it a try. 

So we cut a demo… and they got signed right out of the gate.  Before long, I had a reputation as a solid and affordable demo producer.  Meanwhile, I was teaching more and more and started developing my own approach to VO:  Commercial Theory. 

I started taking notes on the specifics of Commercial Theory and how it related to Shakespeare First Folio technique and the acting theories of Stanislavski and Chekhov.  This led me to remember my Viewpoints training from my graduate work at DePaul University and how, using Viewpoints, Suzuki and Commedia Dell’Arte exercises, I had developed the bulk of my animation voice stable.  This information started showing up in my private coaching sessions.

Before too long, I had attracted the attention of one Matthew Jayson (http://matthewjay.net/, @mattjay_son) who ran a weekly VO workout group in Studio City.  He approached me to come in to his workout group and lead the class.  I did this several times before we noticed that we shared a very similar approach to VO work, so we decided to partner up our separate teaching endeavors and form The VO Academy (www.theVOAcademy.com).  Through the VO Academy we have offered weekly workouts, beginning VO classes, Viewpoints intensives, meet the pros nights, one-on-one instruction and demo production services. 

Soon, I was contacted by Mary Weiss (www.mariweiss.com) at the SAG Conservatory to come and teach an acting for the mic class.  Which I did, and was then asked to teach another one, and then to teach at their summer intensive.  Huzzah!  My teaching resume was growing… and growing…

One of the demos I made was for a gentleman named Tom Crehan (www.facebook.com/killercopy), he was tapped to narrate the new HGTV show “You Live In What?” and he used my home studio to record the sessions.  After two sessions with the producer on a phone patch, I was asked to serve as the VO director for the show… which I have now been doing for three seasons.  I was also asked by my wife’s improv group ADD (www.comedyADD.com) to direct their newest pilot “Book Group” that is designed to pitch to Amazon.  Directing resume growing…

While I was doing all of this directing, teaching and note taking, I decided I should do something with all of those notes.  So I started work on my book:  Starting Your Career In Voice-Overs (www.StartingYourCareerInVoiceOvers.com.)  Originally entitled “From Shakespeare to Soap Flakes:  Commercial Theory and Voice Over” it focused mainly on the First Folio technique aspects of the Theory.  I approached several publishers and quickly heard back from Allworth Press.  They loved the book and the concept and were interested in publishing it.  But they thought I had more to say.  They asked if I could write a second half to the book that expanded on the theory and discussed how to get started in the world of VO.  I obliged and the new incarnation needed a new title:  “Starting Your Career In Voice-Overs."  The book comes out on November 4^th.  Resume continuing to grow…

As a result of the book, I was contacted by a friend of mine from my undergraduate work, Mary-Tyler Upshaw (@blogfilledlife), who is teaching at Salisbury University.  She asked if I would be interested in coming and giving a masterclass in VO at Salisbury and possibly some other universities in the area.  She reached out to some contacts at those universities and I had another class lined up.  I now had university level teaching on my resume, a published book, directing credits and years of professional level teaching. 

Meanwhile, my performance career also benefited.  Because I was not so focused on booking the next job and worrying about not booking that job (see previous blog post), I started booking more.  I had so many things going on that I didn’t obsess over auditions… and booked the job as the narrator of the hit syndicated show “Divorce Court.”  During my run as narrator (which was two years as they are revamping the show in the new season) the show saw it’s highest ratings ever, and was even nominated for a Daytime Emmy.  I also ended up in GTAV as well as several commercials, one of which was nominated for a Radio Mercury award for Radio Commercial of the Year.  Resume, resume, resume.

I’m not bragging, I swear.  This is all about you and how you can do the exact same thing.  Just listen to good ol’ Geoffrey Long.

You see, I credit Geoffrey Long with all of this, thanks to his life changing advice.  The “rules” said I couldn’t get teaching experience without getting a teaching job… which makes no sense.  The “rules” said that having a successful acting career wasn’t enough to teach young actors how to have a successful acting career… which makes no sense.  So I told the “rules” to take a walk and I changed them.  I believe I am now in a much better position than I was 3 years ago to get my foot in the door at a university.

So what does this mean to you gentle reader?  I don’t know exactly.  Changing the “rules” means something different for everyone in every field.  I can’t tell you what path you will take, but I can tell you that doors are never locked just because the “rules” tell you they are.  Figure out what it is that you want out of life, figure out the “rules” to that thing and change them, pick that lock.  It’s your life and this here is ‘Murica… you can do and be anything you want.  So go, do and be.