Acting Days (Seriously, I need a better title)

Oops! I missed yesterday (it was an acting-related day). In my defense, I got home late, was exhausted, and left early.

I started off Monday with my Stagecraft homework. Stagecraft class is where I learn about - stagecraft. Making sets, props, floors, and backgrounds for the various plays at COC (They're doing Equus, The Heidi Chronicles, and New Works this semester). It's pretty fun - painting, cutting wood, drilling. I'm also learning about scenic drawings, a bit of architecture, which fascinates me. This homework (really the first of the semester) involves drawing the area outside the shop to scale on an 11 by 17 inch page. It's about 90 by 50 ft with a few doors and loading docks. Monday, I and another student measured it, so sometime before two Fridays from now, I'll do the drawing.

My second stop on Monday was my business class - that headshot I mentioned Sunday? I brought that into class, went through some sample breakdowns the teacher brought, and (everyone did this) in front of class, told them the breakdown, showed them the picture, and got feedback on whether they matched or not. Then, she brought in a guest speaker, one of her acting friends (whose name escapes me at the moment) to talk to us. He's been working for twenty-five years and makes a living on it, so it was neat. Some things I already knew - like how your headshots should look like you, and how you should move on after an audition without fussing about whether you got it or not.

Then, that night, it was rehearsal for New Works. They're still doing readings and second revisions of the plays, so nothing much is going on yet. I'm not sure exactly how many short plays there are - I'll let ya'll know when I know. (The play goes from April 28th to May 1st, btw. If you're interested.)

Okay! Now that I'm all caught up, here's today's news. Voice class is Tuesdays and Thursdays. It's not a singing class, it's just basic 'how-to' on using your voice. Very basic. I know some students are bored, but it's doing wonders for me. She spent the first month or so teaching us some stretching exercises to relax our bodies, not using our throat to make sound, and getting our voices into the front of our face (the 'mask', I think that's called). I can actually feel the vibrations there. Now she's working on moving our voice into our chest and nasal cavities. The chest isn't too hard; I'm starting to get that one. But the nasal's really hard for me. It's funny; I can memorize super-fast and I articulate pretty well, but I've spent the last twenty-plus years of my life breathing backwards and speaking from my throat.

After that, it was a quick lunch and then I was off to work (sounds like some sort of song) at Starcraft. I called a client of hers to make an appointment (evils! evils! phones are evil!~) and went through a couple of breakdowns. Breakdowns (I mentioned those earlier, and I don't think I've ever explained them. Oops!) are where a casting director has the type of job, what the name of the project is, what union or not it is, the different parts they're looking to cast, and what sort of people they're looking for. So, I click on the part, do a search (male or female and age range) on the clients to find matches. Once I find someone that I think would be a good match, I look through their pictures (they've got anywhere from six to fifteen) to find the right look that would best match the part. From there, after everyone's selected for all the parts, the owner checks my work (sometimes I get it down just right, but often she deselects actors or changes pictures) and then it gets sent off to the casting directors. Today, I only did a couple - almost nothing came in while I was there.

Wow, that was long (cause I missed a day :D)