This past weekend, in addition to my daughter’s 4th birthday, I auditioned for the Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s production of Macbeth which will go up this summer. I auditioned with Bollingbroke’s “Go to the rude ribs of that ancient castle” monologue from Richard II. This was my second Bollingbroke monologue for a Shakespeare show. Anyway, callbacks are this weekend and I’m happy to report that I’ve been called back for Macduff!

Ross also auditioned. I’ll let him write a post about his own experiences.

I’ll let you know what happens after this coming weekend. Good vibes sent in the direction of Middle Tennessee are appreciated!

I’m sitting in my hotel room at the Southeastern Theatre Conference in Orlando, Florida after a rather exciting day of theatre workshops and seeing old friends (or should I say “friends from the old days” so as not to hurt anyone’s feelings?). I presented two workshops today, the first of which came as kind of a surprise since I found out I was doing it late yesterday afternoon. It was a panel discussion geared toward high school students making the transition from high school to a university theatre program. I sat on a panel with Jim Stacy from Louisiana State University Alexandria, Chet Longley from University of South Carolina Aiken and my collegue from Middle Tennessee State University, Kyle Zimmerman. The workshop was based around an article that Professor Stacy had written for an issue of Southern Theatre magazine that sought to help dispell some of the myths some high school students have about university theatre programs. It was a lively discussion and was well attended by high school students and faculty members as well as some current university students.

Next, came my workshop with our good buddy John Mauldin (see the bio links to the right) that was designed to help high school juniors and seniors prepare their university theatre program auditions. After a little screw up with our data projector not having been delivered on time to the conference room, we got our “lecture” portion of the workshop out of the way and opened the floor up to some of the students in attendance to showcase their audition pieces and hear our responses. My only regret is that we didn’t have more time to see more pieces. John and I are already talking about offering the same workshop again next year and requesting a longer time slot. The lecture is important–especially for students who might not be getting that information from their high school drama teachers. As we’ve discussed here before, some high school programs are nothing more than an English teacher’s chance to put on a show or two in the school’s “cafetorium”. Students who are serious about theatre coming from those programs might not get this information otherwise. In the past, there hasn’t been a great deal of workshops or information for high school students as part of the Conference, but thankfully that seems to be changing a bit.

For those of you who were in the “Auditioning for a University Theatre Program” workshop, I promised you that a version of our PowerPoint presentation would be available on this website. Be aware that you will need to have the Acrobat Reader loaded on your computer to access this file. It’s a free download.  For more information about John and I, check out our bio pages in the list of links to the right. Welcome to the site! Feel free to look around and read some of the other postings. Oh yeah, check out the Green Room, too! So far, there hasn’t been a whole lot of action going on over there, but hopefully, you can help get things started!

Tomorrow, three of my collegues from MTSU and I are presenting a workshop entitled “Melodramatic Improvisation OR The Long and The Short of It”. The workshop is the brainchild of Professor Zimmerman. Perhaps I can get him on here to explain it a bit further. Still, it should prove to be a fun workshop. I probably won’t be posting about it immediately afterwards because I’ve got to catch my flight back to Nashville, but be on the lookout…

Today was my day for a rare Sunday morning audition. The good thing is that for this audition, I actually had a complete set of sides and was able to see some possibilities of what they might be looking for and how I might possibly fit into this gig. Not only that, but I actually was able to read with another actor who was auditioning as well. For me, anyway, that has been a rarity indeed. Rather than just reading with the casting director, or reading directly into the camera (which I need much more experience with), I was able to play off of someone.

I also didn’t get lost in Nashville this time!

Oh yeah, the audition was for Kim Petrosky Casting again (my second one for her in less than a month).

So, I went out for a regional car insurance commercial today. Not much to it, you know. Stand up say your line, take some direction on camera and “next”. Pretty standard stuff.

I learned my lesson to not place all of my trust in MapQuest today. I was driving through downtown Nashville (a place with which I am only vaguely familiar) trying to get my directions off my PDA while trying to dodge the dudes who decided that today was the best day to fill in the smallest of potholes on I-40. Traffic would just suddenly come to a crushing standstill.

Anyway, I made it to my audition on time and not too flustered. Everything went fine, but I just had to share the lesson learned today. Don’t completely trust MapQuest…just like the disclaimer says. Use those as a basis, but try to get some better directions from someone else to help you along.

Oh yeah, I also need to get some new headshots. I had some made last year, but they are just not right for the Nashville market. Commercial shots here are starting to trend toward color, not-quite-three-quarter type things. It goes against every bit of theatrical training I’ve had about getting headshots, but if you can’t trust your agent’s advice in this business, who’s can you trust, right? I’m just glad they are tax-deductible.

Hmmm…taxes and the working actor…might be a good subject for another post around tax time…

Hi all:

First time blogger, John, here. I’m a teaching cohort of Tee and went to school with Ross. Until I get a handle on this whole “blogging” thing, I will follow Strunk & White’s age old axiom of “omitting needless words”. So here it goes…

I am currently a member of a professional Improv troupe in Nashville called Ideaprov. The troupe is basing its improv on the Chicago style ala Second City, etc. We are currently working on a hybrid format show entitled How We First Met . I say hybrid because it blends short form (traditional theatre games) with a touch of long form (The Harold). The show was created by Jill Bourque…to give credit where credit is due. It is a fascinating theatre piece because we interview couples and then re-create their story thru improvised scenes and songs.

My question is this: Is Improv or more specifically long-form Improv…Theatre? To my mind, I would say yes; however, there seems to be a strong aversion to equating Improv with Theatre. I was wondering why that would be. Improv has definitely been a viable part of Theatre for a long time. Commedia Del Arte as an example. It is a very important teaching tool for actors, I use it in my classes a lot. Long-form stresses listening & responding, playing off your impulses and strong character development. These are all good qualities to have as an actor, right?

So where’s the beef? Why is it that Improv cannot be “real” Theatre? A phrase I have heard uttered by many of the puritans of the stage. The Italians performed it…ah, but they used stock characters, masks, and enacted known scenarios. Yet there are improv artists like Jill Bourque who are working out of a formated context, so I don’t know if that argument can hold water.

The proof is in the pudding (to keep running with food metaphors). When Improv is done well it has high artistic merit and when it is bad it is just plain bad. But those of us that have done Working will know that Theatre can also be bad.

So what are your thoughts? Can Improv reach a level of respect that Theatre has? Is it a viable art form or just condemned to the confines of the acting studio?

’til next time,

John

I had my first commercial audition since being “back in the saddle again” on Thursday afternoon last week. It was with Kim Petrasky which was nice. I hadn’t seen her in a number of years. She actually cast me as an extra in my first ever on-camera job a million years ago. We had a little moment of reminiscence and then got on with the audition. After nearly two years of being out of the loop, it felt great to be back in front of a camera again…even if it was only for an audition. I was afraid that I might have been a little rusty and, I must admit, there was a little bit of anxiety going in, but those are the breaks.

The lesson there is that acting is like working out. If you don’t use your acting “muscles” at every opportunity you can, those muscles will atrophy. I’m just glad I didn’t wait any longer to really get going again. If you got into (or are thinking about getting into) this business, you’d better make damn sure you love it, because it’s a hard one. But, then again, nothing worth doing in life is ever easy is it? It’s just not for most people.

Tom Stoppard had it right. Actors are truly the opposite of people.

In other news, I’m on campus today doing the interview portion of the auditions for the Tennessee Governor’s School of the Arts. Since I’m not from Tennessee originally, I never got a chance to take part in it, but I do know that it’s a good thing. It’s a statewide summer fine arts (theatre, music, visual arts, etc.) camp for high school students and the quality of the work (at least so far) seems very encouraging. It’s something you don’t ever hear too much about, but I’m glad that Tennessee has not given in and cancelled this very worthwhile project in the light of their recent budget problems. The Governor’s School remains strong. It’s a good feeling.

Okay.  I have a little confession to make.  I have been taking most of the last two years off from my professional acting career.  After my son was born, my wife and I were going through some tough times and it just made sense to put everything else on hold.  Get ourselves re-set to take on life and now things are finally starting to happen in that direction again.

So, I can finally say that I’m getting “back in the saddle”!  I have an interview with a union signatory agent in Nashville on Monday morning, so I’m hoping that will get my face back in front of the camera again!  I’m even starting my workout program back up to shed this “baby weight” that I’ve put on since the birth of my son (I didn’t actually give birth to him, my wife did…).

Not only that, but I’ve decided to audition for the Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s production of The Scottish Play.  That happens later in the Spring, but be on the lookout for information about that right here.

In the meantime, the auditions for Waiting for Lefty happen in less than a week and I’m excited to get back in front of a cast to produce a show, too.  We have some good kids here and I’m excited to be part of it!

More news later!

Thought I’d talk for a little bit about my newest foray into the acting world, that of teacher. I’m teaching an acting class at a local college. Not only that, I’m directing their semester musical. I’m only a week into it, and I’ve discovered already that the two jobs are damn near the same thing. There’s a huge amount of preparation beforehand, and, much like being a parent, you are expected to know everything. So by preparing for this class, I’m discovering just how much I don’t know about what I do.

I remember at one point during my college years realizing how little I felt like I was learning, and I don’t know if, as a result, I shut down and stopped learning, or if it just didn’t make sense to me then. I knew there was at least one professor whom I felt I knew more than, whether it was true or not. I remember being extremely disillusioned with Stanislavski, feeling like it served no real purpose. After all, the audience was never going to read my character analysis, so why bother doing it?

I’ve only had experience with a couple of “methods”, and neither of them appealed to me much just because they seemed to bog things down in rehearsal. I simply got more out of being onstage and doing it, and here I agree with David Mamet - the best actor training is to get on the stage and do it. Let the audience tell you what you’re doing wrong. Since acting is largely intuitive, and you have to learn how to “feel” what the audience is responding to, getting in front of them and showing them what you’ve got is the best way I’ve come across yet to teach you how to do it. This was the best part of my college experience; since there was no graduate acting program, everything was done by the undergrads. We got all the time onstage we could get cast for. This is a problem I see with the way that many programs are structured. You need the experience to learn, and how do you get the experience? It’s like trying to get your union card, when you have to get a union job to join, but you can’t get the job unless you’re union. Curiouser and curiouser.
There are pitfalls, of course, to the onstage training idea. If you’ve got a funny, expressive face, you may learn how to mug and that’s all. Or you may become a genius at slapstick. Or crying on cue. Whatever. All valuable skills to have, so in many ways the tims isn’t wasted. Real world experience has also made me lean more toward the attitude that it’s mostly intuition and bravery. When you’ve got two weeks of rehearsal time, including tech, to mount a show, you don’t waste a lot of time asking the director what your motivation is. You get up there and find it.

But it was my first show at the Children’s Theatre that taught me the value of training. I was playing Long John Silver in TREASURE ISLAND (helluva debut, eh? I loved that show and I would do it again in a heartbeat.), and Scot Copeland (Producing Director) would give us little motivations and ideas to get us to do what he wanted onstage. One day at the end of rehearsal he said,”All of this character stuff we do, it’s just for us. It’s fun for us, and it gets our imaginations working and gets us where we need to be. The audience will never see it. It’s not important that the audience knows what you’re thinking, it’s only important that they know that you ARE thinking, that SOMETHING is going on in your head up there. Let them see that in your face and your body, and they’ll fill in the rest.”

That’s when it all made sense. I still don’t do in-depth character analyses where I create a character in my head who looks different from me, who is taller or has different hair - all of that is pretty much useless to me, because no matter what, I’m gonna be six feet tall and I’m still gonna have black hair and brown eyes. But it’s knowing the WHY of what I do while I’m onstage that makes it fun for me and interesting for the audience. So I do analyze my scenes now and make sure that I know what’s going on. I do the actor homework, finding my beats and my actions. I know what my objectives are, and that makes it all easier. I’ve become a much better actor for it.

And now I’m supposed to pass that along to a new generation of actors, which is exciting and daunting at the same time. So I’m relearning everything myself to make sure that I know what I’m doing and what I’m saying. The last thing I want to do is turn these guys off by leaving something unexplained. So I find myself rewording what I want to say constantly and trying to find the right way to say what I mean. I have to know WHY. In the end, I’m going to become a better actor as well. Which is also exciting.

I also have to recommend A Practical Handbook For The Actor. I find it to be a very simple, effective approach to the craft of acting. It removes the bullshit and gets to the action. Acting is DOING, not being. This is my textbook for my acting class. What’s extremely beautiful about it is that it doesn’t belittle or negate any other acting training you may have. Instead, it simplifies it and relates it back to the whole. It gets to the heart of what every acting “method” is really about: knowing why you’re there, what you want, and how you’re going to get it. And above all, it advocates LISTENING to the other people onstage. Beautiful.

Acting is a full-body workout. It’s an intellectual/physical/emotional workout. If you’re doing it right. It makes every part of you strong and fit. Plus, chicks dig it. Or so I’m told. So what I’m getting at is this: training and education never hurts, it can only help. You shouldn’t accept anyone’s word at face value, especially when it comes to what you want to do for a living, but a little common sense and intelligence will help you extrapolate from those lessons, and in the end you’ll teach yourself loads about your craft. learn your tools and how to use them. They can only help you. The bag of tricks will run dry someday, and if you haven’t learned how to listen and how to learn, you’re gonna be out of work. Take what you can from training courses and use it ONLY IF IT HELPS YOU. If it gets in your way, leave it. But like a good tool, keep it stored away somewhere just in case you ever need it.

Somebody quoted a saying to me once: “Leap, and the net will appear.” Think
it’s an old Buddhist maxim, but I could be wrong. In any case, I figured I’d
get the ball rolling on my contribution to this site and get myself familiar
with the readers. So anyway, I’m Ross Brooks, and I’m stoked to be writing
for Tee’s blog. Tee and I have known each other for years-schoolchums, as it
were, and it’s good to be working with him again.

So, you’ve got my bio, which tells you the basics, but I suppose I could
elaborate more on who I am and what I’m about. I’m a Nashville native, born
and raised in Music City. I’ve lived on both coasts long enough to know that
neither one was for me, so I decided to move back to Nashville after grad
school and a stint in LA, and I’ve been happier and working much more
steadily ever since. All in all, Nashville has got a wonderfully vibrant,
albeit small, theatre scene, with only a few Equity houses. The recession
and subsequent cuts in arts funding have taken their toll on budgets round
here, but this is the town of the little theatre company that could, lemme
tell ya. A quick rundown of (and free publicity for) the major companies in
Nashville:

Nashville Children’s Theatre - the country’s oldest children’s theatre,
started by the Junior League of Nashville in the 30s, and recently rated by
Time Magazine as one of the top 5 children’s theatres in the country. Scot
Copeland, the Producing Director, is internationally recognized as one of
the driving forces in TYA (Theatre for Young Audiences, to use the correct
nomenclature), and he’s a brilliantly gifted director as well as being a
talented playwright and performer. Plus, he’s one hell of a guy, and a good
friend and mentor to me. Hands down, this is the best theatre you’re going
to see in Nashville, no matter how old your driver’s license says you are.
The shows are top notch from every angle. While NCT has no true resident
company, it has a stable of regular actors which it considers its “company”,
and I’m proud to say I’ve been a member for a few years now. It’s a
wonderful place to work - you’re there with family.

Tennessee Repertory Theatre - The largest regional theatre in Tennessee, the
Rep has been going strong for a good twenty or so years now, and altho it
has had its ups and downs, it still produces good work. The Rep changed
hands a couple of years ago and is now run by the team of David Alford and
Rene Copeland, founders of the smaller local company Mockingbird Theatre,
which closed its doors earlier this year at the behest of Alford. The
mission of Mockingbird pretty much moved over to the Rep with David and
Rene, so the quality of the work is high and consistent.

Nashville Shakespeare Festival - Damn near every major city has one of
these, and it’s a good thing, too. NSF has been around for nearly twenty
years, and it has been producing free Shakespeare in the Park every summer
for about ten of those now. Helmed by Denice Hicks, NSF works to keep the
Bard’s words alive.

People’s Branch Theatre - started in 2000 by local actor Brian Niece, PBT
publicizes itself as Nashville’s leading experimental theatre, producing
original works as well as imaginative takes on classics and literary
adaptations. PBT also changed hands roughly three years ago, and is now run
by Matt Chiorini, who has revitalized what was a struggling SPT company.

That’s really it for the professional companies in town. There are a number
of semipro and amatuer companies around that put out good work, the flagship
of these being Actor’s Bridge Ensemble, a semipro company founded and led by
Bill Feehely, a New Jersey transplant. They’ve been around for about ten
years now, give or take, and they do consistently high-quality,
groundbreaking work. They ain’t afraid to take a chance or two.

In 2003, Nashville became a Equity Liaison city, meaning that there are at
least one hundred active members of AEA living and working here. While all
of the major companies in town are committed to using local talent as
opposed to bringing in actors from NY-LA-Chicago, the Children’s Theatre is
the only full Equity company in town. By this I mean that, regardless of
whether you are a member of the union or not, you get the same contract
offered to you and the same pay. NCT also pays money into the Equity Pension
and Health Fund for you regardless of whether or not you are a member. Since
Tennessee is a Right-To-Work state, labor laws prohibit closed shops, so
theatres are free to hire both Equity and non-Equity actors. However, any
theatre with an Equity contract must hire a certain number of union members
per show. The rest of the companies are either on SPT (Small Professional
Theatre) or LOA (Letter Of Agreement) contracts with Equity, allowing them
to offer different contracts to non-Equity talent. This means they don’t pay
into the Health and Pension Fund, and if you aren’t union, you aren’t
eligible for any benefits from them.

The state of the Union is a huge concern in the professional world right
now. Contract negotiations and strikes have been well-publicized lately, and
the acting community is finding itself with a rough road ahead. In
Nashville, this problem is especially relevant. Due to the large pool of
talent and the small number of contracts available, it is becoming harder
and harder for even the best actors in town to get enough work weeks to get
a year’s worth of insurance. If you arent’ familiar with how this system
works, here’s a quick rundown: In order to qualify for health insurance thru
Equity, an actor must work twenty weeks in a year. This is not necessarily a
calendar year - it really depends on when you joined. The union does a
lookback every six months and tabulates the number of weeks you are recorded
to have worked, and after twelve months, they tell you whether or not you
qualify for a year’s worth of health insurance. Once you’ve got that first
year, you still have to get twenty weeks in the next year to keep it going
with no lapses. When I joined in 2002, things were in such good shape in the
economy that you only had to work twelve weeks to get a year’s worth, but
soon after I joined the number went up, thanks to spiraling health care
costs and the unprecedented depletion of the Equity fund. Good or bad,
Equity quickly raised the number back to twenty weeks, where it had been
about seven or eight years before, and now it’s harder than ever to get your
insurance. I’m one of the lucky few who has managed to keep myself insured
consecutively ever since i joined, but the next year looks to be tough for
me, too. Some of it is luck of the draw - you don’t always get cast like you
think you will, and some of it is just lack of work. In any case,
Equity-wise, Nashville is in a precarious place at the moment, and the local
acting community is rallying itself together to try and make some changes.
One of the great things about Nashville for actors is that it’s a very
friendly town. It’s big enough that it has plenty to do, and the art scene
is strong, if small. It’s a great place to raise a family, so if you’re an
actor who wants to have kids someday, this ain’t a bad place to be. However,
there are plenty of challenges to face that could make things less
hospitable round here for theatre, so we’ve got plenty of work to do to keep
ourselves working. But I have to tell you, I love my hometown, and I think
it has the potential to be a major theatrical center. The talent is here,
and so is the money to fund it, we just have to find new ways to draw the
audience.

Whew. I hadn’t intended to ramble quite so much, but I got on a roll. I
think I said more about Nashville than about myself, but that’s okay. This
is my first foray into the blogging world, so give me a little leeway. In
the coming days and months I hope I manage to impart some interesting
information and provoke some exchange of ideas. I’m facing some new
challenges in my career at the moment - i’m moving into teaching, which is
kind of new territory for me. I’m teaching an acting class at a local
community college as well as directing a show there, so I’ll most likely be
sharing my thoughts and experiences with that as time goes by. Plus, i’m
trying to keep my writing career going strong as well, so anytime I have
something I need to rant about, this is probably where you’ll find it. But
my fingers are getting sore, so I’m gonna stop now.

Ross