It should be obvious why “The Artists’ Way” doesn’t work for me.  Long time between posts…sorry, I am not very good at diaries either.  But I digress!

So I shot two commercial spots for Fire Lake Casino this weekend.  Tee isn’t the only one to get work, ha ha!  It was a cool experience all around from Derrick and the Crew to the guys from Concussion out of Ft. Worth, TX “SSSSMMMOKING!”.  I hope the sp/efx guy (a non-smoker) has recovered from having to blow cigarette smoke through a tube all day!  To my fellow actors (Chris & Stephanie) on this gig, it was a blast to work with you!

What was really cool though was one of the spots had been written for me!  They liked my audition so much they felt they had to use me in something even though I didn’t fit the spots I auditioned for. They even inserted my picture from my audition into the storyboard for the commercial. How cool is that!?!  That was a first for me and it really meant a lot. It was a nice feeling to have someone say, “We have to use that guy!”

I hope everyone gets that feeling sometime in their career.  Hopefully more times than not!

Till next time!

Today, I had a callback for a TN Lottery commercial. It went great! I had a great read with a guy named Josh. It was one of those rare occasions when you actually read with someone who has some chops about them and are willing and able to listen and respond with you.

The director gave us several different bits of direction and seemed to be pleased with what we gave in return.

After we were done, Josh and I headed to our cars and asked me if I might be interested in taking part in the Nashville 24 Hour Film Festival. I gave him my info and we went our separate ways.

In short, good times today in Nashville! I hope I get the gig. It seems like it’s going to be a fun time.

Here’s a couple of updates on the goings-on around here:

New logo.  Like it?  Let us know!

The Workshops:  We are in the process of putting together a series of workshops for the summer of 2007.  They will be held in the Middle Tennessee area, but no matter where you are in the world, you can give us some suggestions and/or feedback!  You can find out more here. 

The Podcast:  I’m also putting together a format for a monthly (or possibly weekly) podcast that will be hosted here.  It will feature the same sort of topics we discuss around here.  The first podcast should be ready in the coming weeks.  Watch for updates!

We owe you an apology.  It seems that when most of us have gotten clear of the classrooms and studios for the summer we decided to go completely dark and stay underground for as long as possible.  Hence no posts in a while.

Well, I can tell you that I’m going to be the one to break with the silence and get back in gear with the postings.  Right off the bat, I’ve got at least two book reviews to post for you and an update on some of the other projects I’ve got going.

So, be on the lookout.  We are still here and we will come our from our places of hiding very soon.

Well, I got tired of the old look of the site, so I thought I’d make a few changes.  I’m still working on a modified version of the old logo and I should have that up and running in the next few days.

What do you think?

This weekend I transferred the site from one host to another.  I’m pleased to announce that this site is now hosted by Dreamhost.  If you are on the lookout for a hosting service, this is the one for you!  They have the easiest control panel I think I’ve ever seen.  The site may be acting a little weird while the nameservers are being rerouted, but it should settle down pretty quickly.
Oh yeah, since I was in the process of moving the site, I decided to go ahead and scrap the Greenroom.  I don’t think anyone ever looked at it except for the spammers who had begun to flood it and were making my life a living hell.  So, down it goes.

Well, Steven and I have been busting our humps for the past week and I’m happy to report that the pdf files for all of the female Shakespearean monologues have been uploaded. Steven is getting the links posted online as quickly as his life will allow. (He keeps talking about this “life”, but I’m not exactly sure what he means…)

Anyway, I’m continuing to plow through the men’s monologues now. My guess is that it will take me about another week to get through them all and have them uploaded. After that, we are going to go through the process of checking for any errors we might have missed in the mad rush to get them posted online in time for the big holiday rush on Shakespearean monologues.

In other news, Waiting for Lefty went off pretty much without a hitch. I know I didn’t post too much information about about during the process (which was my intention). I will be putting up a “Post Mortem” slug about it sometime this week.

Oh yeah, if you were one of our workshop attendees at the Southeastern Theatre Conference, make sure you take the time to leave a comment! Our server went down for a couple of days and one of the posts we lost was contained the links to the files I promised would be online. Here are those links again:

Preparing for Your Undergraduate/Graduate School Audition

Melodramatic Improvisation (or The Long and the Short of It)

I just received an e-mail from Steven Shults at Shakespeare Monologues (http://www.shakespeare-monologues.org) and I am pleased to announce that we have just created a partnership with him.

Our site is going to be the host site for a collection of Shakespearean monologues that are pre-formatted to be actor friendly.  The main link to each monologue will reside on his site, but the links will point to a pdf (Adobe Acrobat) file that will be hosted here on our site.  If you have not already visited the site, you should do so.  He’s got a great collection of monologues already online and is continually adding to them.  As of now, he only has links to the page containing the monologue at the MIT complete works online.  That’s a great start, but its not too actor friendly.

So, I’m going to begin putting together some pdf files containing the monologues that are preformatted for scansion–ready to go for actors.  I can already hear the shouts of thousands of undergraduate and graduate students everywhere.

The process is going to be time-consuming and it will take a while to get all of the online, but once it’s done, it’s going to be a great resource on the internet for anyone who’s working on a Shakespearean monologue.

Okay…I know the site was down for a couple of days last week, and I’m pretty sure we lost some posts before I could get a backup done.  So, I’m sorry about the loss of some of the posts.

In other news, I’ve added a link category titled “Shakespeare Resources”.  If you know of a site on the web that is a good source for Shakespeare resources for actors, leave a comment here or e-mail me and I’ll add it to the site.

In other news, I’m guest lecturing/coaching the Shakespeare section of one of the advanced acting classes on campus for the next couple of weeks.  So far, we’ve just covered scansion basics, but next week we start to work on their monologues geared toward auditions.  I’ll post some updates on the work we do in class.

That’s all for now, I’ve got a few drinks to have on this excellent St. Patrick’s Day!  Erin Go Bragh…

Sorry it’s been awhile since I’ve posted, but it’s been a pretty busy week. Ross and I are working on a project that I hope to be able to tell you about in the coming months. It’s a pretty big deal and we are still very much in the planning stages, but if it works out, it should be some very good news indeed.

Other than that, I’ve been working my butt off at the University. The cool thing is that I’ve got some good students in my acting class this semester. They seem to be ready to work and eager to learn this craft. I hope to have some good news and revelations about them as we barrel our way toward May.

In other news, John Mauldin is going to be joining our ranks here as a some time collaborator and contributor. So, be on the lookout for news from him. He works quite a bit in Nashville and has a show opening soon. I’ll let him pass on the details about it. His bio and headshot should be up soon.

John and I are going to be presenting a couple of workshops at this year’s Southeastern Theatre Conference in Orlando in early March. If you hail from the Southeast and are interested, check them out. Anyway, one workshop is geared toward high school juniors and seniors interested in auditioning for scholarships in the theatre and the other we are collaborating with another of our colleagues on a workshop based around the idea of using a classic melodramatic style as a basis for an improvisational game. The game and the workshop were developed by our colleague and we are merely part of his improv troupe for the day. It should prove to be a lot of fun.

Things have been a bit slow lately, but I can tell you that I am now with the Wilhelmina-Dan Agency in Nashville.  The people there are great.

I think that’s all for now.  Don’t forget to check out the Green Room!