Great Hangouts for the Busy Auditioner
We’ve all been there. We have multiple auditions to hit in one day and not enough time to stop home in between each one. We need a place to stop, take a seat, refuel, possibly look over our audition material, and refocus before our next appointment. Where do you go? If you’re like me, you don’t always want to spend money to sit in a cafe or fight for a spot in the crowded McDonalds. Here are my favorite resting spots in New York:
- The Actors Equity Audition Center
165 West 46th Street, New York, NY 10036 If you are a member of Actors Equity, this is a great place to stop in between appointments. You are paying to be a member of AEA- so why not take advantage of the available space (within reason, of course)! There is now a lovely Audition Center on the 16th Floor of the Equity Building. The temporary entrance to the AEA building is still currently through the Times Square Visitor Center (1560 Broadway, New York, NY 10036- Right around the corner from the old entrance). The Audition Center is open Monday through Friday from 9:30am – 5:30pm. You can sit in the lounge aka Audition Waiting Area, charge your phone, review your audition material, use the restrooms, refill your water bottle at the drinking fountain, staple your headshots/resumes, and clear your mind.
I Can’t Make It To Rehearsal, I Have Rehearsal
As the girl on the saltbox said, when it rains, it pours.
I am overcommitted. After a dry spell in which I was not doing any acting — professional or community theater — I find myself with two Fringe Festival shows, one staged reading, and one professional role all between now and the end of August. I will be in rehearsal pretty much every day, and in some cases have two different shows on the same day — and will miss rehearsals for another in order to fit it all in. All of my directors are fine with the arrangement — I told them how busy I was before accepting any of the parts (which, amazingly, were all pre-casting offers) — but it will be an endurance test.
I am enjoying each of the projects, which are all very different. Some are with people I have worked with before (one Fringe role is actually a remounting of a show I did last fall) and some are with people I have aspired to work with for some time. One is a professional role with an up-and-coming company that will be the most significant work I’ve done to date. Several of the roles will open the way to future opportunities.
You guys, it’s hard to believe, but we are officially halfway through rehearsals for The King’s Whore (not counting tech, which isn’t really for the actors, after all…)! We open in less than three weeks, and that’s counting our two preview performances.
It’s been a whirlwind, and a roller coaster ride, and the hardest thing I’ve ever done, no doubt about that.
There was the bliss of seeing everyone I’d brought together (with help, of course) on this project all gathered around tables on the first day of rehearsal. For the record, there are about 30 people involved with this project when you count actors, designers, designer assistants, interns, press and marketing peeps, and everyone in-between. I get a little overwhelmed when I think about it, but also really excited to think that all of these people thought this was a worthwhile project to get involved with.
I recently read The Enterprising Actor’s post about making Artist Dates to stay inspired. I love this idea, and it was cool to read about some of her recent Artist Dates and ways she stays inspired. Although I have never read The Artist’s Way- (the book that made the idea most popular), I love the idea of an Artist Date to center myself and re-hydrate my sometimes parched creative soul. This got me thinking about some of the Artist Dates I have made in the past!
Bridge Walking
One of my favorite Artist Dates is taking a long walk, especially across one of New York’s many pedestrian accessible bridges. So far, I have walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, George Washington Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, Pulaski Bridge, Queensboro Bridge, Roosevelt Island Bridge, and Williamsburg Bridge. I love the feeling of taking an adventure without ever having to go very far. Plus it’s good exercise, it gives me time to think and clear my mind, it gets the endorphins flowing, and I love taking pictures along my journey. Here are some of my favorite photos from past bridge walks.
(Click on the photo for a larger view!)
This is the view at night from the Manhattan Bridge. This is probably one of my favorite photos from my bridge walks so far. The view was breathtaking, and it’s times like those that really make me feel lucky to live in this awesome city!
New Year New Goals
So my birthday has recently passed (yay!).
Every year I treat my birthday the way most people treat new years. I reflect a lot about the previous year, and start making goals for the next year. So here’s a list of goals I’m making for myself for next year.
– Direct Five Full Length Productions (at least)
– Get my first Regional Theatre Credit
– Find new theatres, theatre companies, and theatre festivals to get involved in.
– Do more Dramaturgy work (the more I do Dramaturgical work for plays, the more I love it).
Andy Warhol is my Idol
Well, he’s one of them, anyways. Everyone has them—someone to look up, to keep a biography of on their bookshelf, the person you name your children after, maybe even someone you pray to. You have your everyday idols that you thank in your Tony winning speech: your parents, the English teacher who praised your poem that one time in tenth grade, a friend who let you sleep on their couch for a month. But there are also the big ones, your Jesuses, J. K. Rowlings and Audra McDonalds who don’t get mentioned in the seventy-five seconds before the music kicks in.
Today, I’m taking a little time to mention mine (I have three big ones). Starting with our title idol, Andy Warhol:
My Chat with THEE Danny Goggin…
Hello! It’s been awhile, I know… We just had a ridiculous past few weeks here at my theatre company where we turned 2 shows around in less than a month, and then much needed vacation time. Please forgive my absence!
Back on track.. I wanted to share something really cool with you all! So one of the many many hats I wear here at the theatre is the social media coordinator hat. May’s show was Nunsensations: The Nunsense Las Vegas Revue, and between pitching in to help glitz and glamour up some pretty intense feather fans and head dresses, I had the amazing opportunity to chat with the one and only Daniel Goggin, the genius behind Nunsense. Not only was it great press for the show, but it was kind of a dream come true for me since I had the honor of playing Reverend Mother Superior as a Junior in High School (*cough cough* Character Actor in the making *cough cough*). It turns out that our Artistic Director used to live in the same apartment building as Danny in Manhattan “back in the day,” and they have remained in touch! I hope you enjoy the article, and check back for some more chatter from my end! I have some more stories to tell, I promise!
A Conversation with Danny Goggin
NYC Theatre Festivals
There have to be a million reasons I love the summer. I prefer heat to cold, my birthday, summer vacation for kids, and of course: all the theatre opportunities in the summer. A lot of different theatre festivals happen from the end of May till early September. That’s the time of where there are hundreds of new shows all playing in rep at once. Asides from how many shows one can see, but there’s more opportunities to work on shows and network for future shows. For the first theatre festival of the summer here was Planet Connections Theatre Festivity (PCTF), which I was fortunate to work on 4 shows in this one festival (which also made the past couple of weeks extremely busy), but I’ve also gotten a lot of future work from it.
I love working in festivals for a number of reasons. It gives you the opportunity you network with other theatre artists by both watching and supporting their shows and by talking to them to see if you can work with them in the future. Since any artist that is working on a show in PCTF can see any other show in the festival for free, I made the time to see as many shows as possible (I went to nearly 30) and went to all of the special events. So in that time, I met so many other artists and staff members of the festival that it not only expanded my network of artists, but now I’m working on two shows in the another festival, and several people are interested in working with me in the future in general.
The Green Room 