Sunday Summary — August 13, 2012
Welcome to another Sunday Summary!
This week, our bloggers finished up our “letter to myself five years ago” post series with a bunch of fantastic posts. To check out all nine (nine!) posts in the series, head on over HERE.
If you were really paying attention, you might have noticed that our newest blogger shared her letter, as well. Keep an eye out for her official introduction post tomorrow!
Something About Lights & Tunnels
Hey There,
Just popping in from the future to lay some knowledge on you.
(SQ 1: Sci-fi Tone)
It’s been a year, now, hasn’t it? Having a kid really has thrown you for a loop, huh? Sure makes getting to auditions a whole lot harder. Unfortunately, that doesn’t get any easier. Also, you’re about to go through a crazy series of survival jobs – the yoga teacher thing has been great, but it’s about time to move on. I’d love to wave you off of some things, save you a little heartache and agony – and cash – but I think that all the ups and downs of the next five years are necessary for you to finally learn how to get your shit together for your career of choice.
What I would like to suggest are a few things to make life a little easier along the way, to position you better for your future.
- Get a mini-tramp, a few Wii exercise games, and find a workout buddy. From March through October, the zoo has a walking club – you need to do that. It will be great for you and Kiddo to get out and get some fresh air. And it’s free! Please include lots of arm work and ab work in your exercise regimen.
- At least once a week – WALK AWAY. Let Hubs feed Kiddo hot dogs, or whatever other nutrition atrocity he will come up with, and walk away from the house. Do not feel guilty about this. Grocery shopping does not count as “me” time. Sitting at a coffeeshop with your computer, an americano, and a chocolate-covered graham cracker does.
- Speaking of coffeeshops and computers – that play you are writing? Yeah, don’t put it down. Work on it. Work on all those ideas you are pitching to the local festival. Screw it when your pitches are rejected, write it anyway. In a few years you are going to meet some peeps who really like your writing and you are going to need to have established this routine, and have the catalog of work, to jump on the opportunities about to come your way.
- Start reading business books. Learn about funding start-ups and how to run small/freelance businesses. Please, for the love of god, bone up on your record-keeping skillz.
- Those people who respond so positively to your writing? Keep them very, very close. Invite them to coffee. Host readings to meet other people who will also respond positively to your writing. And also, your theatre peeps are going to shift around; some of them will leave town, some of them will leave the business. For now, keep them close and meet them out for coffee more regularly. Grow that network because when your peeps shift around, you’re going to be at a loss for folks to call when the ball starts rolling.
Five tips for five years.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel. You are going to have some dark days – I hate to admit it, but it’s about to get worse before it gets better. It does get better. Kiddo is about to start school, you love the school you’ve chosen for him, and you are staring down the barrel of more work than you know what to do with. Trust me, I’m from the future.
(SQ 2: Sci-fi Tone)
Thanks, and take it easy,
Dear Katelyn, Hug EVERYONE.
Dear KC,
Yo. What’s up? Happy summer ’07! Having fun, aren’t you? Well, that’s a good thing. You should, so don’t feel guilty for it. Actually, you probably aren’t. That Irish guilt you feel for any day you have too much fun or relaxation doesn’t really kick in until a few years down the road when you become super driven and obsessed with this existential thought that there is a “wrong way and a right way” to live and it’s your job to figure it out (yeah, I don’t know where it came from either, but it will stress you out at times).
Ok, so! This past spring of ’07 you suddenly up and left Salve Regina University to enroll in Salem State’s rigorous, competitive, and award-winning theatre program. Good call, lady. I can safely say, making this decision changed your life and put you on the right course. Salem is going to open your eyes this fall and make you see theatre in a completely different (richer, better) way once you take that Script Analysis class. Your professor Bill Cunningham is going to blow your mind, so get ready. After that, you’ll never turn back.
Spoiler alert! Five years from now, Kerri will be in California on a trip she won from work because she’s such a rockstar as a financial advisor at Prudential and Meghan will be … engaged! Yup, you won that bet. And you, my dear, will be living in New York City, pursuing theatre and doing a good job at it, might I say. I know, you never thought you’d do it, but … you do 🙂 This fall starts your hunger for more. You start realizing what you can do.
And you fall in love 🙂 It won’t last, but it will be quite the journey. It will be tough towards the end and after it ends, but that first year is worth it. And it will feed your art for a while. Even today, recent aftershocks from it lend itself to the play you’re writing (yup, you become a playwright senior year of college – again, thank Bill Cunningham for the guidance).
There is nothing really that I want to tell you. There’s nothing I would change. I just want you to enjoy this summer on the Cape because in five years, that won’t be the norm. This is a thought that hasn’t once occurred to you, but I’m writing from 2012 and I’m really missing home, and I’m jealous of the summer you’re having – making s’mores with Meghan, playing pool and guitar with Jason, going to the beach during the day, bon fires at night …
Oh yeah, hug everyone as much as possible because in New York, for the first two years, no one hugs you. LOL. You find it hilarious. Because it is. You loser. 😛 Love ya.
A blast from the past ….
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Summer ’07: You and your bestie, Kmo. Though you’re miles away, you always stay sisters.
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Summer ’07: Having fun with Megs.
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Fall ’07: First semester at Salem State. You’re chosen as one of the few first year lab students to work on Antigone. Woot woot hollerr.
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Hanging out in the dorms with Costa. You guys end up living together in the big city five years down the road! Who’da thunk! (you look like babies)
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Nightsky will be the first show you are cast in. That’s you stage left. You have to learn sign language for this part. Five years later, you forget it all.
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That’s you and your soon to be main squeeze/main bud/Salem best friend/boyfriend. (you guys should comb your hair)
The Last Five Years
Hola Senorita! (I’m in Mexico)
Right now, you’re probably sitting at your desk in London at the e-commerce designer fashion company office where you work, triple-checking an Excel spreadsheet of stats on ‘Prada’ handbags. There will be times when you wonder why you didn’t stay there and take the position of fashion buyer, flying to Italy every month, earning a steady income and rocking a suitably enviable wardrobe (PS, take more advantage of the staff discount).
You’ll be pleased to know that at some point next year, you’ll come to your senses and those 3 years of professional musical theatre training will not have been a waste of the government’s money (You will book your first tour before you have even worked your notice.) However, don’t take the apartment in Ladbroke Grove, it’s a health hazard and the landlord is a ‘scheming toe-rag’ as Dad would say. Plus, you will have some unpleasant altercations with mice! Also, don’t accumulate too much ‘stuff.’ You have relocated from Kent to London, to South Carolina, to New York to LA and moving never gets easier!
Unfortunately, a horrendous break-up is on the cards, consequently forcing you to watch every single episode of ‘Sex and the City’ and listen to Kate Nash on repeat for hours……he’s REALLY not worth it. However, this will indirectly lead you to the US where you will marry an American clown-turned-producer (I’m not making this up).
The best advice I can give you is a quote I found in a gift from your future mother-in-law:
‘Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.’ Ella Fitzgerald.
As a performer, you will have to be bi-polar. One day you will face rejection and feel helpless, doubting your talent, questioning your life choices and ready to give up on the dream. The next day you will have to put it all behind you and be prepared for the next audition; motivated, self-assured and inspired. From experience I can tell you that only hard work and perseverance pay off. There will always be another audition and another job that you are perfect for, you just have to stay in the game.
There will be times when you feel you are living as a means to an end, but it will be worth it in the long run. Strike a balance between living and just surviving. Take a deep breath, focus on what you really want to achieve, take the classes, attend the workshops, and go to the seminars. Save money when you can but spend it on things that you love, learn to pack a suitcase well (you will tour and work in the UK, Australia, Mexico, Germany, Holland, Canada and the US), invest in a singing coach (you will book musical theatre shows, but you will struggle with learning music) and don’t be afraid of casting directors (they will remember you, believe in you and attending an audition will never be a waste of time).
As a warning, you will live in cities ripe with opportunity and yet you will have never doubted yourself so much in your entire life. They will have the potential to make your dreams come true but also highlight how far away they really are. They will open new avenues and yet the roads might not lead to where you originally wanted to go. They will give you the right connections and yet there will always be another fence to climb.
At times you will endure tedious survival jobs and despair at not having booked a show and then, suddenly, you will book 2 shows that overlap so you have to choose the best deal! You will be discouraged by the difficulty of joining a union, burning holes in holding room floors for hours……and then be able to join 3 unions in one year. Learn that streamlined, specific, focused submissions are 10 times better than mass mailings. This will help you sign with the best dance agent in the country when you least expect it (and obviously at the one time when you’re booked for the rest of the year!).
You are writing this from your hotel room in Guadalajara, Mexico on a day off from ‘The Illusionists’ which is currently the best-selling illusion show in the US. http://youtu.be/9wqMdRRM2Dk
Feel grateful for everything that has brought you this far, relish in the ride (and take more photos) but also continue to chase the ultimate dream. Now it is so close that you can taste it.
Oh, and that premonition you had about being on Law and Order ……you’ve been an extra on it 5 times!
Love n lollipops,
to the High School Musical Dork
Dear High School Musical Dork,
In five years, you are going to be out of your hometown, studying theatre at this great college and doing more theatre than you’ve ever done before in your life (and getting paid to do it too!). And the braces? They really are going to be worth it, even after the first month when you can’t eat anything.
But until then, you’ve got to first get through absolute rock bottom. Your music teacher is going to tell you something though, and you’d better listen to her—your love for theatre is stronger than any rejection. So spend your lunch time practicing in the closet with that old piano anyways. I wish I can write that you’re going to get the lead this year and that you ended up putting together an amazing audition and was accepted into the B.F.A. program at every school you applied too. You’re going to be disappointed, people are going to tell you a long list of things of what you can’t do and you know what? You’re going to end up doing them anyways. It’s going to happen!
I know you are really looking forward to the day you leave home (by the way, the only thing you are allergic to is your hometown. Get three hours away and you’ll never feel better) but in the meantime, start reading more plays (try library loans to make up for the local lack of drama on the shelves) and looking for monologues. The Glass Menagerie is a good one to start with. And don’t stop writing! Write about everything that you do to get ready for the auditions and in a few years, try blogging. And think about minoring in writing? You’re going to realize that creating new works and supporting good causes through theatre are a lot more important (and interesting) and what you really ought to be doing. In five years, you’ve still got a lot of thinking to do about what comes after college although by now, you’ve put enough pieces together to see most of the picture. It’s all going to work out (and I do mean “work”).
Until then, keep writing down your dreams (every morning when you wake up…and when you are bored in math class). Teachers will come and go (and you’ve got some really wonderful ones coming—and a miserable one too), school will end (and for future-me…will end sooner than I like to think about), but you just keep on learning, okay? And wear your retainer!
Love,
The College Theatre Dork
P.S. Keep in mind for future reference, you really, really don’t look good with black hair. Make sure Mom doesn’t try to buy permanent dye. But have you ever thought about cutting it short?
Sunday Summary — August 5, 2012
This week, our bloggers shared their letters to themselves five years ago, along with all of the wisdom and emotion that came with them. Check them out!
And don’t forget to follow along with the rest of the letters next week!
Advice to my 21-year-old self
Dear Kate,
Hey there! It’s Me — well, older, wiser, starting to develop tiny little eye wrinkles, 26-year-old YOU, to be precise.
I know you’re about to graduate from the safe little world of Hofstra and enter into the big unknown of New York City, so you’re pretty worried about a lot of things right now. So I’d like to help you out here with a little spoiler:
Pretty much everything that you’re working so hard for and worried so much about making happen right now will come to pass. You’re gonna get a great apartment. You’re gonna marry that incredible man. You’re gonna be a working actor. So first off, relax a bit, eh? Also:
Hold on to that passion of yours. You are so excited about becoming a part of this industry, and driven to succeed in it. That passion will carry you far, earn you supporters, and keep your head afloat in the dark days. Do not let go of it. On a related note, hold on to that incredible man of yours, too. He loves you so deeply that you and he will buoy each other more than either of you can even guess right now.
Don’t get yourself too wrapped up in the insular world of college. Sure, that campus seems like the whole world to you and everyone else in it at the moment, but it’s such a small place compared to what lies ahead. The things that seem like such a big deal there won’t matter to you at all in a couple of years. Don’t take not getting cast in many mainstage shows so hard. You will have plenty of time and opportunities to prove yourself later, and you will. Get yourself off campus and into New York City more. There’s a whole lotta life outside of Hofstra University, and you can only help yourself by learning about it now.
A few quick and dirtys:
Research the industry in your spare time. Start learning who the players are now, and not in three or four years. You will be lightyears ahead. Read the trade papers and websites religiously.
Take more dance classes now. It only gets harder as you get older. And who cares what all of those dance minors in your class think of you? You will never see them again.
Start looking for an agent earlier. Figure out who will represent very young adults, and target just a few of them now. It will probably take you years to really find one you click with, so start early!
Start your business sooner, it will change your life. Your acting career productivity will skyrocket once you’re not nannying full-time, I promise.
Those random life skills that you develop now will serve you well in your grown-up life. The little crafts you tinker with now will turn into home improvement projects that you save money on. Your administrative assistant days will serve you well when you decide to produce your own show (yeah, you’re gonna do that again…crazy, right?). Your baking skills will one day help to land you an agent. Yeah, it’s true.
Most importantly, you will be good at this career and you will prove it to everyone, but it will take longer than you expect it to (after about four years of busting your ass, you will work with some of those people you’re listening to on the OBCR right now with your roommate!).
Enjoy the rest of your senior year (and congrats on your soon-to-be-engagement!). Keep on working hard and learning everything that you can.
Tara In Black and White
Dear Tara 2007,
Greetings from 2012! This year has been interesting. There have been some happy moments and some heartbreak, just like…well, just like every other year. The thing is, neither the ups nor the downs, last forever. So don’t hold on too tightly to either, and don’t base your state of mind on them. They change. That’s the only thing that’s for sure.
Oh, and Tara, get some COLOR headshots, for pete’s sake.
XO,
Tara 2012
The Green Room 