I'm back and writing from (sometimes) sunny Florida! Your girl's on contract with Mary Poppins this summer and having an absolute blast doing so. It's a whirlwind of a rehearsal process (15 days from first day to opening night), and anyone who knows the show can attest that such a timeline is quite the task. But everyone here is an absolute star and taking everything thrown at them in their stride -- it's my honor and privilege to share the stage with such professional and talented performers, and I, for one, can't wait to see all the magic come together over these next few rehearsals.
I say all this to simply point out: the actor lifestyle can be BUSY, and it can often go from 0-100 in terms of off-contract to suddenly on-contract, which brings me to our topic today. Life happens, and you never quite know what to expect in this industry, so that's why it's so crucial to have a stockpile of self-tapes, reels, and virtual material ready and in your arsenal for whatever life throws at you. Whether you like it or not, regardless of what you have going on, the industry marches on: there are auditions posted and/or happening every day in NYC, and they wait for no man. What if you get sick and you get an audition request? What if your day job work schedule gets crazy busy and you find a submission you're right for? What if you're on contract, away from your usual self-tape setup and equipment, and a posting for a dream show comes up? It certainly would put your mind at ease if you had a library of audition videos at your disposal when those things in life out of your control attempt to slow your roll.
Of course, this isn't a magical solution to all problems -- you'll be asked to tape specific things for a callback or you won't have the right material for this particular audition, and in those cases, you may have to take on the last minute stress if the audition is worth it to you. But otherwise, this will take a lot of weight off your shoulders in those times when a self-tape is rather impossible (or at least feels like it). Knowing that I had this contract coming up, which would take me away from home for the summer, I made one of my high-priority to-do list items to record some of my most used audition songs so that I could more easily submit for future projects while I'm here (as we all know that an actor's job is to audition, right? Yes, we must always celebrate and enjoy while we're on contract, but you want to do everything you can to ensure you have more work lined up once one project ends).
And, wouldn't you know it, my planning ahead came in handy when I got a nasty cold a week before coming to Florida and an audition I wanted to submit for showed up on my Backstage feed! It will seem like a daunting task, especially when life is busy enough and it's difficult to find time to self-tape in the first place. But I can promise you, it will be worth it in the long run; in fact, it will all be worth it the minute you submit one of them, especially if you can submit one for something you technically have time to record for! Now that feels like cheating, but it's totally allowed and encouraged!
So set up the tripod, the lights, and the backdrop, and get ready for a session (or two or three or seven) to get your book on tape for the "just-in-case's". Don't force yourself to record everything in one day (actually, don't do that, full stop: I can say from experience, you won't be happy with any of your cuttings since you'll feel rushed to get everything accomplished. So pace yourself and plan accordingly!), and don't stress it. You don't have to have every single song or every single monologue in your book recorded right this minute; it's an ongoing project, plus your book may change over time, meaning this will constantly be in flux. But hey, the more material you have, the more options, so it's not all bad! You have to start somewhere, so set aside some time and hit Record.
Thanks for reading, #DreamTeamHLJ, and I'm crossing my fingers for us that we book it!
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