Actors
How to Take the Elusive Note ‘Throw it Away’
BY: MARCI LIROFF via www.backstage.com In a scene from director Mike White’s newest film, “Brad’s Status,” actor Jenna Fischer was asked to taste spaghetti sauce her husband (Ben Stiller) had just made. The actor found herself going through all sorts of machinations to find the intention of the scene. She realized, as she told an audience during a panel discussion following an L.A. film screening, that the enthusiasm and fun environment on set was all she needed to tap into to simply “love the …sauce.” I’ve given countless actors the direction “Just throw it away” in an effort to have them keep it simple and stop overthinking. I asked actor Joe Pantoliano (“Sense8,” “The Sopranos”) to share his thoughts with me on this topic: “ ‘Throw it away’ is a code-word action indicating less, q...
How Lighting Affects Actors
BY: CASEY MINK via www.backstage.com For Off-Broadway’s “The Last Match,” Tony-winning lighting designer Bradley King was tasked with lighting a drama evocative of an actual tennis court while maintaining the usual elements of theatricality. Lighting is omnipresent. “A lighting designer is responsible for turning on and off every light that you see in the theater. The ultimate goal of that is to make the audience feel something. The great Jennifer Tipton, who’s basically one of the inventors of modern lighting design, has this quote that’s something like, ‘One percent of the audience is aware of lighting design, but 99 percent is affected by it.’ “ On lighting ‘The Last Match.’ “We use lighting to create a little depth of field and have the background recede and pull someone out in the for...
2018 Atlanta Unified Auditions & Interview Registration NOW OPEN
Do you live in the Atlanta region or have thought about pursuing the arts in the area? The 2018 Atlanta Unified Auditions and Interviews (design, tech, stage management, and musicians) will be held March 5 -6, 2018. Registration is NOW OPEN! Applications are due January 5, 2018. Check out the events below for more information about the auditions, interviews, and registration: 2018 Atlanta Unified Audition Information 2018 Atlanta Unified Design/Tech Interview Information Break a Leg! Visit the C4 Atlanta Unified Auditions website and FAQ to learn more.
MWTA Registration Opens November 1st
The 2018 MidWest Theatre Auditions (MWTA) Registration opens TOMORROW, November 1st! The registration link will open at 10:00 am CENTRAL TIME. Please note that registration fills up quickly, so have all your information and payment ready before you begin the application. There is an application fee of $50 for Actors and $45 for DTSM due with submission of application, payable online by Visa or MasterCard. MWTA does NOT accept any other forms of payment. Checks and cash are NOT accepted. Acting Auditions All applicants should bring copies of their résumés and headshots to the auditions for callbacks. After you send in your application, you will receive an e-mail confirmation by January 1st which will guide you through the process of sending in a small headshot that will be given to the the...
Voice Over Auditions by the Numbers
By KATE McCLANAGHAN via www.backstage.com How many auditions do you imagine it takes to land a single voiceover job? Five? Ten? Twenty? There must be an average. There is, but it’s likely to be a great deal more than you might think. You build your professional reputation as a voice talent and as an actor by consistently delivering exceptional auditions. Lots and lots and lots of them. Which is why tenacity is such a critical element to succeeding in this (or any business). So if it’s walking and chewing gum you’re after, best keep walking. There’s not much demand for that. You can’t underestimate that the bulk of your job as a professional talent is auditioning. You could even consider auditions your greatest form of promotion—they just shouldn’t be your only form of promotion (as it appe...
J.K. Simmons to Aspiring Actors: Listen, Listen, Listen
Photo Source: Courtesy of Freestyle Digital Media Oscar winner and self-professed “journeyman” J.K. Simmons is the kind of actor who pops up in just about everything, and often when you least expect him. (It was easy, for instance, to miss last year’s super-quick cameo reunion with “Whiplash” director Damien Chazelle in “La La Land,” no?) His latest project, however, puts him front and center as a widower and father who, after moving across the country for a new teaching job, learns to love again. “The Bachelors” is a heartfelt and touching comedy with newcomer writer-director Kurt Voelker—and it also showcases a never-better and emotionally exacting Simmons. The veteran actor recently talked to Backstage about his latest film, his love of sharing the screen with young talent, and the impo...
Can you imagine going to jail for singing a song?
That’s exactly what happened to Maria Alyokhina, a member of the Russian feminist punk-rock group Pussy Riot. She spent almost two years in prison for criticizing her government through performing, and now she’s sharing her story live on stage in Belarus Free Theatre’s Burning Doors, a visceral new show about state-sponsored brutality. At a time when words like dystopia, oppression, and totalitarianism are casually bandied about, it’s an eye-opening play about using art to resist, and one of three politically charged works we profiled in TDF Stages this week.
Taavon Gamble : Choreographer
BREAK A LEG NETWORK proposed a question to a choreographer on the rise. Q: How do you prepare to choreograph a show and what can your dancers and actors do to prepare for a season? A: “The two key rules for my-self when going in to choreograph a show are always preparation and organization. I like to go in prepared with a full structure and strong foundation for myself to work off of. For me it all starts with what’s given to you: the script and the score. Through examining the script and score I can get a clear sense of the story, the style, the history of the show, and concept. As a choreographer, if I’m working on a show that’s been done before I’ll then also give a listen to the music. For me listening to the orchestrations fills me in on the style of music and ...
This “Carmen” is smoking: Central City Opera breathes fire into an audience favorite
Central City Opera’s “Carmen” is everything you want it to be, and then some — sexy, sultry and just a little sleazy. Its famous heroine uses and abuses just as she is known to do, teasing men and tempting fate until it all catches up to her in one violent moment. As a production, it is pleasing and terrifically tight and ultra-traditional, just as its creators imagined it in 1875. Director Jose Maria Condemi has, for the most part, resisted messing with the formula as some like to do to keep familiar titles fresh for audiences who have seen them a dozen times or more. Instead, he has gone the opposite way, pushing his characters to feel and indulge in the nuances of composer Georges Bizet’s emphatic music. Everything, from the costumes to the sets to the singing, honors the opera’s lusty,...
Movement for Actors Nicole Potter, Barbara Adrian, Mary Fleischer
In this updated rich resource for actors, renowned movement teachers and directors reveal the physical skills needed for the stage and the screen. Readers will gain remarkable insights into the physical skills and techniques used in a wide variety of performance styles through ready-to-use exercises and approaches. Included in this new edition are chapters covering:
An Interview with JK Simmons by Dwayne Ague
When working in New York is there a specific direction one should take to find work? I honestly have no idea how to pursue theatre work in NY in 2016. When I hit town in 1983, I just went to every open call I could (I had already gotten my Equity card at Seattle Rep) and stood in the snow with everybody else. I did enough auditions that I finally learned I should stop trying so hard to be what I thought they were looking for and I started being myself and then showing them that I could sing a couple of different styles, or that I could do drama and comedy (if given the chance). Do you think anything in your education, training or experience helped you stick out from the rest? I think everything helps. Certainly I learned a lot in college and at The Bigfork Summer Playhouse, but...
Cooling Down: How Actors Unwind After Taxing Performances
Most actors methodically warm up for emotionally draining performances. But what do they do to recoup reality? BY JONATHAN MANDELL Every night I had to kill myself,” declares actor Daniel N. Durant with an exasperated shrug. Durant made his Broadway debut in the recent revival of Spring Awakening as Moritz, a young man who commits suicide in a climactic moment. It wasn’t easy. “Most of my day was spent getting into character, and then I had to go through those emotions every night,” Durant recounts. After the performance, most of his night was spent trying to reverse the process: “I played video games to get out of it. My favorite was Call of Duty, a high-energy game that I confess I’m addicted to.” Austin P. McKenzie, Durant’s castmate in the musical, portrayed Moritz’s close friend, Melc...
