Where are we? What day is it?

You guys, I'm gonna be frank.

I'm am going batshit crazy.

I have had a string of several auditions for various summer and year round theatres lately and every audition has required something just a little bit different. As my voice teacher's 6 year old daughter says, "Well. That. Is. Just. SILLY."

I get it. They need to find the right people and they want to see something that will let them know if you will fit into their season or not. I get that. I do. But it's made preparation hard because I can't prepare the same song or monologue for every audition. I guess this is actually the truth about most auditions, but most auditions don't come one right after the other and leave you no time to prepare in between. And that makes for some very half-assed auditions and a very frustrated me.

I must admit, I'm getting nervous about this project. Our deadline is rapidly approaching, I feel like I have no time to put the work in and I'm starting to wonder if we're in over our heads. And then two seconds later, I kick myself and think, "This is your career, you have to make the time." And then I feel lazy and remember that this project is all about not being a lazy actor and the circle just goes round and round....

Once Midwest Theatre Auditions are over this weekend, I'll be able to breathe a bit before the next auditions. Then I'm going to try to AM going to commit some serious time to working on this project. 25 monologues don't find, edit, learn and memorize themselves.

Deep cleansing breathes....and.....GO.

--Kristi

PS: I got cast in a TV pilot at Columbia College here in Chicago! They have a crack team of kids over there in the film school and I'm excited to get started. More info when I have it....

Well?

I'm sure you've all been waiting with baited (bated?) breath to find out how my audition went.

Overall, I felt it went well. My monologue was awesome. If I didn't love it before, I love it now. TV monologues are just SO PERFECT for this situation. They are short, sweet and to the point. I think with a little KK work, I can take it to the next level for Midwest Theatre auditions in two weeks. Judge away, but I'm sticking with it.

My song is another story. I just didn't feel good about it. Specifically, I didn't feel good about one note. (For those of you who are musically inclined, it's D4) It's hard to explain what makes that section of the song difficult without using a bunch of music jargon, but I'll say this. In a performance situation where I would be adequately warmed up and singing throughout the show, it wouldn't be a problem. In an audition situation where I warm up before I go, but then sit around for an hour and don't have anywhere to sing and keep myself warm, it's not ideal.

I still haven't decided if I'm going to change my song or not. I have another audition this weekend and I'm going to give it one more go. If it doesn't work out, I'll change it. I've got some songs on reserve, just in case.

In completely unrelated news, how are you all dealing with the the blizzard aftermath? Have you dug yourself out yet? Chicago got walloped with snow and now we've got no where to put it. Some of the cars in my neighborhood haven't even tried to dig out. My coworker said she'll just take the train until spring. I don't have a car, but it would be really nice if people would plow their sidewalks!

In news that is more related, I think I'm going to begin a program called The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron in the coming weeks. I won't say too much about it now, but I'm hoping that putting it out there publicly will give me the motivation to actually do it. :)

With love and gratitude,
Kristi

Short and Sweet

Hi everyone! Happy 1/11/11! Wouldn't it be cool if you were turning 11 years old today? It'd be like a golden birthday, only better.

I have a video in the works that I will be sharing with you hopefully in the next day or two. I'm introducing the first two worksheets that Whitney mentioned in her last post, so stay tuned for that!

Today, I wanted to share a note about what I call short and sweet monologues. (I talk about this some in the video, but I wanted to elaborate here)

It seems to me the standard audition is one monologue, under 2 minutes. This is pretty basic for most non-musical audition situations, but I've noticed lately a lot of companies have been asking for something under 1 minute.

To a non-actor, 1 minute might seem like forever, but it's really a very short amount of time. There's not a whole lot you can do with 1 minute. Take a paragraph out of your favorite book and read it out loud. It probably takes you roughly a minute to read it at normal speed. See how fast it went by? Now try to pack something of substance in those 60 seconds.

Part of this project has been to look for monologues in non-traditional places and a great place to go for short and sweet monologues is television shows. I know, I know, it seems weird, but think about it. TV writers have 45 minutes to tell an entire story. So any monologue they write has to get to the point and get there quick.

The current monologue I'm working on is from Grey's Anatomy (my fave show :)). The show is in it's seventh season. My monologue is from season 5. If you chose to do a monologue from a currently running TV show, it's probably a good idea to go one or two seasons back. One of the problems you run into doing a monologue from television is that your auditors may have preconceived notions about what this character is supposed to look and sound like. After all, someone is already playing this character in front of millions of people weekly. If you chose a past season, most likely no one but the hard-core fans will remember that speech. Also, since characters tend to change from season to season, there's a good chance that your character in season 5 is not the same character in season 7.

I always stayed away from doing TV monologues in auditions because I was embarrassed to say, "My name is Kristi and I'll be doing a monologue from *insert TV show here*" However, my friend Brandon, a fellow actor, gave me a great tip recently. He uses a monologue from a popular TV show quite frequently and when he does, he states the title of the episode not the title of the TV show. If they ask, you can certainly tell them what TV show it's from, but by telling them the title of the episode, you hopefully keep them from passing immediate judgement.

I mentioned above that the auditors might have preconceived ideas about who this character is, but it can't be denied that you do as well. I watch Grey's every week and have been living with this character for 2 years, so I certainly have an idea about how she should be played. However, I'm doing everything I can to rid myself of those brain worms*. I only watched the episode once and that was so I could get the story. I got the text of the piece off the internet, but I couldn't quite remember the context, so I watched the episode exclusively for that. During the scene in which my monologue occurs, I didn't pay any attention to the acting, only to the text of the piece to make sure I had it written down correctly. After all, the internet isn't always right.  ...

Once I had done that, I put the DVDs away and I won't pull them out again until after I have finalized my version of this piece. In the video to come, you'll see that I've done some of my KK homework and I'll be finishing the rest this week. It's so incredibly helpful and I can't wait to share with you how I feel her homework has impacted my audition. We know it's done well for Whitney! She got cast in a great show!

Have a great day everyone and don't miss my next video, coming soon!

With gratitude-
Kristi


*Does anyone remember that Private Practice/Grey's cross-over episode when Addison's brother had parasites in his brain?! Intense.