So You Wanna Be A Star?

Becoming an Actor or Actress

Actors play a key role in the interpretation of a writer's script. Although most famous actors live in Los Angeles or New York, there are thousands of actors that work in local television studios, theatres, or film production companies. This article contains the job description, working conditions, necessary qualifications, salary range, and promotion opportunities for actors. Please read on to find out more.

A career in theatre or film is one of the few vocational paths that offers the possibility of amazing financial opportunity and fame without requiring extensive education or book-smarts. Frequently actors are trained through an acting conservatory or university, but it is quite common for actors to find work based solely on their experience and talent. So, it is best to start preparing for a film or stage career at a young age.

Two of the most frustrating aspects of the acting profession are the intense competition and the continual rejection (both are common occupational hazards.) Although some people assume that all actors live the 'Hollywood lifestyle,' there are lots of actors that live perfectly normal lives. The majority of actors make a living by performing in television, radio, video, stage, or motion picture productions. Furthermore, fledgling actors gain experience by performing in local cabarets, nightclubs, theme parks, commercials, and films for training or educational purposes.

Salaried actors earned about $23,470 in 2002, though the top 10% of actors made over $100,000 a year.

Acting is mostly a labor of Love. The joy of performing and the process of working with a cast on a production is a very rewarding experience. Making a living solely on acting is a challenge for most artists. Most have other jobs to maintain there life while practicing their craft. Hard work, determination and persistence are key to the growth of the actor.

Just a word of advice if you wanna be a star. There are millions of actors competing for a handful of TOP paying acting opportunities. So understand the playing field. In other words, don't quit your day job.

The Acting Grind Or I Love Rejection

THE ACTING GRIND

or

I LOVE REJECTION

"I found this commentary from a newbie actor. I reminded me that we as artists all go through the same pains no matter what decade we did it in pursueing our dream. I found that facinating..."

Acting.

There's such a weird mystique about acting. Landing a role depends on whether you're tall enough or have the right skin color. You need to accept yourself as an artist and be who you are. Accepting that is a huge thing."Networking. "

Networking

Is too impersonal of a word. It's more about fostering meaningful artistic relationships with people. Get involved with the right people. Who you know can really step up your game. "Meeting people in The Acting Company has been terrific because there are a lot of people into the kinds of things that I'm doing. Having someone there backing you up can be really great."

Accepting criticism.

"Criticism is so essential. You have to keep developing, and you need your peers to tell you when something isn't working."

Auditioning. "It's such a weird Catch-22. You have to go into a room and offer up your soul and crack open your heart. Then you have to turn all of that off, and say 'it's work, and this is who I am,' and if you like it, that's fine. You have to walk out and leave it at the door."

Choosing roles.

"It's my first year out (of graduate school), so I'll go for anything: film work, commercial work, all of it. At some point, the industry is going to accept you for who you are. My fiancee is doing a lot of TV work, she's been on "Gossip Girl" and "Lipstick Jungle," and I seem to be getting a lot of theater work."

The down side of being an actor.

"You're always wondering when the next job is coming. Do I have enough money to pay the rent? And it puts a real strain on relationships."But every day I wake up and say, 'today I am an actor. I am an artist.' If you don't do that, you go nuts."

Emmitt Says....

As an artist you have to feel the need to do what you do. Yes their are many rewards at the top in the financial sense and the notariety sense, but the real value is the jackpot you hit by working at perfecting your craft. The exhilaration of audiences responding to you the artist. That, you can't put a price on. The value of those moments are what we as artists work long and hard for. The war stories we all have about the process as we develope are just that. Battle scars that we are proud of. When Theater actors say we have paid our dues you really understand what they mean. You respect what they have endured just for the opportunity to practice their craft and give their gift.

There is something to be said for fame. But their is more to be said for enduring and surviving as an Artist, GOD smiles at your creations even when no one else even see them. Trust your work and believe in yourself. Don't fool yourself into thinking there is a short cut. There are NO shortcuts in a process. Short Cuts are by it's very meaning a short version of something more meaningful. Don't try to drink the water without first getting a cup. You may be able to drink out of your hands but you never know what else you may be drinking that is on your hands. Instead use your hands to applaude for the Artist that has done the work and continues to do the work trying to be in the moment, for only a moment.

THEATER ARTISTS UNITE

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Emmitt Thrower

I Just Found This Fascinating...
Theater of Code — with Ursula Endlicher, Adrianne Wortzel, MTAA; Curated by Christiane Paul :: March 3, 2009; 7:30 pm :: Light Industry, 220 36th Street, 5th Floor, Brooklyn, New York.
Theater of Code will present three performance / interventions that explore how computer code, scripting language, and software applications relate to the movement of bodies and the staging and choreography of our lives. Adrianne Wortzel’s A Re-enactment of The Battle of the Pyramids is a performance installation of reconfigured robotic toys performing military maneuvers in rigid choreographed formations. Clusters of these toys snap to synchronization in response to a call to arms, their movements emulating the rigid and postured fighting strategies of Napoleonic warfare. These strategies, employed in Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, were particularly idiosyncratic in Egypt where they were persistently performed without consideration of either the desert environment or the fighting strategies of the enemy. The work is intended as a testimony to the tragic consequences of imperialism and the dangers, follies and sadness of a rationale for blind obedience that makes victims out of warriors. Ursula Endlicher’s Website Impersonations: The Ten Most Visited is a ten-part live performance series, which utilizes Web code as choreography. In the performance of facebook on March 3, 2009, at Light Industry, three dancers, the audience, and the artist will shape the course of the performance. The source of the website — its HTML tags — is interpreted live on stage into new dance movements, which are immediately translated into text-based descriptions and then stored online in the html-movement-library. This information is reused on stage as new instruction material. As the data performance progresses, more html-movements are developed, stored and altered by the participants. The user (=the audience) takes an active role in the performance of facebook.com. The inclusion of the html-movement-library on stage enables a simultaneous exchange of instruction and performance, data and movement input and output, and a continuous transfer between Web and body. MTAA returns to Light Industry with two new performances of code-based art. In the first work — titled $”##’ — MTAA re-stages John Cage’s 4′33″ within a framework of a new media lecture. The second project is a demonstration of Autotrace, a software-generated appropriation and shape creation system. As part of the Autotrace performance, MTAA will use one of the newly generated “Autotraced shapes” to create a ridiculously large, two-dimensional, site-specific work right in front of the audience’s eyes. Together, the three projects comment on the various levels in which our movements—from military maneuvers to social interaction and the presentation of a lecture—are encoded by technologies.
Emmitt Says... How is technology impacting the art of theater? I think in some ways technology has had less impact upon theater as opposed to everything else in the world. It certainly has impacted Broadway as they have technological explosions to attract the tourism side of theater. But at the gut level of theater, Community theater, off and off off Broadway theater, it is for the most part just as it has always been. It is the pureness of word, sound and form that propels theater forward and captivates the minds and souls of theater lovers. It is a close mimic of our own lives and realities. Examining us at the most basic levels.
There have and still are many trying to incorporate technology into the Art of Theater. Some with more success than others. The trick of course is how do we take theater to another level using technology but still maintaing the attributes of a theater we care about and love. The theater that emotionally appeals to something deeper inside us that seems to need this basic live interaction to justify our existence.
I don't know what the answer is, but feel that we must pursue that model where technology and theater co exist peacefully along side each other. Theater of Code may be part of the puzzle. Maybe connecting Artists Globally, as is the ambition of Artist Magnet, to do it on a Global basis in a central location can be the bridge leading us into finding those answers with our fellow International Artist.

History will answer that...

Emmitt thrower
et@wabisabiproductions.com