Hi all,
Here is the last post of the year considering there are only two weeks. Merry Christmas! or whatever you celebrate. This is my favorite holiday of the year. I love the Christmas shopping, the beautiful lights, baking cookies, the tree, Christmas carols, Santa Claus, and spending time with my family and friends I haven’t seen in a while. I am also a very faithful Catholic so I see this as all about the birth of Jesus and how He changed the world. I tried to keep myself engaged with acting during this festive month. Casting director Mark Sikes, who has a weekly blog on the Showfax page of Actors Access, gave a challenge to actors to not let December pass them by. I wasn’t sure how many auditions I would get and what I could book not being in LA and having an agent. I’ll tell you in a moment what I accomplished.
First off, let me tell you about being in the Filmstock Actors Showcase. The whole festival took place at the Harkins Valley Art and now includes short films from around the world in the categories of drama, comedy, animation, and documentary. I performed Ariel’s Harpy speech from The Tempest and I received rave reviews. They had an onstage director, Alejandro Montoya, who is a filmmaker from New Mexico. He was awesome to work with and gave us all redirects after our initial performance of our piece. He told me to do the speech like Patton’s speech from the film. It’s my Dad’s favorite movie, so I knew exactly how to do that. I had a lot of fun acting like I did back at Drama school. I also got coaching on the monologue from Duane Daniels at the Actors Workhouse. I attended a free workshop at his studio and really loved it. I would take classes there every week if had more money. It’s only $30 per class. He helped me move the monologue in the direction of making it how Ariel would actually do it, not Prospero. Before, I made it an angry monologue, but Ariel is mischievous, light, and funny, so I changed my portrayal to show that. I will inquire about getting the footage of the performance to put on my Social Media.
Remember the casting office where I got to audition for the commercial? I booked another commercial shoot and it’s a big one. I can’t divulge any details at this time, but look for it soon. That certainly added to my making December count.
My script, La Famille, got to be part of the In The Works series reading this past Tuesday. You get to have an excerpt from the screenplay, so I went with the first 15 pages about Laureatte. I didn’t get any French speakers to read the script, but it was really cool to hear my words. (I put the French bits into English. The French parts are not all translated because I’m not fluent in French and don’t know the Acadian/Cajun versions.) The young lady reading Laureatte did the cutest French accent ever and I wanted to hug her for going for it. I was really happy with just about everything that I wrote, but I knew I needed to add more. After the read, the audience can give the writer feedback. They said that I needed to have more explanation of the history, since many people don’t know the history of the Acadians/Cajuns. However, they were really impressed with my research and my characters though they were differing opinions on how well they felt they knew the characters. I will definitely be fixing the first part and adding a lot more explanation and scenes with Laureatte, Madame Richard, and the other characters in that part. The most important change will be Dawn giving the audience (and her daughter) the introductory explanation of the history.
I signed up for the SMFA: Get in Gear for the New Year challenge hosted by casting director, Bonnie Gillespie, which is about getting actors on the right track to get hired in 2015. I’ve done the homework so far and received some useful feedback on what my headshot says about me and how to target my materials. SMFA stands for Self-Management for Actors and it’s the guide she wrote for actors to be successful in the industry.
I hope that amazing things will happen for me in the New Year, like finally being union eligible, getting significant credits on my resume, making The Go-Girls into a film, and getting La Famille produced (after edits, of course). But first, I’ll go ahead and enjoy the holiday season. I can at least take Christmas off, right?
Anna Sahlstrom.com 