From the Anna Archives

Hi all,

I’m participating in the Bramon Garcia Braun 10 Day Actor’s Challenge for Letting Go and part of the challenge is to do an acting exercise each day and after making a self-tape for a comedy pilot (I just might book that!), I decided that my acting task for the day was to look over my old self-tapes and see how I’ve done.  I really cringed at the older ones that had me constantly looking at the script and my facial tics and unnecessary arm gestures.  I often punctuate my words with my hands and make “fish lips” (not as adorable as that sounds!)  I can’t show my most recent self-tape because the project hasn’t even finalized casting yet.

Here is one of my first self-tapes for the ABC Diversity Showcase.  Now, why would pasty little me audition for this?  Because I’m a woman.  I am sharing this to demonstrate how much I’ve improved.  I was really nervous and it showed, and I also looked at my sides constantly.  Ever since taking Chris Game’s How To Book Everything Class, I have sworn to memorize the sides for every audition and minimize the silly gestures.

Next up is a much more recent video of my doing a scene from the one-camera comedy series, “Kevin From Work,” in Chris’  class doing a much better job and being really funny.  Completely memorized, not really nervous, and minimized silly extra movements.

Of course, we can all get better at auditioning, especially self-tapes.  Many projects request self-tape auditions and I’m glad to have the resources to do them, but I always prefer in-person auditions because I can meet the production team.