Bad, Very Bad Acting!

I went to my second casting director workshop Tuesday night with Dream Big Casting.  I completely adore the two casting directors that run the workshop and Dream Big Casting.  I love the fact that they are completely, brutally honest with your read in the workshop and while in the audition (because I am also an occasional reader for their auditions), they will stop you if you are horrible, or set your headshot aside and not even bother to send in your tape to the director.  I feel the more honest they are, the better, because how can you grow properly as an actor if you are given false information.  Have you ever seen those people on American Idol whose family has always told them that they have this amazing voice, but when they go up in front of Simon, Paula and Randy it is the worst thing they have ever heard?  Yea, that is why it pays to have someone who is so disgustingly honest that it hurts, but in a good way. 

Tuesday night’s class was packed, it was the first time actually that I have seen it packed, which was a good thing, more variety of people to work with, different ranges of talent, etc.  Since I love to sit up front, I always get handed what I believe is the better scenes because when Sherrie hands them out, she goes from front to back, pretty much giving me the first choice of scenes without really giving me the choice; if you happen to be sitting in the back, you pretty much just get whatever is left, and sometimes they are crappy scenes.  I felt like I got a pretty awesome, relatable scene (which I feel is important).  My scene partner was a mixed version of Robert Pattison and both casting directors saw his “beauty” so they picked on him all night about it, although I do not believe he sees that in himself. He was also semi-new to the industry.  He has done a few films, but I believe he could possibly have the talent, depending on the role and scene, but it could have also been his look. 

We were given a scene about a husband who just scored his dream job as an undercover narcotics police officer and the wife was upset because they have two children and she did not want something happening to her husband because she could not live without him.  This hit close to home for me, because my boyfriend just passed Hell Week for the Navy Seal training program, which is an extremely dangerous job.  We’ve discussed marriage, kids, etc., so I can totally put myself in my character’s shoes.  My poor scene partner could not have been older than twenty, so he does not really have any life experiences relatable to his character, but he did the best he could to make it feel real for him.  We even got to a point in rehearsal (they gave us 15 minutes to go over it with our scene partners before we took it up in front of everyone) where we were both in tears.  At that point I knew we were ready to go up. 

We were the first to go up in our section (they split us in two groups to make it go by faster) and the first few times running the scene, my poor scene partner got stuck in his head and it showed.  Finally on our last take (after convincing Sherrie he was good in rehearsal), we played the roles as we did in rehearsal (which was much different than what Sherrie was having us do).  She then saw the life come from him and was blown away by the real, raw emotion.

The next group to go up was a group of three girls, they were okay.  They were at least willing to learn and take direction, which is very respectable and a great quality to have. They were open to learn, how could you ask for more than that?!  The third couple though, OMG!  They should totally, 100% GIVE UP acting.  I cannot even call them actors they were so horrible.  The female of the pair, English was her second language, which is fine, but not for acting.  I could see her playing a semi-decent role in Spanish, but there is no way she will ever get a role on a television show or film speaking in English, unless she practices her cold reading and really gets the language down.  The guy of the pair was even worse.  Neither of the two connected with the material or each other, even after Dan had made it clear to them and given them people to think about during the scene (which was a funeral scene).  The guy was pushing way too hard to bring out emotion, he was squinting his eyes, totally pretending to cry and pushing so hard that it almost looked like a cross between constipation and an orgasm, very odd. Meanwhile, he would also glance over to the audience to see if anyone was buying what he was doing… OMG!  He carried himself like he was the best actor in the room, and even after Dan told them straight up that their scene and their acting was a piece of shit, he still did not get it.  Dan told them to go home and work on this scene for two weeks and bring it back, but I hope I am not there when they come back (if they do), because there is no way I can sit through that scene again, it was so horrible and a waste of at least an hour and a half of my life and the sad part is, they had the shortest scene of the whole class.. it was one page, while everyone else had two to three. 

Note to self – always be open minded when it comes to acting.