My first Award Show

I had a nice, busy weekend, followed by a relatively relaxing Monday.

On Friday I was lucky enough to be an extra with some friends, and also got to make some new ones. It was a much smaller set than the one I have been on recently, so the crew ate with the extras, and there were a lot less people. I thoroughly enjoyed the call time of nearly noon, compared to the 3-4 a.m. I had gotten used to. I didn’t really enjoy driving home with the bridge closed due to fireworks, but all considered it was a very fun day!

On Saturday, I had Day 1 of the workshop with Casting Director Mike Migliara. It was a group entirely made up of actors from my agent’s roster, and was pretty insightful. There were a lot of things he said that I had heard before with Margie Haber or Anthony Meindl in L.A., but I need to work harder to remember all these genius things I have learnt, and apply them.

I had to duck out kind of early from the workshop in order to attend the ACTRA awards with Carolyne. She introduced me to the people she knew, and I actually knew some as well. More than anything, it convinced us that we want to be there one day. Once we have established ourselves, we will come back home and be presenters or just watch the show, to demonstrate that we haven’t forgotten where we came from. And as for now, it was really nice to spend a night with the Montreal acting community, to be entertained by the hilarious host, and to have a night out with a good friend 🙂 It was a very fun first ‘real’ awards show, but I can’t wait to actually be a part of it!

On Sunday, we had the actual casting and audition part of the workshop, as well as the guest speakers. My group got to cast first, so we sat behind the table and watched half the group audition. We had to put them on short list, and I took note of things they do that from my side, aren’t exactly flattering, so I can make sure not to do them myself.

After we finished watching, we had to actually audition. We had two scenes, and the guys before me had done both of theirs, but I was the first girl to go, and we only had time for me to do one. This may, in part, have been because my scene starts with me sleeping, until the other character wakes me up. There was a mix up with the sides, so the reader thought I had the first line. This left me sleeping on the floor for a while. My agent seemed to love it, but Mike basically said I need to work on my specificity, which is totally true, I didn’t know how hungry or scared I was, which I should have.

After the audition, I went back out so the others could audition, and was surprised when the ADs from the sets I had been an extra on walked in. I had researched the movie that our guest speakers had done, but I hadn’t looked at their pictures. There was something about having worked with them before that made everything they said more interesting, although it was all really cool, from the get go. Writing a script and working to make it into a movie is something that I definitely admire.  I do write a lot though, and would love to turn one of my stories into a movie, but I don’t think I would be able to do it myself, like he did. 

I drove to my grandmother’s afterwards. I missed supper, but still got to eat and catch up with the family, including my cousins who had done Tough Mudder on Saturday. I had to miss it for the workshop, which really sucks, but I will be able to do it next year, with everyone, and have a year to prepare 😉

Today I walked all around running errands, I went for a swim, and I worked on my scenes for Wednesday, putting them on cue cards on getting familiar with them. Our commercial that was in the contest didn’t win, but I am not letting that get me down, because we still made it pretty far. I don’t have any auditions lined up, but I do have workshops and classes and some monologues to work on 🙂

“One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn’t pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.”

-Lucille Ball