Another Actor In LA

I've often said that a person who wants to be an actor would be better served by taking a cooking class than taking an acting class. Not because acting classes aren't valuable, but because increasing the breadth and depth of your life experience will have a much greater impact on the quality of your work than learning any particular technique. The difference in my work before and after my trip around the world is stupidly obvious. Good acting is less an invention from thin air than it is a reshuffling of self. Depending on the role: you play up certain parts of your personality and experience and you sublimate others. The more that's happened to you, the more you've felt, the more of yourself you've used to get through life, the greater your palette.

A blogging buddy of mine recently posted about her first big gig as a professional artist. She was gob smacked by the amount she was being paid. She then wrote the following line in reference to her website to promote her art:

The website will host all my “professional” (I had to put that in quotes because I feel like a douche using the word without them) work and clients can access which photos they want to purchase directly the site.

The following is a copy of my response to her post, adapted to suit an actor:

Dear Actor,

Congratulations on your paid acting gig! You are officially a professional actor, and you should not feel like a "douche" when describing yourself as such.

Clearly, you do work of a professional caliber. Others recognize this and are willing to pay you for it. But more important than others believing you should be paid for your work, is you believing you deserve to be paid for your work. Until you can believe that, you will be hesitant to offer your services as a *professional* actor. Just because the status is new doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

Again, dear Actor, you are now a professional. You deliver professional-quality performances because you are a paid professional. You deserve to be compensated handsomely for your efforts, as any professional would be.

Here’s to great success in your endeavors and that this is the first of many such gigs! Best,

Donovan

Your work is only worth as much as you can convince someone else to pay you for it. If you can't even convince yourself you're a professional, what hope do you have of someone else seeing that value? The most important step towards a successful acting career is having a powerful champion of your work in your corner, someone who truly believes your work is good and that you deserve to be paid for it, that person is YOU.

A few weeks ago I nearly had a panic attack during acting class because I was asked to sit up straight. Ok, it was a little more complicated than that, but somaticaly good posture is all that was requested.

I hadn't failed a class since my wannabe stoner phase in middle school. Then I enrolled in Groundlings Level II. I first took it with Kevin Kirkpatrick and was asked to repeat it. Then I took it with Karen Maruyama, and she asked me to repeat it again. 13 weeks ago, I enrolled in Groundlings Level II for a third time, again with Karen.

Taking a page from my buddy Sokrates' book, I'm going to fulfill my bloggerly duties in the simplest way possible, a list of what's going on with me.