So you wanna be an actor

Musical theater will always be my first love. It is ostensibly what I trained for - for 2 years I ate, lived and breathed musical theater.

Then I graduated.

And then I didn't get cast in any musicals.

I did get cast in plays. I did get cast in movies. Eventually I got cast in a tv show. More on that later, if I feel like it. Generally I'm uncomfortable tooting my own horn, but one thing I've learned is that at this stage in my career, there isn't many other people who will do it for me.

But musical theater didn't happen, and not for lack of trying (for once). I went to every Miss Saigon and every Flower Drum Song call there was. I went to Rent calls, I went to Grease calls, I crashed Equity calls, etc etc etc. I got callbacks, but never cast.

This led me to a realization that I think everyone comes to at some point: my teachers lied. To be sure, there were many aspects they were brutally honest about. The best teacher I had at AMDA (an acting teacher), used to talk for 5 to 10 minutes before starting class about something. Sometimes it would be articles from the New York Times - I remember one article about Robert Caro's biography on LBJ where there was a picture showing LBJ talking to another member of the Senate - and his physicality (LBJ was very tall), using his size and crowding the man, pressing forward and jabbing a finger into his chest, was what Ray (my teacher) emphasized. I actually picked up that part (there are 3 so far, and Caro is only up to LBJ's time in the Senate) of the biography and it's a fascinating look at a man who was probably the greatest politician of his generation, with Nixon a close second. That comment, of course, is deliberately neutral - to be a good politician does not mean that one is a good person. Anyways, back to Ray. One day - it might even have been the first day - Ray said to us all that out of say, 100,000 actors who are in SAG, 10,000 actually get work in a given year. He himself had gone to acting school when he was starting, and out of his class, he was the only one at that time still acting. He told us to look around the room (our class was 20 people) and think about the fact that in 10 years time, all but one or two of us would have stopped acting.

It's now three years later. To my knowledge, 2 other people that were in that class with me continue to pursue acting here in New York.

But back to the lies. Teachers (well, my teachers) all said that having a great voice was fine and all, but after 5 seconds an audience member has made a decision if they like your voice or not. And after those 5 seconds, you'd damn well better have something else to keep them interested or they'd get bored, and possibly irritated. This, of course, was said with the express intention of pushing their take on musical theater - acting through a song. But then, the people who became the favorites in class inevitably were the ones who had great voices, sometimes able to match it with acting talent but frequently not.

Part of the problem stems from the very fact that music is inherently emotional. It's right there in the music itself. I read a story in the Times once where a theater had put on an experiment; it took the same show, but gave it to two different companies - one a musical theater company, the other an opera company. They then housed both productions in the same theater, giving viewers the opportunity to see the two different approaches. In the article, the difference was summed up as this: opera takes its acting cues from the music; the composer, through dynamics and keys (in other words, technical means) has already set the tone, and all that is required of the performer is to fulfill those technicalities. Musical theater, however, seeks justification for the musicality in the lyric. But, as in opera, in musical theater an incredible voice can emote even if the performer isn't doing anything other than singing. Or at least give the impression of emotion.

This is not to bash opera; it is a perfectly valid art form and I can appreciate it as well, but to me it always feels highly technical. There are few things as thrilling as a human voice that has been trained so perfectly that it can soar to notes that hit you on an instinctive level. There are also few things as disappointing as a technically perfect voice that lacks any emotive quality whatsoever other than the music itself - Josh Groban comes to mind. When you listen to good musical theater (and there isn't much of it out there - I mean the REALLY good stuff) you can see exactly what the performer is doing at any given time, because it's all there in their inflections - the way they sing the lyric. Bad musical theater, of course, makes you wish for an automatic weapon of some kind. I had a teacher that always used to say, the reason why people hate musical theater is because they've only seen bad musical theater. I can't really argue with that. I've seen a lot of bad musical theater.

But back to acting. As it went in school, so it went in auditions. You come to the realization very quickly that your look is important. You don't have to be beautiful (as long as you don't try to audition for beautiful roles). You just need to have a look that producers and directors can define. Being asian, I was immediately disqualified for many roles. That's just the way it is. Even if people might be open to (as it's referred to) non-traditional casting, most producers will not or can not take that risk.

It does, though, work both ways. Being asian, there were some roles I could audition for that I could not have otherwise. Pretty much everything I have been cast in, the casting notice stated that they were looking for an asian.

This post is already pretty long, and I haven't even gotten into the nuts and bolts of acting (well, what I think about acting). That's because the casting process is the most time-consuming portion of being an actor. You can think of it this way: actors are self-employed, and their company is themselves. You can be the best actor in the world, but if you can't promote yourself; if you don't have the strength or the will to mail out your information, to go to auditions and to keep going to auditions, to mail things to agents and to continually hound them until you get the one that you want, and then to keep pushing with your agent to get the parts that you want, you won't be able to make a living as an actor.

For those who don't know, the casting process for an starting actor goes like this. In New York, there are several weekly publications that list notices from productions looking for actors. Backstage is the main one for stage, and as New York is mainly a stage (musicals and straight plays) town, that's the main one here. Directors or producers will either be asking you to mail in your headshot and resume, or simply give a time and location for an audition, as well as the pertinent details - character breakdowns, whether they want to hear a prepared monologue or will be providing sides, that sort of thing. If it's a mail in, you send in your stuff and if it's an audition you go to the audition, and then you wait.

Typically (for me), out of every 10 things you mail you might get two to three calls. Some weeks you'll get more, some weeks you'll get nothing. Out of every 10 auditions you go to, you'll probably get a few call backs (that's when they...call you back, to see you again. It's the next level, when they're trying to decide between a few people which is the one they really want). The bigger the production is, the more call backs they'll hold - to get into the big Disney productions here in a lead role you usually have to be seen by them at least 4-5 times.

In my experience, it's rarely predictable. You have months where you go to auditions, you get call backs and you never get roles. Then you have a month where 2 or 3 productions all call you and want you. Then it's back to nothing. When I started I would be overjoyed to get a call back - after a few months it was a good thing but nothing to be excited about. You learn to even out the peaks and valleys or you get a therapist or you quit. Or maybe both of those last two options.

It's this business side that, I think, pushes a lot of people out of the profession. Everyone who goes to acting school might enjoy it, they might be talented at it, but if they're not willing to work for it, they won't stick around. Look at the people who are Hollywood stars - many of them are worse actors than people you can see in high school productions (not many, but some). But what made those people stars (aside from the beautiful people who come and go with their looks and lucky people who happen to know the right people), above and beyond whatever talent they might have had, was an inner drive that would not stop pushing, would not stop working until they had made it to a certain professional level.

I'm still not tired, but I think that's about all I have to say about this for now. Hopefully it's somewhat coherent.