Summer Acting Program - Maggie Flanigan Studio 02

Summer Acting Program - Maggie Flanigan Studio 02 Q: What was your experience like auditioning in New York City before starting at the studio? A: Yes. I'm laughing because it's like night and day. When I went into the room before the studio, I would get the sides. If I saw that they want to see monologues, I would say, "I don't have a monologue," and I wouldn't go to the audition. Because I was afraid, it was fear. I was worried that I didn't have the skills to go to a play audition, so I went to musical theater auditions because I knew I had songs. I knew that I had that ability, that musicianship, but the acting ability, I didn't feel like I was prepared for it. I would get sides for musical theater auditions, and I wouldn't memorize them. This whole experience has taught me, prepare, prepare, and prepare in the right way. Prepare in the way that we're trained to prepare, and it will have a positive outcome for you. If it's not the job, then it's a personal achievement. I would go into these audition rooms. I would not be memorized. I would sing pretty or whatever, and then they would say, thank you, and I usually wouldn't get the job, and I didn't know why. The feedback I would get would be, "You sound great, but you were more we're looking for." After training with Maggie for a while, I realized it's because I wasn't prepared at the end of the day. If you're trained to prepare, it's easier to prepare because you know what you're supposed to do. If you go into an audition, you get sides, and you're like, "Well, I guess lightning will strike if I just say the lines or if I have an objective, and I have tactics and all these things that we were taught in undergrad." We think that "OKOK, well, maybe lightning will strike, and it'll be a good scene," without really knowing why or how. That's what auditioning was like before. Now I know that there's so much more work to put into it, but I know how to go about it, and that's priceless. Q: Do you think the problem you were having about that lack of preparation and understanding is why many actors struggle to work professionally? A: 100%. Everybody is talented, everybody. If you have the wherewithal to go into this business and show yourself, there's some talent there. You have a natural push to do something in this business. Everybody's talented. What sets people apart is that talent shouldn't be a crutch. Talent is something that is a catapult for you to then build upon. It's a foundation. I have learned that people who are not naturally talented sometimes do better because they work harder and don't rest on talent. That's something I was doing. I was sleeping on my singing, and then it got to a certain point where I started seeing the same people at the same auditions with the same outcome. Then I started hanging out with those people, people who are also in the same limbo. What happens is then this feeling of this chip on your shoulder starts to appear where you're saying, "Well, it's the business. It's not me; it's this." Then people get stuck there. Suppose you don't find a studio like Maggie Flanigan and don't find a technique that works for you. In that case, you will just be stuck in that limbo if you keep taking casting director classes, like a six-week intensive, if you keep taking those classes, but without training, all you're doing is showing those casting directors how untrained you are. Going to a casting director workshop expecting to be taught isn't the right way to think about it. I see it as you're a business; you're a product. If you were in a cupcake business, you wouldn't take your batch of cupcakes that you have never baked before to a convention to try to get investors. You wouldn't walk into the convention and be like, "Hey, here are my crappy cupcakes; you want to try them?" Then they beat them, and they're like, "No." Then they put a big X over your name. It's like that with casting director workshops. I don't want to take my cupcakes to their convention until they're ready to be tested, and it's like they weren't ready to be tasted. I think a lot of people in that purgatory don't realize that. Maggie Flanigan Studio 153 W 27th St #803 New York, New York 10001 (917) 789-1599 www.maggieflaniganstudio.com/new-york-ny www.google.com/maps?cid=17904951966372592922 twitter.com/MeisnerActing www.facebook.com/MeisnerActing/ meisneracting10001.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/index.html maggieflaniganstudio.business.site/ www.pearltrees.com/maggieflaniganstudio https://flic.kr/p/2kXW2P7