WEEK ONE:

Today you will participate in a “discussion”style lecture on Crystal Carson’s Auditioning by Heart method:

HOMEWORK:

Please read, print & fill out Venn diagram and return a picture of the completed Venn diagram to Crystal.Carson@mac.com 48 hours before class. Also, keep it somewhere to access for yourself in the future. This is a wonderful centering tool for your artistic life and acting career. Thanks!

 WHY ARE YOU AN ACTOR?

There are actors who act to give something of themselves to the world, and there are actors who act to get something from the world. I feel fortunate that for the most part, I come into contact with the former. Most actors I have spoken with say that they got into acting to connect to people and share their gifts. Of course they want to make money and many want the fame, too. However, money is not the first consideration to them. They would (and sometimes do) act for free!

But it’s easy to get off-track and become overly absorbed in the desire to work and be "successful" as an actor for your ego's sake. You want to book jobs so your agent is happy, your friends and family are proud of you, and you can feel like a success walking down the street. These are not bad things, but they can turn on you when they become the driving force behind your career as an artist. So it becomes very important for the actor to "check in" and make sure that they remember why they wanted to do this in the first place. When you get out of your own self-centeredness you realize how narrow you can become if you’re not careful.

Giving to others opens you up—expands your heart and strengthens you. When you "live" through the character of the script and allow yourself to have the character's thoughts and feelings; even those that are ugly, weak, and filled with self-doubt, you're acknowledging that to be human is to be imperfect.

You become strengthened by the knowledge that you are not alone in those feelings of being less-than, feelings of fear, feelings of being "not good enough". They are actually much of what drive the characters to do what they do. Like a single flame lighting many wicks, your audience lights up in recognition. They are as seeing themselves in your character... and sharing "your uglies”. Any acting you do that you do that you have fleshed out and discovered using your imagination and act in truth allows the audience to see themselves especially in the silence.

You're not losing anything but rather, gaining joy and expansiveness. You are connecting us all, as the parts of one perfectly imperfect human experience. Actors, like most people, are always at their best, happiest, and most effective when they are about something bigger than themselves.

So let's list the reasons why you might be an actor:
1) To get stuff. To gain Material things, love, adoration and attention.
2) To be challenged and meet those challenges within a community. Create something in collaboration with others.
3) To make a difference in the world for the future and for people I’ve never even met.

Your Values give you what you will focus on, and what you focus on is an instruction to you brain to go get it. So...
1. Saying WHY you want to be an actor, excites you in a powerful and positive way to develop the qualities that will get you to become an actor.
2. Saying WHY you want to be an actor, changes your path from self- serving to "others serving", and transforms your values in a way that serves you in fulfilling on that “why”.

3. Saying WHY you want to be an actor, emboldens you to believe there is a greater value in it.

4. It prioritizes your time and money. You will specialize when you get knowledge that lead you there faster.
5. Saying WHY you want to be an actor, focuses your mind on finding out how to do it. More ideas in how to do it pop into your head and allows more possibilities to come to you.
6. Saying WHY you want to be an actor causes people of like-mind start to come to you, too. And they will support and/or mentor you.
7. Saying WHY you want to be an actor causes you to notice resources that you wouldn’t have seen without that focus.
8. Your decision-making power becomes more finely honed, and so you can now make quicker, smarter decisions.
9. Your consciousness feels good and deserving because you know that it is not only for yourself but for others.
10. Saying WHY you want to be an actor, will make you more willing to pay the price.

Please fill out the Venn diagram below and send it back to me. :-)

PS - You will either need to print this, write on it, and then snap a picture to return to me, or Draw the circles in a program you like that you can manipulate. (I’m sorry) THNX! —Crystal