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<p>I bought a travel humidifer for the hotel rooms during audition travel. It works with a regular water-bottle (and can be refilled with tap water.) It made a huge difference in comfort. I felt lucky my daughter did not get sick during those trips.</p>
<p>Our daughter did a walk-in at Unifieds for an acting program - the only straight acting program she auditioned for along with 15+ MT programs. She ended up with multiple offers and selected the walk-in Acting program and couldn’t be happier!!! Don’t close any doors!!</p>
<p>"^ And what makes me mad is that the boys have it so much easier. A boy at my daughter’s school got into CMU. This is a kid who skips school, does drugs and smokes, and doesn’t make good grades at all. I actually lost a little respect for CMU for admitting him! He doesn’t get respect from the kids at school either but he’s a boy and was cast in just about everything. The only consolation is that kids like this can’t handle the hard work that goes into the craft!"</p>
<p>not saying that i’m like this boy you’re describing however…but the characteristics you are using to describe the boy can’t really define if the boy is talented or not. one of the best actors i know in one of the classes above me apparently was belligerent 90% of his freshman year, and a quarter of the times that I run into him I’m sure he’s been drinking…but all the work as an actor that I see him do is solid and he’s just been cast in show this summer at a very well known and respected theatre. It’s clear he does a lot of work whenever it comes to acting and is prepared for projects that do matter. This can be said for many people in my program. Some of the most amazing people to watch aren’t the ones who are necessarily the ones who are the most well behaved. I’ll even admit. I skip half of my academic classes and even failed the two I was taking aside from my BFA core last semester…I’m currently unsure if I’ll pass one of my academics this semester. This does not bleed into my acting work at all and often times it’s because i’m consumed by everything I’m putting towards my BFA work. I killed myself in hs with all my AP and honors courses and now realize that I shouldn’t be wasting my precious energy in areas that aren’t peaking my interest now…especially in classes with students who are a hundred times less inspiring and less motivated to learn than my company. So if this boy doesn’t give a darn about anything and isn’t your picture of the student who “deserves” to get admitted to a “top” program so be it. No one knows how his audition went…it must have been amazing for him to even be considered let alone accepted. If you’re convinced he’s never deserved anything he’s gotten, he had to have worked his butt off in that audition room. CMU is known for spending lots of time with students they’re interested in and for throwing the strangest things at kids–my audition for that school the year I auditioned was really long I remember and it was one of the most exhausting and required so much energy to keep up with what the auditor was asking of me. The boy must have taken lots of risks in that room to get the acceptance. And that’s the thing, sometimes the kids who are the heavy drinkers, smokers, etc…the “wilder” ones who don’t care as much seem to have it easy. They don’t have to work so hard to learn how to be risky in their acting because they’re already so free in their own life.</p>
<p>There’s a guy who guest teaches at my school. He’s a graduate of Juilliard and I remember him telling us a story about the problems that the companies he knew experienced. The classes who were full of heavy drinkers or drug users had put themselves in the position to be very open and vulnerable…they would have an easy time having access to their emotions whenever they worked, but they faced huge monsters in their own life. His class, however, was full of people who behaved well and took care of themselves…they ate well and worked out and their bodies were in really great condition. Unlike the other classes, they held more tension that was buried deeper in them and made it harder for them to get access into their emotional well. </p>
<p>This is the case with most acting programs. There is a range in the types of students you meet in these places. Plenty of them will be the well mannered kids that you say deserve to be in these programs, but then the other half will probably be very similar to the boy you have described. The thing, I’ve noticed and learned, however…no matter what, EVERYONE who comes to these programs and stays is extremely dedicated to their craft…either from day 1 or they eventually learn how to implement discipline into their work. We all figure out that we love the work too much to not do our work and therefore jeopardize our own growth as actors.</p>
<p>CCer2014, thanks for the time you took to explain your perspective on this.</p>
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<p>I would like to second all of the above! I was out of state dealing with a family emergency during the month our D made her final list last year, and to everyone’s surprise her top choice was a school with binding ED. If I had been home I very likely would have tried to talk her into applying RD, but it is absolutely the best place she could have landed and I am SO glad we let her apply ED!! Her intuition was spot on, which is probably true for many actors.</p>
<p>I’d also add that at her school 40% of the class is filled ED, and they are a very talented bunch. They get TONS of audition practice once there, so don’t assume that going through the entire college audition process increases anyone’s talent level OR even assume that all of the most talented kids even show up to the BFA auditions. In short, my biggest lesson learned was to keep an open mind about programs that don’t fit the cc BFA audition mode.</p>
<p>I’m going to Emerson for BFA Acting, and I couldn’t be more excited. I do have one regret, though: I applied for MT, but I was really sick on the day of my audition and could barely breathe out of my nose, and I didn’t tell the auditor (at Tisch the singing auditor said she wanted to know if we were sick, but when I asked the students running the auditions at Emerson they gave me a not-too-convincing “yeah…maybe.”) I managed an on-key but flimsy-sounding soprano piece, and then we chatted about how I was primarily a dancer. The acting auditor was very, very quick with me: one monologue, some light praise, and I was out in 5 minutes. I didn’t think the audition went very well, but apparently I wasn’t that bad.<br>
My advice for future seniors is to fully commit to your auditions and your material. I took the entire process very seriously, but I vacillated between three monologues. In retrospect the one I did for Emerson was definitely the strongest, and I only performed it at two of my six auditions. Also, choosing a monologue that has a good amount of yourself in it is really helpful. It’s a lot easier, especially when you’re nervous, to play a version of yourself, and while it may not be the most ambitious option, my logic was that in that audition room I wanted every advantage I could get.
The other thing I would say is, to assuage the nerves, think of the fact that most of the people that you’ll meet at your auditions are in the same boat as you: they’re pursuing something they love, they’re unsure, they’re nervous, they’re not professionals, but they’re giving it their best shot. I remember showing up to half my auditions with an internal panic attack that went something like: “OhmygodwhatamIdoingherethesepeopleareallprofessionalsatsuperperformingartshighschoolsandI’mnotIshouldgohome.” It wasn’t very helpful. It sounds trite, but a confidence that you love what you’re doing and you’re pretty decent at it will go a long way. For a girl like myself, a new dress or two didn’t hurt either. It was a strenuous, stressful process, to be sure (and I only auditioned for six schools!) but I’m so excited it worked out for me and I can’t wait for the fall :)</p>
<p>Congratulations sammii! Great monologue advice.</p>
<p>Just a thought in response to CCer2014: you make some excellent points about the how it is not always the perfectly behaved students who are the best actors. That’s a given. But anyone who is often drunk or using drugs is not someone who I think would naturally have “access” to their deeper feelings at all! People who over-use alcohol and drugs are doing a form of self-medicating to AVOID their emotions, and not to get <em>access</em> to them. I am not one who thinks people “deserve” or “don’t deserve” to get into programs or get certain roles or whatever: life doesn’t work that way. So I am not saying that a student who is often drinking doesn’t deserve to be at a prestigious program. I am just making the point that anyone who uses that many substances that often (and someone who is drunk during the day would qualify, in my book) isn’t someone running toward his emotions: he’s running away from them.</p>
<p>no i know exactly what you mean. and i completely agree.</p>
<p>oftentimes however…the people running away from their emotions are the ones who put themselves in the position of being able to access them easily. take it from someone who deals with heavy depression who refused to acknowledge it last year and in turn ended up being a huge emotional mess in and out of the classroom until i began to face my problems. people who are usually the “hot-messes” are the ones who are the most vulnerable and can easily tap into their emotional well…they’ve primed themselves unconsciously to have access to it when they need it in their work. of course, we cannot rely on being a hot mess for the rest of our lives to have good work, but there is a reason why some of the most honest and celebrated artists are the ones who have been these hot messes of people at some time or another in their careers…there is a quality of true and raw emotion and passion that comes through in their work because they are literally working through their personal issues as they’ve been working on a project.</p>
<p>my original post was just trying to get at the fact that we cannot use a person’s chosen lifestyle as a way to judge of whether they are deserving or not of something.</p>
<p>It’s definitely true that the best actors aren’t always the best students. My faculty actually admonished me to “stop being such a good student and start being an artist” in evaluations first year. It kind of became an inside joke in my class after awhile …</p>
<p>It’s also true that some of the best actors often have very messy lives. Not that that’s something to strive for … And I’m not saying I’m one of the best actors, but it kind of worked the opposite for me with all the substance abuse and whatnot. I doubt many of the parents on here would have wanted their kids hanging around with me between the ages of 13 and 15. Talk about a “hot mess” … Stumbling onto acting was really my way out of that. It might have even saved my life. </p>
<p>Now back on topic … I would have probably given a huge laundry list of “coulda, woulda, shouldas” a few years ago. Looking back, though, I wouldn’t change a thing. There’s an old Chinese folktale about a farmer who had a beautiful white horse wander onto his property and all the people in the village exclaimed, “How fortunate!” The next day the farmer’s only son was thrown from the horse while training it and broke his leg in three places. Of course, all the people in the village exclaimed, “How unfortunate!” Then, a few days later the Emperor’s army marched through town and conscripted all the able bodied young men for what turned out to be a very long, bloody war from which none returned … </p>
<p>You never know what the universe has in store. Just gotta have faith in whatever it is that you have faith in and keep plugging …</p>
<p>wow, fishbowlfreshman, your post gave my goose bumps. Loved that folktale.</p>
<p>Also can understand what your professor meant, because sometimes being a good student means following the rules and meeting the expectations of others. It’s a balance, really, because an actor needs to be pretty exceptional for a director to be willing to put up with missing deadlines / commitments because of personal issues and for admission to college programs, the better students are going to have a wider range of options – whether acceptances to a school with higher academic bar and /or scholarship offers.</p>
<p>fishbowlfreshman - I always love your posts and this was no exception!</p>
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<p>Next time they say that, just reply “Meryl Streep.” You can DEFINITELY be both!! ;-D</p>
<p>You CAN be a good actor who is also a good student. To me, grades measure responsibility and no matter how talented you are, or think you are, in the professional world, if you show up late, drunk, high, and can’t remember your lines- you’re fired and get a bad reputation in the industry. Carnegie has high standards and my point was, you should meet those standards. There are plenty of acting programs and schools that don’t put such an emphasis on that. If they only place about 6/7 boys in their program, I don’t buy that those boys can’t also be responsible with good grades. just sayin’ :)</p>
<p>I agree, and much prefer schools that take a wholistic approach. Some come right out and say, “If your smart enough we can teach you acting.” This business about one person or another having talent that takes their breath away is very subjective. Some will see it, others won’t.</p>
<p>I have certainly worked with actors that I knew used marijuana recreationally, and almost every actor I have worked with drinks alcohol socially. (I don’t do either) Nevertheless, the actors I work with show up for rehearsal on time, sober, and with their lines memorized. It doesn’t make sense just to assume that if someone is a drug user they don’t have the discipline to do the work. If someone gets admitted to an fairly exclusive program, you can be sure that they had to be disciplined to do so.</p>
<p>KEVP</p>