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The Good, the Bad & the Ugly: a Vet’s Take on 30 Years of Auditioning

Suzie Plakson has been making a living as a TV, theatre, and film actress for 25 years.  Highlights include recurring roles as Dr. Golfinos on Mad About You and Judy Erikson on How I Met Your Mother, Broadway’s La Bete, movies such as Disclosure, Wag the Dog and Redeye, and the voice of a blue brontosaurus real estate agent on Dinosaurs. For more info visit www.suzieplakson.com.

I’ve been auditioning for professional acting jobs for (cue scream of horror) thirty years. Auditioning is, indeed, a micro-art unto itself. It is an art within a presumably artistic business, an art fraught with frustration, futility, humiliation, anxiety, hidden crafts, and on very rare occasion, magic — magic that isn’t necessarily contingent upon getting the job. The magic happens when preparation and skill mix with the receptivity of the people for whom you’re auditioning — in spite of the pressures that would seem to preclude that possibility — and all within the room are transported, for a moment, beyond the rather unappealing business at hand.

A few of my general premises:

1) Show business is a mad, mad, mad, mad world.  Mediocrity is all too often the cream that rises; why does so much talent go nowhere, why does so much crap go everywhere? Don’t ask.  Literally.  To maintain a steady sanity, it is essential to accept, again and again, the fact of a systemic, smiling insanity and inanity. One must let go of finding a Why in so very many instances.  Particularly for the analytical amongst us, “But why?” leads to tortured madness.  Best

Music Guru Jeffrey Marshek Wants to be Your Doctor

JEFFREY MARSHEK is a personal music junkie, at your disposal.

I like to think of my work as a music trainer with a monthly plan to get your ears in the best shape possible.

I am setting up a regimen for what you should be listening to each month.

You could even look at me as your music doctor.

This month, I’m prescribing soulful R&B, Alternative Country Folk, Trip Hop and some Dance/Electronica.

Our next appointment is in a month……

MY-POD: THE SOUNDTRACK

MASSIVE ATTACK: Electro-ancestors and Trip hop forefathers

Massive Attack, the collective known for pioneering a unique style of sound, a genre (and a legion of copy cats) returns with ‘Heligoland.’

As with Sade, Massive attack has also only released a handful of recordings in its 20 year career, the latest installment being their 5th.

‘Heligoland’ (named after a German archipelago in the North Sea) clocks in at just under an hour.

And in true Massive Attack fashion, it boasts an impressive roster of innovative collaborations.

Tunde Adembimpe of TV on the Radio kicks the album off with ‘Pray for Rain’ a haunting funhouse of spook and ethereal production.

Martina Topley Bird follows “hallucinating, chasing, changing and racing” through the industrial groove ‘Babel.’

‘Paradise Circus’ is a seductive incantation cast by a spellbinding Mazzy Star front woman Hope Sandoval.

And ‘Girl I Love You’ is a hypnotic reggae dub trance.

But it’s the eerie trip through ‘Saturday Come Slow’ with Blur’s Damon Albarn (backed by Portishead guitarist

How to Do Your To Do List

Samantha Bennett is the founder of The Organized Artist Company dedicated to helping creative people get unstuck in whatever way they’re stuck, especially by helping them focus and move forward on their goals.  Based in Los Angeles, Samantha offers her revolutionary Get It Done! Workshops, teleclasses and private consulting to overwhelmed [...]

Audition Tapes that Got the Part

Courtesy of Youtube and some leaky casting offices, The Brains bring you a selection of role-winning audition tapes and musings to go with them.
Evangeline Lilly – Lost

Claire: Ohhh, I love the discourse between her and JJ Abrams at the top of the tape. Just that little bit, watching two people [...]

Jason Pugatch on Getting Dropped by Your Agent

Jason Pugatch is the author of Acting is a Job: Real Life Lessons about the Acting Business, which has received high praise for its candid look at the acting business. He has also written the feature film Coach, starring Hugh Dancy, to be released in NY and LA this Spring. As an actor you might [...]

Crafting a Mission Statement to Guide Your Career

Ian Forester is an actor and award-winning theater director, having won the 2008 LA Weekly Award for Best Comedic Direction for his production of John Clancy’s Fatboy. Recently Ian starred in the independent feature In Memoriam. Chicago theater highlights include: Cadillac, Chicago Dramatists (dir. Ed Sobel); The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow, Collaboraction; [...]