Starting an Acting Career

Video Transcript

"Now must the world point at poor Katherine and say lo, there is mad Pretruchio's wife, if it would please him, come, and marry her. William Shakespeare. One of my favorites. I started acting about twenty-five years ago. I'm Janice Creneti, and I'm now director of the Girlstories Theater Project with Power Stories Theater in Tampa Bay. Well, how do you actually start an acting career? Mine started in high school. I decided to audition for a musical that we were doing. Now, that meant that I needed to have a song prepared, I needed to be willing to do some dancing, and also do some speaking. Auditioning can be kind of intimidating, so the best thing to do is to talk to other people that you know that have auditioned. Find out what auditions are about, get comfortable. Learn some monologues. Learn some songs, so that no matter what they ask you an audition, you're ready to go. Improv classes are also a great way to get prepared for your acting career. That's the beauty of live theater. You never know what's going to happen next. I've had to improv more than once on stage to cover some technical foul up or the occasional actor who forgot to come on when they were supposed to. So improv is a great way. Take a lot of classes, learn from everybody, get a different sense of how people approach acting, and find the strategy that works best for you. Once you're ready, find out what's in your area. Maybe there's community theater. Maybe there's children's theater. If you're still in school, you might have a drama club. And that's a great way to get started. Then, go to the auditions, go to auditions, go to auditions. And if that doesn't work out for you the first couple of times, another great way to get started is to work backstage. Sometimes they need twice as many people behind the scenes then they actually need out front. That's an opportunity for you not only to learn what has to go on around the actor, but also to meet the people who are doing the auditioning. Gets them familiar with you, and it gets you familiar with them. Audition, audition, audition. Work backstage. And then, when you finally get that first part, make sure that you do what you need to do to be a successful performer. Be on time for rehearsals, make sure that you memorize your lines when the director says to have them memorized, put your all into it. And you're going to have a blast. Acting has always been a great source of joy in my life, and it's one of the reasons that I continue to do it. So, while it may seem daunting, actually starting an acting career is pretty basic. Take some classes, go to some auditions, and you're on your way. I'm Janice Creneti. Thanks."