Last minute audition calls

When it's Tuesday evening and you get an email calling you in for an audition first thing Friday morning, and you have 14-hour days on Wednesday and Thursday ... what do you do??

What do you need to have in place so that you nail an audition on short notice?

Before you do anything, do a little happy dance! Any audition is worth celebrating!! Then get down to business.

Firstly, scan the audition call carefully to make sure you are clear about what is being asked. The last thing you want to do is to overlook an important detail in a fit of excitment.

Secondly, be realistic about how much time you can allocate to preparing for the audition. Then choose material accordingly. If you're like me and you take at least a week to fully integrate a new monologue or song, then please don't put yourself in a situation where you are trying to remember lines during an audition.

That leads to the third point. How many songs and monologues do you have in your bag that you can pull out with minimal preparation? Have you been taking advantage of the downtime to build up your rep?

Fourth, start preparing. Think ahead to your schedule in the days and hours leading up the audition. How much sleep do you need, what's your food intake looking like, start thinking about what you need to pack for the day, prepare scores or accompaniment tracks (if singing is required), etc.

Fifth, ask yourself - what sort of support do you need? Can someone cover your shift? Can someone run that errand for you? Pull in your tribe if you need to! Remember ... it takes a village.

Ultimately, what we are doing is taking tiny steps to reduce your stress levels so you can devote what time you have to actual audition preparation.

Break a leg!!

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My name is Eu Jin. I recently embarked on a career as a professional actor after 20 years in the corporate world. A big supporter of personal growth, I also dedicate time and energy in performing arts education, specifically in the arena of practical approaches to inner health because I believe that lays the groundwork for a sustainable career as an artiste. If you would like to find out more or share your thoughts, please leave me a message on the "Contact" page of my website. Thank you very much!

Who holds you to a higher standard?

"It takes a village to raise a child."

It really does, and especially if you are just starting out - there is an entire village that you need to surround yourself with. These are people in your life you empower to support your spiritual and emotional journey. There are the Heroes, the Nurses, the Instigators, the Rivals, the Cheerleaders, the Enablers, the Trail Blazers, the Opportunists ... the list goes on. 

The one type of person I want to talk about today are the Believers. This is a person/s who holds you to a higher standard than you hold yourself; someone who sees the person you can be and refuses to let you settle.

But this isn't someone who holds the strings in the relationship. This is someone who teaches you to believe in yourself. This is someone who holds up a mirror; someone who teaches you to see that you are worth loving; someone who teaches you to see the human behind the artiste.

I am incredibly blessed to have someone like that in my life. Chuck started out as a career mentor. But our conversations would always veer to the more spiritual and he soon realized that what I needed was not corporate advice. What I needed was to believe in myself.

He had nothing to gain by doing this. He worked in a completely different industry. He did it because someone else had done it for him when he was starting out. He was just paying it forward, and I will always be grateful.

So on the days that are particularly bad, I ask myself, "what would Chuck say to me?" and I don't feel like I am alone on this journey. 

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My name is Eu Jin. I recently embarked on a career as a professional actor after 20 years in the corporate world. A big supporter of personal growth, I also dedicate time and energy in performing arts education, specifically in the arena of practical approaches to inner health because I believe that lays the groundwork for a sustainable career as an artiste. If you would like to find out more or share your thoughts, please leave me a message on the "Contact" page of my website. Thank you very much!

What do you do when things don't work

... and they won't a lot of the time. Possibly even more so when you are at the start of your career when what you desperately need is a little bit of luck, a little bit of momentum and a gentle nudge in the right direction from the Universe.

People who know me know that I always have a back-up plan. I'm always working on multiple things at one time. Heck! I'm never not working ... which in itself is probably part of the problem (but that's another post for another time!). Within the last 12 months, I've gone down at least 80 rabbit holes looking for opportunities, only to be turned back 75 times. I'm still digging through the last 5 while simultaneously starting on 10 new rabbit holes. That's 75 times things haven't worked out.

But I'm still digging ... I'm still exploring ... I'm still trying. Most days it feels like I'm trying to move an entire mountain all by myself. It's exhausting - emotionally, intellectually, spiritually and physically.

a) I KEEP THINGS MOVING. I don't stop EVERYTHING simply because one thing isn't working. Because the darkness will pass. And if I've set other things in motion, it's easier for me to pick them up once I come out of that dark hole. If I stop everything, it is so much much difficult to convince myself to start again

b) I REACH OUT TO PEOPLE FROM MY TRIBE. Most of my tribe do not live in the same time zone as me. So I use technology to connect me. I skype with at least 1 person from my tribe per week. I'm lucky because my tribe holds me up when I can't stand on my own. They also kick my ass when I'm not being the best version of me.

c) I AM GENTLE WITH MYSELF. Especially early in our careers when we're finding our feet, we'll make a lot of missteps. It's part of the journey. And setting an impossible goal of not making any missteps is unrealistic - at any stage of your career. So I remind myself to go easy on myself. I get an ice cream, I sleep in, I go watch a movie ... I take care of myself.

What do you do when things don't work?

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My name is Eu Jin. I recently embarked on a career as a professional actor after 20 years in the corporate world. A big supporter of personal growth, I also dedicate time and energy in performing arts education, specifically in the arena of practical approaches to inner health because I believe that lays the groundwork for a sustainable career as an artiste. If you would like to find out more or share your thoughts, please leave me a message on the "Contact" page of my website. Thank you very much!

Navigating a New World (Part 2)

On the flip side, you can "DO" all the right things and still make little or no progress. You can sometimes be on the cusp of something and be thwarted or you could never hear back from the casting director. The number of factors in a casting decision that you - the actor - control is tiny. And it is draining. Spiritually, emotionally, mentally and physically draining. It's subtle and powerful at the same time. AND you need to find a way to stop it.

Otherwise, one day you find that you no longer care. You find that you no longer want all those dreams you spent hours nurturing. It might be a big, dramatic realization. But it might also be a slow, painful throbbing awareness that grows in time.

So what CAN you do?

You do want you can control. You create steps that you can take. You create momentum you can build on your own. You create - for yourself - those moments that you remind you why you got into performing arts in the first place. You feed the monster.

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My name is Eu Jin. I recently embarked on a career as a professional actor after 20 years in the corporate world. A big supporter of personal growth, I also dedicate time and energy in performing arts education, specifically in the arena of practical approaches to inner health because I believe that lays the groundwork for a sustainable career as an artiste. If you would like to find out more or share your thoughts, please leave me a message on the "Contact" page of my website. Thank you very much!