AboutPeter Messaline Expertise This is the place for Canadian answers! My company runs "The Advisors",
a Toronto-based career-power network for performers, producers and entertainment artists of all sorts.
I am a performer, and I have not had a joe-job in the last thirty-odd years, so I must be doing something right.
I can talk about career moves, self-promotion, self-production, and the business sense that turns your art into a living.
Experience I am the most published Canadian arts entrepreneur.
The Actor's Survival Kit, Tax Kit 2000+, Tax CD, The Art of Managing Your Career.
Organizations Canadian Equity, ACTRA, AEA, BAEA
Publications The Actor's Survival Kit, Tax Kit 2000+, The Agents Book, The Art of Managing Your Career, The Organizer, Equity News, ACTRA newsletters.
Awards and Honors "Many people in the audience applauded warmly when it was time for him to leave the stage" (Local review of my Bill Walker in "Major Barbara" at the Shaw Festival.
Question QUESTION: Hello, this is Greata Dreyzina. I'm interested in the entertainment business, looking to get booked. If you can help me in anyway, I'd appreciate it. My acting aspirations are TV shows, commercials and films, I am with the agency DS Entertainment.
Here is my page where you can view my resume and photos.
ANSWER: I was surprised to see how much is going on in Nashville!
Your résumé really needs some more up-to-date credits -- well, yes, you say, but that's the whole problem! I suggest getting involved as much as possible with small, experimental and student film and video. You're looking for credits and contacts. As you work professionally more, even in rinky-dink productions, you'll gain professional skills and more people will come to know you as a performer, rather than as an out-of-work performer. And get in touch with theatres. There really is no frontier between live and recorded performance, it's all acting, and the skills and confidence you gain will be valuable.
Different agencies have different house rules, but if you sit down and talk to DS about your plans, I can't imagine they'd fight you. Be sure you let them know that you won't book into anything without clearing it with them. Since they have you on an exclusive contract, they will expect to be involved with (and take commission on) anything that pays.
I should sort out your special skills on the résumé. They are a bit of a mix at the moment. Make it easy for engagers to see if you have the sorts of skills they are looking for.
Look for chances to take little tiny steps towards success. Find out all you can about what's in town, who the players are in the local business, and where actors exchange news.
Look at http://community.actorspages.org/forum. This is national, but some Nashville content and you'll see that young actors everywhere have the same questions.
Look at the Facebook group Theatre Nashville, and visit the Actor's Bridge website
Google "film TV Nashville" and see how many companies you should be in regular touch with. Write to producers, by name, talk about what they've been doing and what your ambitions are. Let them get to know you. Don't ask for auditions or even a meeting. Let them start replying first!
Lot's to be done! Go girl!!
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: Hello again, I actually live in New York. The agency in Nashville was recommended by a friend. Say, do you work as an agent?
Please reply. Thank You!
Answer I don't agent, and I wouldn't be any good getting you work from this far away.
I can't think what the Nashville agency thinks it will gain from you!
You say 'New York': do you mean Manhattan, NYC or the state?
In each case, the previous advice holds generally, but the details and the odds against success will be different. You will want to start as small and as locally as possible.
Dig deep and look for chances to get involved at any level. As close as you are to the desperate arid wasteland that is NYC for an actor, the easy options will have been snapped up. It will be a struggle to be accepted even as an unpaid intern sweeping the floor for a non-union production company.
You are trying to persuade people to run a risk in hiring you, so the more they know you, the better your chances. People like people who think the same way, the same likes and dislikes, the same approach to the business and life in general. You can get in by focussing your attempt on the person you're approaching, and by approaching lots of people. It's like a lottery, and you certainly won't win if you don't buy a ticket.
Look for sources of information: google every name that comes up and find out all you can about the people you're approaching. Use the leverage from contacts you already have. Your friend was one, and there will be others. Put the word out among your family, get them to pass on anything they hear, anyone they know. It's always best to go in on someone's coat-tail -- getting through the door puts you on a much shorter short list. Approach individual people: most mail isn't really read, and To Whom It May Concern, or The Starlight Agency, won't read anything.
Good luck with the endless struggle.
(I heard a story yesterday about Sir John Gielgud, who recently called his agent and asked if there was anything for him that day. The agent said, John you're 93 and I don't put you up any more, and Gielgud said, well I thought there might be a little voice-over they'd see me for?)
