Why am I an Artist? You know I find myself asking that more and more as I get older. Why am I doing this to myself? The constant rejection you think it would get old, it doesn’t! Maybe its hurts a little less and your soul is just being callused by it all. Why? It seems so simple to answer that three letter word. But this shit is complex it’s honestly mind boggling to me. Do I love it, yes? Enough to suffer the way I currently am I don’t know. Maybe it’s trying to prove others wrong who told me to have a PLAN B this isn’t birth control people it’s a plan for when PLAN A aka Acting fails. That alone, the thought that people insist that you will eventually fail is great fuel to the fire in pursuit to prove them wrong. Is it enough?
I don’t think normal civilians fully grasp the torture it is to be an artist. I call it torture because that’s exactly what it is! Maybe we are all masochists. But let me tell you being an artist is no fairy tail, it may look fun, and people may say asshole things like "I would've loved to be an artist", or "oh, you’re an artist can you perform something." Hell no dip shit I’m not a performing monkey. I went through a specialized program called a Bachelors in Fine Arts for Acting. I changed my major in Community College and added an extra year and a half of studies there just so I can transfer to another program. That all is contingent on the audition process. Yes, you read that correctly you have to audition to be accepted into a BFA program it’s either BA or BFA and that F is hard earned. So once you audition you either are accepted into the BA or BFA program. They inform you that some of your credits won’t be transferred so you may have to start as a Freshman, if they do whoopee you are a Sophomore and are now on a path to a three year program. Oh, and since this program is so special only a small cohort is chosen, and at the end of each semester you get picked apart by the professor’s and are then possibly kicked out of this lovely program. If that doesn’t get you booted then a large enough dose of absentees and tardy’s will do the trick or if your grades slip, adios amigos.
So yea, that’s just the beginning to the journey of being a BFA Actor. Then you graduate and realize, holy shit I’m in the real world. How do I format my resume? Are these headshot appropriate? Do I need an acting headshot for film and a separate one for theater? Yea they don’t teach these things when you are in a BFA program. Which to this day blows my mind. If you can act that’s spectacular, but if you don’t know how to pimp yourself out and treat you as a business which we are then you fall flat on your face. It’s freakin brutal and yet here we are still climbing up an oiled wall.
That isn’t even the thick of it. The moment we realize we need all these business tools we didn’t even know about, we have to teach ourselves the business side of the film and theatre world. So happy I paid thousands of dollars on a University education. All in all would I give up the choice and do it all again. Choose the safer route and complete my hospitality degree. I want to say yes, but honestly probably not. I am a sick individual who either loves to prove others wrong (which I do) or it’s just because I love the craft so damn much it hurts. Sometimes it hurts more than all of the rejection.
So as my rant continues and highlights the stupidity that we as a student body at the time didn’t inquire, well what about life out of school, what’s next? How do we get an agent or manager? What’s the difference between the two? I mean those questions should’ve been asked or offered to us, but they weren’t. I feel like they told us little birdies to go fly straight into a damn window. After you graduate the education doesn’t stop, it never does. You go to networking events to pimp yourself out and hope to make solid connections with fellow artists. That help you to get indie jobs so you can build yourself a reel. Also a lovely item we weren’t taught a reel is about a few second clips of work you’ve done in film, you can also have a theatre reel. These are usually no more than a minute to five with some artists I know. All in all it’s a visual resume for agents, and casting directors to see and say, hmmm I like them let’s give them a shot.
To this day I have friends who have worked on countless projects, yet no reels. Why? Because people sometimes suck and budgets don’t go through so the project remains exactly that just a project. These incomplete works then gather dust as well as your performances that will never be added to your reel or be seen by any audience. They are opportunities that took about 10-24 hours of your life and sometimes way longer and you’ll never reap the benefits which isn’t payment people, its footage to add to your reel. Therefore your greeting card remains blank. It’s a bullshit job being an actor, and yet here we all are still pushing through. Receiving auditions while on vacation (true story) and the damn script is two pages long and they need it in less than 48 hours. I don’t have a studio I can go to! What do I do? I use my damn brain and find all the lights in my air b&b and stay up an extra three hours pounding those lines into my brain. To then wake up 6 hours later and continue the day while site seeing just going over the lines like a crazy lady talking to herself. Finally to film the audition in my little air b&b on my shitty iphone and send it in so I can hear nothing! So I can get booked for nothing? Why the FUCK do we do this to ourselves?!
Once you’ve got a roll on life and this acting carreer you need to start taking more classes to strengthen that acting muscle. So you begin to spend money on classes to help you book more gigs. Some do and some don’t. Oh then on top of that!!!! Wait for it you need headshots. Expensive and nice photos of yourself not just one or two approximately three to four looks. There on your new education and headshots in one year you spend about $1,000. That’s also not including any equipment you buy to film your own self tapes or if you go to a studio tac on an additional $250-$400 for that year. In total you spend apprroximatly $1,400 excluding any extras like extra photos on casting networks, backstage accounts, gas and tolls. That whole saying it takes money to make money, well they weren’t a starving artist that’s for sure. That saying sucks, starving artist. But guess what it’s true! Many times I choose to take a class and get something off the dollar menu just so I can grow and gain knowledge so I could become a better actress. The down fall to that situation, I started to get fat. Oh, and the film world and I feel the theatre world included is just plain prejudice of anyone who is above a size 6. That’s my opinion if you get offended then that’s your feelings being hurt and cry me a damn river, because I’ve cried a river about not being enough for this industry. This world that I have chosen to be a part of takes more and more each year I am in it and gives very little back. So the question still remains Why the FUCK am I an artist? Honestly it beats me! Why are you one?
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