In between hosting Janet, who's visiting from Melbourne (yay!), Sound of Music rehearsals (I'm backstage now), and Rudolph shows (feel should add something in parentheses....um....it's going well), I'm supposed to be wading through the pile of paperwork and instructions my new agent gave me.
I have a sum total of a half-day's experience in screen work, so right now I'm just looking at "we need a certain type of body on camera" work, which sometimes might include specific skill sets. You never know when a tv show or movie or commercial will require someone exactly five foot seven who looks Asian and plays classical guitar. So this means I have to answer long long surveys about my looks and my skills, once for the agent and once for each of the four online casting databases I'm signing up for. And here are the questions I am asking myself as I answer their questions:
Eternally damnable questions such as what to include...I used to think there was this magic line between professional and amateur, but there's not. I do include my last show in Australia, "Scenes from an Everyday Affair" in my list of professional accomplishments, because I flatter myself that it wasn't just for fun that I rolled around an intimate cabaret venue in my underwear. Wait, does it make it more sordid if money was involved...? And do you want to know how much money was involved? $5, plus reimbursements for the props I bought. That's right.
Yet more questions:
1. Do I tick "wind instrument" if I've already ticked "flute"? Will that mislead casting directors into thinking I play another wind instrument?...coz it would just make me feel better to tick more boxes...
2. Do casting directors seriously open this online database looking for someone with "whistling skills" as their defining characteristic?
3. Who or what is "rappelling"?
4. Why can't my secondary interests be more employable? i.e., why is Latin not listed in the foreign languages?
5. My only TV experience is with the ABC, but I can't write ABC coz there's an American ABC...so it's the Australian Broadcasting....Company? Corporation? Canoe? No, wait, canoeing is in the "athletic skills" section...
6. Resume comments section...presumably for me to comment, not the readers...."wow, i seem to have done lots of things that class as "live entertainment"" seems a little inane, so maybe I'll leave that blank.
7. Who the hell knows their hat size?
...more adventures in the world of my career. But I smile as I quietly grumble, because I have an agent I like, and more theatre projects and friends in this world than I could possibly have time for. And also because they're singing "The Lonely Goatherd" right now, and you can't possibly be grumpy about that.
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