(Yet More) Thoughts on Actor-hood and Actors' Equity
I, and most other young actors I know, struggle with the question of when you get to call yourself an actor. No one crosses you with a sword and says "I hereby dub thee a professional/working/good actor" (whatever adjective or benchmark it is you have set in your mind). On the other side of the coin, no one pulls you aside and says "hey, buddy, you're obviously not going to get enough work, so you should quit now". So it's all about setting your own goals, and getting good training, and pulling your self-confidence together to chart your own journey.
For me, since moving here, the desire to have some kind of validation has manifested itself into an obsession to join the union, Actors' Equity. You can check out their website to see all the reasons why that's a good thing, not the least endearing of which is the Cantzen Shoe Fund, a bequest made by the late Conrad Cantzen to help out-of-work actors buy nice shoes to wear to auditions. I've realised that for me, and for many others, the question on the audition form about union status has really become a status symbol in our minds. I'm not yet a member of the union, and I haven't even yet earned any points in the Equity Membership Candidate program. I am getting callbacks for a couple of the companies in Houston where you can earn such points, so I trust it's a matter of time and being ready for the right role turning up until I begin to be able to do that. But recently I realised that even if I were offered union membership now I wouldn't take it because I'm not consistently getting union work, and it would prevent me from doing my current non-union job at Main Street Theater for Youth. And Lucas, ever the wonderful, has been encouraging me to enjoy my current jobs (which I certainly do) without feeling like it somehow diminishes my goals.
I do want to be consistently getting union work, and I do want to be a member of Actors' Equity, BUT something cool happened today that let me know in another way that I am progressing. When I was a teenager I took a master class at NIDA, and the actor teaching that course spoke about learning to love auditions, and knowing that you have developed a good dramatic technique when you can love that impromptu, terrifying, unrehearsed situation. And this morning, I thought, "Gosh, I'm so busy right now I don't have much time to go to auditions. Gee, I miss auditions." (Yes, I was exactly that bizarrely colloquial in my thoughts.) And it reminded me how far I've come since my first auditions in Houston. I have come to LOVE auditions*.
*Theater auditions. Screen auditions still turn me into an embarrassed mess.
