The Most Magical Place on Earth

Once upon a time when I started my acting career I thought that only an agent could get you work. I was completely unaware of self submissions. A good friend of mine, Mike Sweet, enlightened me to the process about 2 years ago. At first I was timid and did not submit for much. As my understanding of the process grew and I got more comfortable with it I started increasing the range of things I would submit for. After I signed with my manager this past month we came up with a game plan for my career and I expanded my submissions even further. He recommended a site to join, and I joined another one on my own, bringing my total to 5 casting sites! Since then, I have been even more methodical about submitting myself to every project that pops up in my email from these sites. In addition I belong to several Facebook groups and scour their pages daily for castings. My diligence has paid off with a noticeable increase in the number of theatrical auditions I have been called in for, especially since adding the two new casting sites. Memorizing pages of dialogue has started to get less tricky, although the last minute 4 pages to digest in under 12 hours still throws a curve ball at me. This exact thing happened yesterday after I had completed a hair commercial audition in West Hollywood. I got a cmail at 2pm, saying I had an audition for a student film(YAY!), they want me to come in tomorrow at noon and gave me the show fax link for the script. Turns it is has 4 pages of dialogue to know. I had already made plans with my family to go to Downtown Disney for dinner with my nieces after they spent the day at the happiest place on earth. The clock was ticking down on the time I had left to memorize my lines. Fortunately, my sister kept pushing dinner back later and later into the evening so I had more time to work with my lines. I went to the gym and did my daily cardio and took my lines with me. I find that it is easier for me to work on lines while doing a physical activity like cardio. My younger sister drove to dinner and I worked on them in traffic as well. By the time we got there I had a good grasp of my dialogue and the 2 scenes. We walked around Downtown Disney and took in all the splendor, finally ending up at Rainforest Cafe for dinner. For whatever reason I had no signal on my phone and could not connect to the wifi. Once dinner had ended I saw a notification for an email but I could not check it until we left the restaurant. After we said our goodbyes I finally checked my email and it was for a web series I had applied to on Backstage. They wanted to know if I was available to work on the SAG Series pilot that would have IMDb credit tomorrow! This was the exact thing my manager and I had discussed less than a month ago. So it comes to pass that in the parking lot of Downtown Disney I booked a job from just my application for a web series filming the next day. Unfortunately this meant I was now unavailable for the student film audition I had just spent the last few hours memorizing dialogue for. I contacted the film through actors access and let them know I was no longer available to audition due to my web series booking and said I could video submit if they liked. Usually when I have to reschedule or cancel an audition they never have me video submit instead, and this case was no exception. However, they did give me another date where I could audition with the director! Now I had until Monday to shape my character!!  Thank you for all the Magic Disney!! 

Keep Shining Bright

xo

Lauren