The Acting Business Boot Camp Podcast

When are we doing too much?

When are we doing too little?

What is our responsibility and what isn’t?

My Part vs. Not My Part

The Serenity Prayer

Grant Me the Serenity to Accept the Things I cannot change

I cannot change other people, places, or things, or outcomes.

I did my part but I can not control how that director took my performance in my callback.

Courage to Change the Things I can,

I can only change myself, my attitudes, and my actions.

And Wisdom to know the difference.

Wisdom to know the difference between the things I cannot change, and what I can change.

Thank you for helping to change the things I can control, and to let go of the things I can’t.

Recovering your True Self—The awareness of who you will are

When in doubt, leave it out.

Don’t just do something, sit there.

When in doubt, slow down, pause, journal, and make a plan for how you are going to take care of yourself. 

Journal, talk it out, find a bookend.

Show me what I need to learn today. 

Help ...

About Maria:

Maria Dizzia currently teaches an ongoing scene study class at The Freeman Studio in NYC. She has taught both Public Speaking and Acting at the University of California at San Diego as well as master classes at Wheaton College, Penghao Theater in Beijing and the Sichuan People's Art Theater in Chengdu, China. She was a Beinecke Fellow at Yale School of Drama and a 2011 recipient of the Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship.

Broadway credits include: In The Next Room by Sarah Ruhl (Tony nomination Featured Actress; Lincoln Center). Recent theater credits include If I Forget by Steven Levenson (Roundabount Theater Company),  Belleville by Amy Herzog (Drama Desk Nomination; New York Theater Workshop, Yale Rep), Annie Baker's Uncle Vanya (Soho Rep), Drunken City by Adam Bock (Playwrights Horizons), and Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl (Second Stage, Yale Rep, Berkeley Rep). Outside of the United States, Maria has performed at The Gate Theater in London with The Civilians and at ...

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“If we treated our friends like we treated ourselves, we’d all go to jail.”

There are no mistakes.

I use my mind to govern my brain.

The mistakes stem from my brain, or my heart, or both.

Why is it so bad to give yourself a break?

Ask yourself what was the lesson, what can be learned from this experience?

The next time I’m in this situations, this is what I intend to do.

There are no mistakes there are only choices.

If you let go of it being a mistake, and allow it to be just something that happened, then you prevent it from becoming an assumption.

The Thought, Action, Emotion Triangle.

Why do I feel that I always screw up __________?

What do I need to work on?

Reframing thoughts empowers us to be more positive about what’s happening.

When we are more positive about what’s happening, we get more positive results.

Change can’t to choose not to, change should to could, change have to choose to, change...

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How David got into casting.

The only thing you can control is the work that you do in the room.

When you need a surgeon, you want someone who knows anatomy. When you need an actor you need someone who knows the anatomy of a scene. Acting is a craft and you have to learn your craft.

The Three Jobs of an Actor:

1. Becoming the best actor you can be
2. Learning the business
3. Maintaining your health and your mental health

What makes a great commercial audition:

• An authenticity
• A point of view that is specific and personal
• A willingness to play
• Not bring a fixed point of view into the room

Auditions are performances

Auditions are not opportunities to sort of kinda maybe get it right…

If you come into the room and give me nothing, the Casting Director has nothing to work with

Don’t be afraid to make choices

There is no right choice, there is no wrong choice, there is just your choice.

Commercial acting is how much you can be yourself in...

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Helen Keller, “to keep our faces towards change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate, is strength undefeatable.”

Why is it so hard to be ourselves?

Big T Truth vs. little t truth

When you let your ego drive, you give up your power

Giving yourself the courage to be yourself.

You can not buy peace of mind, it needs to be earned.

Truth, is infinitely powerful

little t truth is EGO

1. Easing
2. God
3. Out

little t truth is based in fear

T- we are in reality

t- some sort of obsession or worry

Thoughts: Use your mind to govern your brain

Take a blank piece of paper and put a line down the center

• Right side little t truth
• Write down all your negative thoughts
• Left side Big T Truth
• Write down the opposite
• “I’m not good enough” —> “I am enough”
• “I suck at commercial auditions.” —> “I master my commercial technique and I am successful in all my commercial auditions.”
• little t thoughts are based in people, places, and things
...

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Malissa’s Motto, “One foot in front of the other.”

In this episode Malissa and I talk about:

Why you MUST invest in a self-tape setup.

What it means to be a bicoastal manager.

What she looks for when looking for new talent.

What a pitch deck is for actors looking for representation.

The importance of following up.

Your resume and skills should be honest.

Qualities of her favorite clients:

• Wow factor in self tapes
• Paying attention to instructions
• Positive energy
• Gratitude
• Follow directions

What Melissa wants actors to know but doesn’t have time to tell them:

• Know you as the actor has a business and work side to it
• Make the chart
• Know who you saw and what they called you in for
• Send thank you’s to casting directors after an audition
• Coaching and classes
• Keeping your instrument tuned

Sign up for the free webinar HERE

The Language of the Agents and the Casting Director is spoken in: 

1. Your Resume
2. Your Pictures
   • Telling agents and Casting Directors you are not green.
3. Have a good follow-up, how, when and what you say in your follow-up.
4. Your Demo Reel, how it’s edited, where is shown, what you put on it. 
5. Website— always put your direct contact info, even if you have an agent.

The outline of a resume: If you put so much stuff on it that it’s hard to read, it’s going to get deleted or discarded and you don’t want that!

The Letterhead:

• Your name
• Your union affiliation
• Cell Phone
• Email
• Website
• Social Media Handles

Your stats:

• Hair and the eyes
• Your height and weight (or size)
• Vocal Range (if you are a singer)

The Film Section

• 3 columns only
• Any info you want me to know with an asterisk (ie: *scene with Tracy Morgan)
• The role you played
• Production Company
• Director’s name underneath that

Television/ New Media

• 3 Columns
• Nam
...

How does a casting director get hired?

By reputation. Selling themselves and working with them and getting rehired.

How does the process work?

Ad agency hires the director

They will send scripts, usage, when it’s shooting, the boards, and conflicts, character breakdowns.

CD sends them out to agents-- to their favorite agents (about 10).

Agents send a list with pictures and CDs send back a list of who they want to see/ self-tape.

CDs send the auditions to the ad agency and the director.

Ad agency and directors send back a list of callbacks.

The client decides who gets the role.

Commercials are 50% unions 50% nonunion

Qualities of actors you love to have in the room:

• Show up on time
• Have other lives outside of acting
• Put the work in to get to know you as well

Mistakes actors make in callbacks: They go into the callback putting too much pressure on themselves.

“You don’t go in asking for the job, you go in the room doing the job.”

Go in knowing you got the call...

Sign up for the Free Webinar, The Three Pillars to a Successful Acting Career, also known as, How to Become a Working Actor Without Breaking Your Bank and Wasting Your Time, HERE

What is Life Coaching?

• One on One Support System
• Accountability
• NOT Therapy
• Help you move your life closer to the version you want to be
• Goal Setting

What are your ultimate goals?

Then we start to work on the action steps?

When they don’t get done, what is getting in your way?

“Don’t ever underestimate how good you have to be.”

The Importance of Core Work

"For Coaching work to be successful, it has to be nuanced."

Goals: What are you doing to achieve this goal?

“Anxiety and fear come into the room because they are there to serve us and protect us.”

“Choose your hard.”

Choose the hard that serves you and your end goals.

Tool: Ask yourself, “What’s happening now?”

Fight, flight, or fawn— Show up in auditions

Know yourself and know your triggers.

Rituals: What are the things that activat...

We are each the product of our own belief system

Carl Jung, “Man is so imprisoned in his type of thinking that he is simply incapable of fully understanding another standpoint.”

Warranty, “if you don’t like the one you have, you can return it for one that is more preferable.”

You can change the beliefs that created your reality.

Limiting Belief: Something you accept about life, about yourself, about your world and the people in it that limits you in some way.

Curt Carlson, “Obstacles are those frightening things you see when you take your eye off the target.”

The thing that gets in the way: all the bullshit in the industry that has actors going in too many directions.

Big T Truth vs little t truth:

• The Bit T Truth: Who you really are, all the best aspects of you.
• The little t truth: the truth you think you are, or ego’s truth.

Write down 3 Limiting Beliefs about you or your acting career.

Ask yourself these Empowering Questions:

1. How True is that belief?
2. Where did y
...