Acting Business Boot Camp

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 the Garasjen theater in Norway with Young Jean Lee's Theater Company.

Television credits include: a recurring role on Louis C.K.'s "Horace and Pete," recurring role on "Orange Is the New Black" (SAG Award, Outstanding Ensemble), "Louie," "Master of None," "Newsroom," "Elementary," and "The Blacklist." Among her film roles are: Christine, Martha Marcy May Marlene (Gotham Film Award nomination, Best Ensemble), While We're Young, and Margin Call.

To find a teacher who sees something in you and be able to have an adult conversation with you is essential.

Everybody who keeps acting keeps learning.

When it's with Zoom, you get to take responsibility for yourself.

When you work with celebrity, they love the story that they're telling.

Meeting them is wanting to tell that story with them, and to understand their vision.

Really dig into the work relationship part of it.

It always comes down to the work.

Email [email protected] to get a replay of the Webinar.

"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 try to will.

Dr. Wayne Dyer, "Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change."

"If you want to be happy, put your effort into controlling the sail, not the wind." Anonymous

There's no such thing as getting it right.

Life is a journey, it's a becoming, it's a growing, it's a process.

To live in the moment, means not to measure success in the realization of a specific goal, but also by the process, because it's in the process that we decide our won measure of success.

"Do something today that you will thank yourself for a year from now."

Each moment we have an opportunity, we can always choose something different.

You can restart your day at any point.

Sign up for the FREE Webinar HERE.

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 front of the camera.

Nail it on the first take, then show them something different.

Cautioning against perfectionism, you can prevent mistakes, you can't protect yourself from making mistakes, and you have to love your nonperfect self.

You have to believe as an actor you can do that, and you can do it every time. Are you going to be able to do that every time? No, and you have to be able to forgive yourself every time.

Auditions are collaborations between you and the Casting Director.

Sign up for the FREE webinar HERE

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
• Big T thoughts are thoughts we can choose, "Hey I am what I am," "I am enough," "I take good care of myself and I can handle this situation"

Our self worth comes from within

Sign up for the FREE Webinar HERE.

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
• Name of the Show
• What kind of role you played (Series Regular/Guest Star/ Costar/ Featured)
• Name of the Network or where it was shown

Theater

• 3 Columns
• Name of the Play
• Name of the Character/ Kind of Role you played (Lead/ Suporting/ Small Supporting/ Ensemble)
• Name of the Theater and City
• Director/ Musical Director/ Choreographer (if it's a big dance show) underneath that

Commercial/ Print/ Industrials/ Voiceover/ Cabaret

• List upon request
• Cabaret set up like you did in the Theater section

Training

• If you have graduated from any school
• Name of the degree, school, city/ state
• List who you've been studying with for acting, improv, commercials, singing, dance, etc.

Skills

• You want to be intermediate or advanced in any skill you list
• Languages, accents, types of singing you do, sports, and an other category.
• End with drivers license, passport, covid vaccine (as the last thing)

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 callback so you're right for the job.

Advice for beginner actors:

• Get in class!
• From a reputable person
• Come in prepared
• Google any class. Knowledge is power

Self tapes are here to stay and every actor needs a good self tape setup.

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 activate your senses that bookend an experience that you know is going to be anxiety inducing.

• Cues of safety
• Creating safer containers for you to exist and opportunities to reground

The Serenity Prayer:

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

courage to change the things I can,

and wisdom to know the difference."

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 you get that idea from?
3. How has that belief affected you?
4. What would it feel like if you let this belief go?
5. What would be easier for you?
6. How can I let that belief go?
7. How can you put that letting go into action immediately?

What are Empowering Questions?

"Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions and as a result, they get better answers." Tony Robbins

They are:

• Open ended
• Clarity seeking
• Probing
• Challenging
• Thought provoking
• Future directed
• Solution oriented
• They spark your imagination and they get you to think

The right questions at the right time for the right reason in the right format to get the right response.

1. What can I do?
2. How can I make that work?
3. What other choices could I make?
4. How would someone who really loves me tell me to look at this?
5. What is going to be my next step?
6. What have you been able accomplished in the past and how able to accomplish that task?

Remain teachable.

Intimacy Coordinators:

• Act as an advocate and a liaison between actors and other parties, directors producers.
• Help co create choreography within the boundaries of all parties involved in a scene
• Is safe and repeatable.

Actors are trained to say yes, and consent is not engrained. Our job is to be a cocreator, a colleague and peer.

Clarification is not accusation.

The mitigation of power dynamics.

• what makes it hard to ask clarifying questions?
• Regulating the nervous system
• Intimacy Coordinators take the pressure off the actor by being their advocate

Somatic Regulation: How your nervous system talks to you. How we regulate or disregulate and how we engage in behaviors, reactions, responses based on past traumas, overwhelm, stress, or sleep.

The reactions are often from a disregulated nervous system and coming back into regulation and body can be very powerful.

How Amy helps get actors back into regulation when they've been triggered.

Costume tools for keeping the actors protected.

Questions to ask:

1. Do you have an intimacy coordinator? Or how is that to be handled?
2. What am I wearing?
3. How is the garment coming off?
4. Where will the hands be?
5. What are the shots?
6. How many cam ops?
7. Will the set be closed?
8. How the stream being regulated?

Boundaries and advocacy go so far beyond just intimacy on set.

Consent must be informed for it to be true consent.

COVID:

• Ask if there's going to be a covid compliance officer.
• Is everyone going to be tested?
• Whos enforcing it?
• DONT let it be a producer or a pa.
• Will 6 feet be regulated?

What is preload? Having as much information as possible before you set foot on set is going to set you up for success. It will help you move with some changes. There is a big difference between being unsafe and uncomfortable. Uncomfortable is always going to happen, but having the information keeps you from being unsafe.

Amy does consults for prepping intimacy scenes. Got questions, reach out to Amy via our email: [email protected]