Author: rachael patterson

8 Tips for Finding Great Monologues by Studio Director Rachael Patterson As an actor, there are aspects of your career in which you are in the driver’s seat and many variables that are completely out of your control.  Your training, education, professionalism, work ethic, headshots, resume, and monologue selection are variables that you can control.  And while finding great monologues is essential, finding material that speaks to you, is age-appropriate,…

How To Rock Your Performance (or audition) With A Sore Throat!  by Kate DeVore You have an audition at 2:00pm and your throat is sore. You have a performance later that night and you’re worried that you might lose your voice. What do you do? Kate DeVore, a speech pathologist and dialect coach extraordinaire, has some useful tips for helping with that pesky sore throat. Performing When You’re Hoarse or…

It’s All In The Timing Advice for the Commercial Audition by Matt Miller Commercial copy is intensely structured stuff and actors often don’t realize how they can use the structure of the commercial to their advantage when preparing their commercial audition. Fun fact: a broadcast TV commercial—and this is a notable designation as commercials made for the internet do not have the same rules—must fit into a very rigid running…

10 Tips for Getting Representation by Studio Director Rachael Patterson Do your homework like a pro & make agents notice!   1. Do your homework. Every franchised SAG-AFTRA talent agency has a website. Read what they’ve written about their agency, then look at the actors they represent. Do you see anyone who looks like your “type?” If you can, look at that actor’s resume and see where they have trained,…

SELF HELP FOR SELF TAPING 8 Great Tips for Audition Success       by Gail Rastorfer of Artistic Strategies   More and more on-camera casting AND theatres are accepting digital submissions and while it’s preferable that you stroll on over to your agents office(if you have an agent) or a studio(if you know of one) to lay that audition down, a lack of time and resources may not make…

 8 TIPS FOR SUCCESSFUL AUDITIONING by Rachael Patterson, Studio Director 1. When auditioning use YOURSELF to make choices that will stand-out. This is not the same as “being yourself.” You must personalize the role, the given circumstances and the images with YOUR history, YOUR intelligence, YOUR sense of humor, YOUR physicality.  2. Do NOT seek reassurance/affirmation  from the casting director…KNOW you are in the RIGHT PLACE. NEVER APOLOGIZE. NEVER ASK IF YOUR AUDITION…

5 Apps for Actors As the owner of Artistic Strategies and as an actor I am constantly on the lookout for apps that help simplify my life.  There are MANY out there…MANY!  But here are my top 5.  Some are free and some you can get for a small fee.  All are well worth it! 1. LINELEARNER : Memorize those lines! For $3.84 you can make memorizing a little easier with this…

Guidepost #2  – Conflict by Megan Donahue   The core acting curriculum at Acting Studio Chicago is based on the 12 Guideposts from Michael Shurtlef’s Audition. The concept of Conflict is essential to script analysis.  Having a shared language, vocabulary and philosophy about the actor’s approach to text means that there is a consistency and  a specificity to our training. In this series of posts, we invite our faculty to comment on…

Faculty Spotlight: Kurt Naebig Actor, Director & ASC Senior Instructor When Kurt Naebig took an improv class in high school, he didn’t know it would change the course of his life. He was a semi-pro skateboarder, he owned a skateboard shop in Oak Park (yes, as a teenager), and acting wasn’t really on his radar. The Chicago actor, director, and ASC teacher thought the class would just be kind of fun;…

 CINEMA LAB SCREENING  by Megan Donahue Last month, ASC hosted a screening of the work that’s come out of  Cinema Lab. A “crash course in independent film making”, the class takes students from improvisation to filming in just eight weeks.   The screening featured a total of 12 short films, from four classes. Instructor Stephen Cone, a Chicago film maker, opened the evening by introducing the films. Though the films are…