The Power of Showing Up

My agent contacted me and wanted to send me on an audition.

My agency was told only to send their very best and I was selected to go! I was so excited that they thought that I could handle going to this audition. I wasn’t able to prepare until the morning of the audition but it was plenty of time since I’m pretty good at memorizing lines if I stay really focused. Instead of trying to sneak in a little blogging like I normally do when I have a free moment I spent time memorizing and working on some character development for the piece. I really wanted to do a good job since I felt as though I was representing my agency for this audition.

I took a long shower, ironed my clothes and left with PLENTY of time to sign in, prep and get my nerves under control. I put the audition location into my GPS and off I went. Everything was going swimmingly. I even had time to give myself a pep talk on the ride over.

After ten minutes I found myself driving past a nice but simple home and hearing the GPS tell me that “I had arrived”.

Ummm what?

I drove into the parking area of the home and realized that yep, this was somebody’s house and I was hoping to God they didn’t come out wondering why this well dressed chick was in their driveway. I looked back at my email and realized the address my GPS thought was for the name of the company was no longer where they resided! I quickly re – entered the audition location into the GPS and saw that the place was only 15 minutes away. I would be on time but would lose my cushion for my breathing exercises to get calmed down. (I know cheesy, right?)

When arrived at the next location I saw a fire station, a court house, other businesses but not anything that would point me towards the company that was hosting the audition. In panic I called my agent. At this moment I only had 8 minutes to find this place, park and get signed in! I was freakin’ out because I hate being late and in this business 15 minutes early is considered on time.

Another person, very nice and with lovely intent helped me and directed me to another address across town. I was assured that it was no big deal that I was late.

I ended up back at my home Agency’s new location (which I hadn’t been to yet) so I didn’t know that I was going to the wrong place. When I walked in my agent looked at me and said “What are you doing here? You are supposed to be at a different location!”

It turns out I was once again in the wrong place. They made the necessary calls and I was back on my way to the original second location.

On the way I had this slight feeling of wanting to just cancel my audition slot. It felt like too much stress for an audition that I probably wasn’t even going to land anyway. (Do you see the negativity starting to creep in?) But something else inside of me just said don’t give up. Just show up.

So I made the 20 minute drive back and eventually found the place. I signed in and still had a few moments to calm myself down and go over my lines.

So why am I even telling you this crazy story?

1. Is to give you a glimpse into my life.

2. To tell you what happened after the audition.

I ended up auditioning with this guy who looked like a model. I later found out he was in fact a model who had lived in Asia for several years working as a run way model and was getting ready to graduate from NYU’s film program. Apparently he was a smart model too. He told me that he was getting ready to go to Berlin to film one of his required films. I know this sounds crazy but he is from my agency so if he was lying I could find him out quickly!

Anyways I started asking questions like I normally do especially about funding films.

Let me tell you!

By the time we were done talking I had a buttload of resources to research for funding for films!

To me this was gold! This information was worth more than getting the audition because it helped me to feel more hopeful about making films on a more regular basis.

See if I hadn’t gone through all of that driving and miscommunication I wouldn’t have arrived at the exact time as my new filmmaker friend and I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to learn more about how I could get my films funded.

I learned a huge lesson that day.

Just show up.

I want to encourage you to just show up. There are statistics in the acting world that say that 30% of people don’t show up to their auditions. If you can just show up you’ve beat out one third of the competition. If you can stay consistent and stay in the game for the long haul you can beat out a lot more people!

There is so much power in just showing up!

You never know who you are going to meet, what connections you will make, what information you will learn if you just show up!

Be encouraged to day on your creative journey!