Author: Heath

Ever since my layoff last June there have been many things I’ve been meaning to do to more fully pursue my life goals. One of the top items was to put together a promo package to try and get a talent agent here in Austin and get some paid acting gigs. I puttered around far longer than I should have, but I eventually sent packets to my top 3 agents a couple of months ago. As time wore, I really started to think I wasn’t going to hear anything back. I was surprised. I have a full resume, and what I think is a great promo package, although I think my Demo reel is a bit lacking.
On Friday I had a message form what I consider probably the top agency in town. They wanted me to come in to their audition “class” on Monday. They sent me 3 scenes and a commercial that I would be filmed performing. I spent all day Monday memorizing them and working on my performance. Now generally, you don’t have to have things memorized for an audition, but I wanted to be as prepared as possible and look as professional as possible. Also, having the lines memorized means I can concentrate more on my performance and less on trying to remember the lines.
We’ll see what happens, but I feel like it went really well. I don’t really know how to explain this without seeming totally conceited and egotistical, but I’ll try anyway. This was the second experience I’ve had recently (another being a film audition I recently went on) that really made me feel confident in my acting abilities. I felt that I gave a great performance and that I seemed to be in a whole other league from most of the people there (here’s where I sound conceited). It’s not that everyone else was bad or anything but I just really felt much more natural and honed. I was born to a mother who was into community theatre so I was brought into theatre literally from the moment I was born. Acting is literally a part of my essence, something that has been with me my entire life and it’s only within the last few years that I’ve really settled into a real confidence in my talents. These recent experiences have been wonderful in solidifying and bolstering my acting pursuits. I just really felt in my element and like I had some thing special going for me that a lot of other people didn’t. I think most people came off looking like they were acting. Let’s hope the agency feels as strongly about me as I felt about myself. Next step, figuring out how to get some of the big work in L.A and then how to juggle that with living in Austin. If that means sending out tapes auditions, or gambling a plane ticket every now and ten to make an audition, I’m willing to do that. No more delays. It’s time to get my life on the track it was meant to be on but has been derailed from for so many years.
Today’s random non sequitur: Eric Bana is one “na” away from banana.

I just realized something I haven’t written about yet. Larry and I have been writing and rehearsing an original improv/sketch comedy show with our friend, Jon Steele (his real name). It all started a couple of months ago when we decided we wanted to put something together and by the end of the first rehearsal we already had almost an entire show’s worth of ideas to flesh out. There’s a few strictly scripted pieces, but most are just loose skeletons that we improv around. They’re still kind of scripted but just not strictly. They’re more like specific plot points to create the basic story flow and resolution with room to play. We also have a few pieces that are just a very loose concept and are improv’d from audience submitted suggestions. We’ve done two test performances in our living room for friends and have received very positive feedback.
We’ve settled on the name “Damn Dirty Apes” for our troupe and the show is called “The Madhouse” as there is a running set of sketches involving me as Charlton Heston.
I wanted to present two of my favorites to here now. Naturally they are the fully scripted pieces since I can’t really present any of the improv pieces.
The first one is “Arnold Schwarzenegger’s General Store”.
The second is one I’m particularly proud of, as we’ve taken one of the most basic lowbrow comedy staples, the dick joke, and turned into one of the most densely pun and innuendo packed and dare I say, intelligent pieces we’ve written. It is known to us as “Dickin’ Around”.
We hope to start booking the show soon and perhaps participating in some of the improv Olympics that go on weekly around here.