Los Angeles Acting blog by David August: If Not This There'll Be Another

Monday, May 06, 2013

If Not This There'll Be Another

Your roles are your roles. No one else will book the roles that will be yours. Hard to have faith that you'll book something even if it isn't "this" thing (whatever you are currently working on). If you don't book from this audition, you will book another. This is simple fact.

I know, part of an actor's work require us to be in the moment, in the present: now. We're trained for it. That means not living in the future where all the roles you haven't booked yet, but will, are for the time being. Your roles are finding their way to you just as you are finding your way to them.

And I know, when bills are due, and you're feeling restless, or far from where you want to be, or otherwise dissatisfied and impatient, it is hard to breathe, find calm and remember that you really will book again. Whether it is this role or another or both: you will book. Think of it as math.

Not only are you stacking the deck in your favor by preparing and honing your work. Not only are you talented and intrinsically capable of being human (the core of our work) but the arbitrariness of the industry means that opportunity comes to everyone. Your chance to do great things with the opportunities that come your way is a certainty. It depends only on having the patience and persistence to make luck; luck being preparation meeting opportunity.

It really is mundane when you find the balance of investment and detachment from outcome. Like the formation of diamonds: time and persistent energy make good things.

In an audition you have the role, you are playing it during the audition. Whether you are offered the opportunity to play it again has little to do with you. I told my grandmother once that when I book, or when I don't, I give her the blame or credit. The genetics she and my other grandparents gave me make a difference and are beyond my power to choose them. Booking, like many things in life, is not about you.

Do your work, trust the process and jobs will come. If you don't book this, you'll book another. So have fun, enjoy the journey. Find fun in the process. Success is inevitable.