But since this isn’t my usual audience, I can make a confession here that I wouldn’t make there. I’m actually very shy. Few people believe me, even among my closest friends, but I identify as an introvert. I’m an introvert who can address an audience of 20,000 people every week, speak with spontaneous panache at a convention, and talk your ear off at a party. This is not a paradox. Shaking a stranger’s hand, I’m simultaneously relaxed and confident, and anxious enough to chew my own arm off to get away. The trick I’ve learned is simply faking it well; often well enough to forget that I’m faking it myself. And how did I learn to fake it?

Improv comedy.

I think everybody should learn to do improv. Especially the people who know with total certainty that they could never do improv. I had my formative experience with it in Georgia Tech’s theater group, DramaTech. We started with a few weekends’ worth of workshops, which became a performing troupe, the Let’s Try This Players — they’re still around 15 years later. Tech’s an engineering school; I’m not the only geeky introvert this troupe converted to a social mayfly.

The thing about improv is that it always looks much harder than it is. In truth, the hardest part of it is simply letting go of the belief that it should be hard. Once you learn to allow it to be easy, to let it flow, it’s easier to keep it going than to turn it off.

I learned two basic principles in improv that can be applied to any social situation anywhere. Together they’re enough of a social toolbox to defuse any social fear. They are spontaneity and acceptance.

Spontaneity simply means living in the moment. The surest way to freeze on stage in improv is to spend time planning your next line. You’re in a dynamic environment, the other people are constantly changing the context, and by the time you get to your clever line it simply isn’t relevant anymore. You can’t plan the scene, just as you can’t plan good conversations. Other people are too independent. The only thing you can do is open your mouth at the right time, and trust that whatever comes out will be the right thing. If you’re truly living in the moment, fully aware of your context, and confident enough, it will be. And when it is, that builds your confidence and awareness. It’s a self-reinforcing feedback loop once it gets started.

Acceptance was our most unbreakable rule in improv: never say no. “No” kills the scene. Failure to collaborate kills. If someone asks you to hold steady the invisible ladder they’re climbing and you say “No,” there’s nowhere to go from there. It’s not funny and there’s no plot that comes out of “No.” The correct answer is “Yes, and…” Accept and validate the point of view that the people around you are building — and then add to it with your own ideas. The same is true in any group dynamic. You have the power to change anything around you, but only if you accept the power of everyone else to do the same. This doesn’t mean having no boundaries; but if you’re doing improv (or life) and people are constantly pushing your limits and making you say “No,” you’re probably on the wrong stage.

These ideas are not unique to improv, and I know I’m not the first person to talk about socializing effectively with them. You can read the same stuff in How to Win Friends and Influence People. But improv is where it sunk in for me. Making it funny, having fun, is how I fully absorbed it. If you ever find yourself in my shoes, think about improv yourself. It’s worth a try. (And then can I please have
them back? I like those shoes.)
–
Have Fun,
Steve Eley (sfeley@gmail.com)
ESCAPE POD - The Science Fiction Podcast Magazine
http://www.escapepod.org

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I’m most fascinated by Sass X7 and Xtreme Dance Force, for their gender-based divisions. I suspect that there are other groups that are all-boy or all-girl, but they make a point of it. Judge for yourself how they compare. I think that Sass relies a little heavily on their beauty – not as much dance chops in there. Still, they sure ain’t no Pussycat Dolls.

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© 2008 Michael J. Wallach – Used by Permission of the Author

It used to be simple. You met an agency that you liked and you were presented with an agency contract that you could comfortably sign.  But, it doesn’t work like that anymore. What do I mean by that?  In the old days (not more than approximately five years ago) there was basically just one contract that an actor was given to sign. You were presented with a SAG Franchised Theatrical Motion Pictures and Television Contract. No problem. Signing it was easy because there were safeguards built into the agreement which guarded the actor from giving away important rights. But, it’s not quite like that anymore. Approximately 50++% of all talent agencies are no longer SAG franchised. In fact, as a personal manager of twenty years, I was comfortable allowing my client to sign such a SAG franchised contract without scrutinizing it because I knew that SAG had guidelines built into the contract that would protect my client.

What’s changed?  Most agencies are no longer franchised by the Guild and therefore are not bound to sign a potential client to a SAG Franchised Theatrical Motion Pictures and Television contract. So, what kind of contract does a non-franchised talent agent sign an actor to these days?  The answer is an agreement called a General Services Agreement. Is there a difference in the two contracts?  Absolutely.

Let’s talk about the basic differences. These differences can change your entire relationship with your agency. For example, it can keep you stuck in an agreement that you have learned was a mistake to enter into in the first place.  It can cost you more than ten percent…

So, before being specific about the different agency agreements, let me say that in spite of the agreement you sign, you can still turn a General Services Agreement into a positive move for your career!  (I’ll explain later in the article.)

OK, let’s examine the safeguards that a SAG agreement afforded you. First off, SAG didn’t allow an actor to sign an initial agency contract for more than one year.  This meant, of course, that the agreement’s term was relatively short and an actor knew that if it didn’t work out, after the year was up, he or she could move on to another agency.
But, with a General Services Agreement, an agency can sign you for up to seven years. (Yes, seven years because the state of California controls a general contract and the state rule is that a personal services agreement is enforceable for up to seven years.  It’s the same as signing a personal services contract to perform as a series regular on a series where the producer/network can sign you for up to seven years!)

What else does a SAG franchised agreement protect you with? It protects your right to get out of the agency contract if it’s not working and you’re not satisfied.  Specifically, you can get out of the agreement if you haven’t worked 15 days in the first 151 days.  How is this different than with a General Services Agreement?  Since such an agreement is only regulated by state law, you can only get out if you haven’t worked one day in the last four months!

Another important distinction between the two contracts that you may be presented with involves the type of representation that the agency will have over you. Simply put, when you sign a SAG franchised agreement, the only kind of representation is for theatrical motion pictures and television (and sometimes commercials). However, if you sign a General Services Agreement, you will likely be represented as not only an actor but also as a director, producer, writer, choreographer, and many more capacities!  So, you will not only be paying a commission as an actor but also for other fields should you happen to produce or write something that gets sold. In other words, was it your intention to give an agency a commission for something other than as an actor?

And another distinction is that the SAG franchised agreement limits the commission one pays to ten percent.  A General Services Agreement (controlled by the state of California) does not limit your commission to ten percent!

There is a positive way to approach the above situation. Let’s discuss. What is one to do when presented with a General Services Agreement?  Do you sign it out of desperation? Or, do you try to negotiate the terms with the agency trying to sign you?  The answer is the latter.  When an agency wants to sign you, the playing field has leveled out. While it may seem that they have all the cards, the fact is that you are wanted and needed by the agency that wants to sign you. So, discuss the terms. What do I specifically mean by that?  For example, tell the agency that you only want to sign for one year; that you want the same out clauses that a SAG agreement gives you; that you only want to be represented as an actor; and that the commission should not exceed ten percent.
Remember, the agency wants you – probably as much or more than you want the agency – so negotiate!

Michael J. Wallach, a manager and attorney for more than twenty years has written a book entitled “How To Get Arrested®”: A Motivational Story For Actors Breaking Into Hollywood. It answers many questions and does it in story form as opposed to it being written in text book style. Wallach also created and teaches a course for UCLA Extension called “This Business of Acting” which was offered in the Winter Quarter ’08.

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Making the Dream Real

Much to my joy, I find that Jeanne is making the dream real, putting Stardance into movie form. The complications of choreography in zero gee are immense, and not the least of it is the problem of, well, getting into zero gee in the first place. However, she and her main choreographer, Kathleen McDonagh, managed to get up in one of the zero gee planes and…well, they did it. They danced. They began a zero-gee movement vocabulary. And I can’t tell you how amazing I find that. It’s the most inspirational thing I’ve seen…well, ever.

Thank you, Jeanne, for making me believe in dreams yet again.

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All About Numbers

As the video on their site will tell you, in the past 9 years Artistic Fraud has called for:

• 81 school desks
•  32 flourescent semaphore flags
• 790 maps
• 36 vibraphone keys
• 2400 square feet of polyester wedding dress lining
• Over 300 performers.

You can see a short film about the relatively small production Fear of Flight on YouTube now, and hear the ensemble as they blend and create their vocal stagescapes (score by Jonathan Monroe). It’s fascinating how the score backs up the dramatic collaboration of the characters on the stage…

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I’d been to Edinburgh with the same company back in 2002, when I had the chance to see a show from a Russian physical theatre company, Derevo. That show was called La Divina Commedia, took place in a circus tent in an industrial part of the city and was at the time – and still to this day – an example of some of the finest, most dreamlike and Boschian performance work I’ve experienced.

 That’s Right: Boschian.

Theatre in the round, four blocks of audience with a tower between each block. A tightrope at least twenty feet up across the stage. A woman, naked from the waist up, immaculately muscled, pale and dusted white wearing faun legs and curling ram horns summoning the three other performers as rabid dog animals only just prevented from attacking the audience. I looked closely at one of those dog-people and for a moment saw nothing at all that was human there.
The show in 2006 was entitled Ketzal and took place at what is well known as one of the most exciting and innovative performance venues at the Fringe, Aurora Nova. This year it’s unfortunately not a part of the festival which even though I’m not going to be able to be there upsets me tremendously. Ketzal, however, was a fitting way for me to end my relationship with the venue.

Again, the imagery is amazingly dreamlike, severely disturbing and unlike anything you’ll have seen on this side of the ocean. They have a complete mastery of environmental design – as soon as you enter the theatre you are, without a doubt, somewhere else. Mark Monahan from telegraph.co.uk reviewed Ketzal in 2006 and said, “Quite simply, Ketzal, the company’s latest show (named after the Naguan for “bird”), is one of the strangest, darkest, most mesmerisingly beautiful things you may ever see.” Frankly, I couldn’t agree with him more. If you EVER get the chance to experience a performance by Derevo, do not pass it up. You can also see their video and still image work at their e-life site.

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Scoping the Arts

In the same vein, I thought I’d mine the Arts and Entertainment section of the local newspaper as the
basis of my post on the Eastern Time Zone, the Lewiston Sun Journal which serves the Central Maine area.

The website itself is pretty standard for its type, nice to see it’s keeping up with the times and not all
blink tags and comic sans font. Nothing surprising in the headlines:  someone plagiarized off the Internet (sigh, so 1999), some notable local court cases, and some discouraging news about homeless crackdowns and shelter protests.

But, there is the “Encore” arts section under Entertainment in the left navigation menu. And under
that, a link to the World Refugee Day in Kennedy Park. And that does a lot to lift my heart. You see, while there were a lot of nice small town aspects to the Lewiston/Auburn area that I left as a child, I also recall that on the whole it was extremely conservative, extremely religious, and very ethnically uniform in its Franco-American Heritage.

A Hope for Cultural Maturity

As I said earlier, I’ve peeked in from time to time over the years. There was a Harry Potter book burning in the same park some years ago that I still shake my head about. But on the other hand, I’ve also read about the migration of Somalis refugees to the area. I have to admit at first I was skeptical, but this festival gives me hope that the area as a whole is slowing joining the world around it. Hope, which while not universal to all art (nor should be, I’d be the first to admit), is certainly one of its best abilities.

So, if you’re in the Eastern Time Zone today, in Central Maine in general, and Kennedy Park in Lewiston in particular…please go to the World Refugee Day festival. Listen to their experiences, enjoy their local foods and drinks, and as you listen to their music and watch them dance, look up or sideways. With hope, I’ll see you on Google.

Refugee festival set for Friday

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(yes, I realize this falls outside of the time zone idea for the blog-off. But it’s too good to pass up, so let’s call it a “stardate”).

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Now, I’ll admit that I found this by googling “Mountain Standard Time Arts”, but a causal browse on
their website revels a lot beneath the generic title. The first festival was in 1971 in Calgary, AB Canada. Since then, the festival has specialized in combining traditional art forms like film and dance with more modern ones like video and multimedia, as well as covering everything else under the “performance art”
umbrella. I know that this will be of particular interest to my friend Gray, who has a lot of experience with combining video with dance to create new and interesting performance pieces.

They don’t have the current program for this year’s festival up yet, but going to the Program navigation
link on their website does bring up links to past artists that give a sample of what the festival has to
offer. The artists range from Camille Turner, who uses her performance as beauty queen Miss Canadiana as a way of mirroring the society around her; to the Nihilist Spasm Band, who specialize in creating their own unique sounds using a variety of low and high tech instruments and items not normally related to music; to Mono Logical, a monologist who incorporates video and audio clips into his monologues about urban space and global economics (among other things.) And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

If you’re interested in how performance arts are performed in different parts of the world, you could certainly do worse than checking out this site.

The Mountain Standard Time Performance Art Festival is being held October 3rd-17th, 2008 in Calgary, AB
(Alberta) Canada. http://www.mstfestival.org/index.html

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I’m actually out camping in the wilds of Wisconsin this weekend, so I’m afraid while I’m able to Blog Off I am going to miss America’s Best Dance Crew tonight. It’s interesting to see how this show has captured a lot of audience that seems perhaps burned out by the pomp and circumstance of So You Think You Can Dance? (note: that link goes to what I consider the snarkiest review ever. When you spend a page complaining about the fact that you have to review something in the first place, you’re pretty snarky. I’m just sayin’).

Still, there is something very special about watching the dancers move in unison, and watching the process, emotions, and teams that are built as they compete for the $100,000 prize. I’ll be sure to catch up with the broadcast online later, but if you have any thoughts during this Blog-Off, please let me know.

Remember, this post is part of the Great Blog Off here at B5Media. If you’d like to help us contribute to the Actor’s Fund, please use the following link:

Actors Fund – http://www.actorsfund.org/support/blog-off

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