Guess who is back...

That is right everyone! I am back in St. Louis Missouri! After 6 beautiful weeks off and back home in Omaha Nebraska, I am back and refreshed for a new school semester!

Break was amazing. I really did nothing special,  just hung around the house with family! We had different family gatherings, family outings, and other quality time items with parents! I spent most of my time outside in the woods, thinking and relaxing!

I did attend a master class in Omaha that was very exciting! It was under Broadway Dreams Foundation and it was an hour acting exercise that was focusing on self awareness and letting it happen and not force the emotion.

I now get to get the ball rolling to have an amazing year! I am thrilled to start this semester! I am only taking 13 credit hours and one of the classes I will be finished on February 8th! Then I am only taking 10 hours! Ha this semester is going to be awesome! I only have this semester and last semester left!

Having a four day weekend ever week is going to be something amazing! I am very tempted to get a "real job" for the days that I don't have school. However I am working with DaySpring Academy for the Arts as in intern and that is keeping me very busy this semester. I am still debating on what todo! I have to get my normal job resume together first off and then we will go from there!:)

I have a few auditions coming up, one of them is for Metro Theater Company here in St. Louis. I am excited for this audition and can't wait to tell you more about this audition. I have Midwest Theater Auditions coming up in late February and now I am focusing on working on that monologue.  All other auditions I will tell you at a later time because secrets are amazing!:)

I was super excited when I got my Humana Festival scripts from 2011 and 2012! I can't wait to indulge myself in these scripts and hopefully find some great monologues!

I also am looking for more workshops in St. Louis area to attend, if you know of any please let me know!

Anna rehearsals will be starting in about two weeks! We have a read through on Feb 2nd. I will be talking a lot about this show in the coming days!

I feel that is a good run down and quick update that may interest you. I will be keeping up to date on everything that happens!

This year is gong to be bigger then last year and I can't wait to get it started! only 48 more weeks left of this year, that is not that much time!

Have a wonderful day and enjoy some Simon's Cat!:)

Daniel Sukup

Stand out!

Hello All,

Has it really been a week of the new year? Wow where does time go? How are your New Years' resolutions standing up?

An actors faces thousands of auditions throughout their career. It seems that we're are always trying to find that "best impression" or that way to "Stand out" when in a pool of thousands. How do we do it, how do we mange to "be noticed"? I have been thinking about this for sometime. I have my idea, but like every actor they need to find their own path to "standing out" in an audition.

Traditionally an actor will come in with a headshot and resume, hit their mark, introduce, monologue, say thanks, and exit stage left. If I was a casting director I would get very disinterested in this process when I have to sit through hundreds, if not thousands, of the same set up. How do we make this more interesting?

The obvious answer is not to do that, and you would be right. Now the question is how do you break tradition? When I was taking an art class my professor always gave us specific guidelines that would still let us provide our own art, but under certain restrictions. Everyone followed suit, except in the later part of the semester a student combined two different materials in one projects (Before this project was up, we were only working with one material to present. Our professor did not want to complicate things with two materials.) and the professor was impressed by the risk of the student of "breaking the rules." She even stated to the student that I normally would be against this type of project but you [the student] managed to go for it and not back down.

Those last words are exactly how you manage to stand out. Take a risk in something different and don't half ass it, but fully commit to it. Make the casting director pay attention to you. Be different. but how?

As I stated earlier the traditional audition process, well break it. Come up with interesting ways to slate, to perform, to sing, to leave. Make them notice you. I don't want to give ideas because they may not work for you. You, as an artist, need to make the art and present it. The rules are there to be broken, we have heard that so many time, but convince them that it is not wrong to break these rules.

Something to always remember in acting, we are all artist, make your art and present it. Make people want to look at this piece of art.

I hope this helped on some degree?

Daniel Sukup

Auditions

Wow! It seems like we never stop auditioning for stuff! 

Hello all,

Let me first say that The Lord has blessed me so much this year! I am starting to get a lot if auditions and starting to book jobs!!

Here is a rundown of what auditons I have been heading to recently!!

A Mob video, Fairwood Brothers, Star wars 7, and finally __________. The last one I will reveal to you later in the year, it is a surprise!:).

 

A mob video:

This one was a little out of my range I feel, it was a challenge to play (or attempt) a son of a mob leader. 

This was a video audition, and for those that don't know what happens in a video audition, they are very informal auditons. First you have to set up good lighting, food camera focus and make sure you look camera ready. After all of that you now get into the acting part! Make sure you pay attention to required wardrobe, this is very important. Then you will slate, meaning you say your name, other information that they want, then agency. After that you do profiles if they want them.

Now once this is all done, you get to Edit* it all together and send the file to your agency or directly to the person casting. 

*when I say edit, I mean the simple stuff! Putting slates and audition into one video!

This was a unique experience!

The next one was the Fairwood Brother  aidtion. If you don't know, Fairwood Brothers are a music group that, well makes music. I don't know much about their work, I have listened to some of it and it's hard to tell what genre. 

This was an in perish audition. When I got to the location about 12 of us were there. The audition was to be from 4-5 but ran a little longer, oh well that is how the color crumbles. 

When I got to audition, I was a little aggravated because the just notified that all the roles for men but one was already cast! I wish I knew this before hand. But you still have to go. 

Well I get into the audition room and they were very friendly, however I was reading there body language and they pretty much had already cast the last role. I did my best in the audition. Was it as strong as it could have been? No, but we all have bad auditons once in a while. Now moving on:

Finally Star Wars 7, this was a long shot, but what was the main reason for going was to hand my headshot and resume to MaryEllen who has cast many major "superhero" films including "man of steel" and many, many others. This opportunity was not going to pass me. 

I went, got there early and the line was not long at all, and was out by 11:30am. It was a meet and greet style, meaning that all you did was hand your headshot ad resume to her, she says hi and a few words and you go! I was thrilled when she loved my resume and said it was great stuff, keep up the hard work. 

That was all of the auditions. The last one is a surprise!:)

Just a little about Christmas Carol Update! 

We have started tech rehearsals, we just finished spacing rehearsals and that went great, now we have to go into tech and we have a short tech because of Thanksgiving break!:) I will post photos of everything next week :)

Thank you for reading,

Love you all

D