Lesbian Dancing After The Show: An Improviser's Non Improvised Life

The Los Angeles Lap Dance: The Casting Thingy - Intro

The Casting Thingies

For all purposes, even with the improvisation I do here with Hans and others? I'm officially a solo actor. I'm not running anything. I finally have to officially promote myself as an actor.

With this in mind, I start looking for an agent.

This was not the first priority though, since finding a talent agency in Los Angeles is as easy as finding a velvet rope on a Friday Night in front of an unimportant bar. My real first priority was to get myself on all of the "Casting Submission Sites" that were most used by Casting Directors.

There are four of them I signed up for and did the Full Monty on: Headshots, Reels, and Uploaded Resumes (sometimes a few hours cutting and pasting that resume into their premade resume systems).

I hit submit to them all and paid the fees that were needed to see the submissions for auditions and in turn to "Self Submit."

Even with an agent, I still self-submit because they sometimes miss things I might be interested in auditioning for. Sometimes, the agencies are not even on the actual submission sites I'm on. (I was told by an agent that one of these submission sites "Was Ghetto" and to not promote myself going to that place on Facebook. Three months later, they sent me to the place to audition. I guess it's okay when the Ghetto is offering a ten percent agent fee).

So with all the gusto of a bright eyed girl in the late 1940's getting off the Greyhound Bus from Topeka with a red suitcase asking for directions to Schwabs, I got on the computer with all of my information on who I am: Also...the physical type and Age Range. The possible Ethnicity I could pass for.

I'm realistic. On my end of Submissions I'm this: African-American, Female, 5'9", Overweight (for L.A. Terms), age range from 35-50. With other folks submitting me, the spread is 30-60. This is a pretty huge spread. Of late I either see myself in an audition room with women old enough to be my mother trying to pretend they can be 60...or women young enough to be my daughters trying to pretend to be 35. While I try to pretend...that I'm 35.

I cannot wait for my face to drop and gray hair to really kick in. I got to get out of the Lopsided High School Basketball Scores age range.

After about six months of living in Los Angeles, I was on all of the Casting Submission sites and the auditions started to filter into my email quickly.

Now, six years later, I actually cherish these emails. I started to save some. I started posting them as Facebook Statuses, something I dubbed "From The Casting Thingies," where actors would scream laughing at my observations on possibly the worst actor submissions you could humanly think of. Someone told me I should write a book on these alone.

I decided to just give you some of them in part of a Chapter. Enjoy.

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