Are you ready for a Casting Director workshop?

Industry Pro workshop with Nick Peciaro CSA

Here's a scenario I've experienced countless times over my now 17 years of coaching. A new actor signs up for an acting class. They're very enthusiastic. They have stars in their eyes and they want to start their careers as soon as possible. So, after their first six weeks of class, they send me an email: "Do you think I'm ready for one of your Casting Director workshops...?"

Sigh.

Passion and enthusiasm are fantastic! It's the one thing I can't teach – it has to come from the individual. Acting is fun, but it also takes commitment, dedication, and willingness to put in the time to work on the craft, and the more passion and enthusiasm you have, the more likely you'll have the work ethic that's essential to advance your career. But what I also try to teach is a realistic view of where you're at vs. working actors who have been at this for a long time. And the truth is, many actors are in a hurry to be seen before they're ready to be remembered.

Which leads me to Casting Director workshops.

I've participated in Casting Director workshops, both as an actor and acting coach, starting decades ago in-person in Los Angeles when I was a new actor, and more recently on Zoom in the past few years.

The value of a Casting Director workshop is the opportunity to have face time with a professional who is actively working in the industry and is constantly challenged by the requirements of their job, which is to solve a problem and solve it quickly. They might have 24 hours to read a TV script and post a breakdown for maybe 50 actors of all shapes, sizes, and ages. They might need to find a Guest Star who has pages of heavy technical medical dialogue, as well as a woman who has a dramatic meltdown scene when she finds out her child is missing, as well as a bouncer-type who can play a psychotic criminal, as well as several men who are playing Santas in a department store, as well as a group of people who can play various drug addicts, as well as, as, as, as, as.....

Are you following? Casting directors are problem solvers and most of those problems need to be solved yesterday. They are looking for actors who, in a crunch, have the ability to get a multi-page script for a complex character in the morning and turn around a competitive, compelling, and professional self-tape audition within a 24-hour period. Is that you? If it is, you might be ready for a Casting Director workshop.

But, if you can look at yourself and admit that – maybe it's not – bravo! That's one of the most important skills you can develop in your career: a realistic assessment of where you stand in the industry and what your strengths and weaknesses are. And, the only way you'll be able to constantly assess your strengths and improve your weaknesses is by training.

Casting Director workshops are not a substitute for training. Like any group of professionals, casting directors are individuals with their own quirks, preferences, and opinions, but in general, one could safely say – they don't show up at a workshop to teach you how to act.

They can offer their knowledge they've gained from experience and answer questions most actors have: (What are your pet peeves? Usually actors who don't follow directions. What's the kind of headshot that stands out? The one that looks like you. How important is demo reel footage? I usually don't have time to look at your footage, your self-tape audition is more important...)*

In most workshops, actors are assigned a scene which the casting director critiques. Time and again, the newer actor stands out immediately. It's not just nerves, because everyone gets them. It's a lack of training that shows up in all sorts of ways: a one-note performance, little to no emotional connection, too much emotional connection but not much else, an inability to take direction and make an adjustment, just to name a few.

But it's not just newer actors who might not be at their best. Sometimes actors who have had some training but may not have been in class for a while can get rusty. An actor may have foundational skills but may not have been keeping up-t0-date with scene analysis, spontaneity, or getting an unexpected adjustment just to test their flexibility. I know firsthand what it's like to think I knew it all when I had some TV credits under my belt, only to show up for a casting director workshop and get quickly schooled on what was missing in my performance. So...if that can happen to someone with substantial experience, guess what might be true for you?

My goal isn't to discourage you from taking Casting Director workshops, it's quite the opposite. I want you to get the most value possible from them. When you're trained and ready, the kind of critique you might get is more of refinement and a tweak, and in a best case scenario, you might even be remembered by the casting director the next time they need to solve a problem. That's the goal.

So, don't look for shortcuts, because they don't exist. Train and train some more. Don't just throw something up against a wall and hope it sticks. Because when you do take a Casting Director workshop, you don't want to hope you might be ready.

You want to be absolutely sure.

*These represent the majority of questions and answers in the past four years of the Industry Pro classes. Many casting directors have had almost identical responses!