Hey everyone, this post is about the most controversial issue in the entire acting world; casting director workshops – In particular international casting director workshops where an American casting director goes to a foreign country and teaches a “class”. Hopefully you can figure out why I have the word class in quotation marks.
The only thing positive I have to say about international casting director workshops is that it was really a stroke of genius for the person who conceived of them to realize that even a foreign actor’s money could be fleeced from them with no discernible benefit and that huge money was out there for the taking if you only brought in a big enough name for actors to hitch their dreams to.
I know that sounds a little bit harsh but let’s just call a spade a spade. I don’t want to step on my own toes for this blog post but I’m going to give away the ending and that is that while any casting director workshop is largely inefficient, ineffective, immoral, unethical and likely illegal, the international version of these is exponentially worse on all counts.
This post is in response to a question I had from an English actor who has been tempted by these workshops and wanted to know my opinion on them. While this is my opinion, I am merely stating the facts. There is not a whole lot of interpretation to be done here. If you evaluate these workshops on the facts, you can come to no other conclusion.
What do you guys think? Am I right or wrong? I would love to hear your thoughts.
Hacktor Question:
Here in the UK, we have caught the bug of attending Casting Director (CD) workshops, or “Pay to Play” opportunities, in the hope of getting offered work by the CD involved. I’m trying to convince my fellow actors that the chances of that happening are slim and one can spend a lot of money with that hope in mind. I used to attend those workshops to get myself, what I call “match fit”. I hadn’t had a casting for sometime and to get used to cold reading scripts and sharpen my casting technique, I attended two blocks of six weekly classes. My goal was achieved, so now I take acting classes as not all CD’s can direct you in an interview situation.
What do others think?
Definitely CD workshops are playing on actors fears and weakness. Actors don’t understand how the business works and don’t know how to get auditions so they think that by paying for them, they will get opportunities. While it is possible that you may get an audition from a CD who works in your home town, albeit small, the chances of a Hollywood casting director calling you for an audition for a project which shoots in America are absolutely positively ZERO! It angers me that actors in other countries, let alone other states/cities are conned into believing that they are really being considered for work by these CD’s. There’s absolutely no chance they are going to fly an unknown actor anywhere, let alone across the ocean to do a small part and there is absolutely no chance an unknown actor is going to get even an audition for a large part. Sorry, but that’s reality. Can you find an exception to what I’m saying? Very doubtful…I’d love to hear about it. The only exception is maybe for a child actor or someone with a particular disability or some other very unique trait, but those people wouldn’t be found through a workshop but through an international casting search. Casting directors don’t teach acting, so to take lessons from them will likely fill an actor’s mind with somewhat meaningless and hard to understand information because they have no training in the field of teaching… They go from assistant to CD and suddenly people are paying them for their opinion… Ridiculous! Even more ridiculous is paying to see an assistant, who doesn’t even have the power to call people in! Don’t waste your money, it can be spent in a far better and productive way.
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