This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Jeffrey Dreisbach: So, how do you look in Spandex? You know, the tight fitting, stretchy stuff usually worn in the gym or dance class? How does it make you feel? Now, I'm not talking about your physicality. I'm talking about why you decided to choose whatever you wear when you are outside your home. Okay, the same thing applies to the scripted material you choose to work on, whether for an audition or a class. How do you choose the “material” that best suits you? Material that fits, on this episode of Casting Actors Cast.

[0:50] Jeffrey Dreisbach: This is Casting Actors Cast, the podcast for actors in the business of show. Casting director Jeffrey Dreisbach brings you insights and inspiration to help make a difference in your acting and your acting career. Here's your host, Jeffrey Dreisbach.

[1:04] Jeffrey Dreisbach: Well, hello and welcome to today's episode of Casting Actors Cast. I'm Jeffrey Dreisbach. I'm a casting partner with Pat McCorkle at the McCorkle Group in New York. How are you? Hope you're having a good day. I'm having a good day now that you're here, and I wanted to share with you a little bit about finding the best material for your work, for your acting. And that's gonna be coming up in just a moment, but first this is that moment of the podcast where I want to do a little bit of a push on my website, CastingActorsCast.com. There you're gonna find show notes from previous episodes and current episodes. Also, you're gonna see that there's a place that says dive into the talent pool. And when you fill out that form, it opens up a menu of a couple of freebies.

One is a free book that I wrote on doing voiceover work called Conversation Pieces Out of the Studio, The Voiceover Workshop for Professional Actors. I think you're gonna find that really helpful. It's a hundred pages, it's absolutely free. The next thing is a video that I put together. It's a 20-minute private YouTube video called Casting Secrets, what they don't tell you. All of this freebie stuff is just that I get your name and your email. By the way, I don't spam you. I don't abuse the privilege of you sending me your email. It just helps me know that you are out there. Also, I would really love in return if you could write a review, especially on iTunes, or if you're watching us on YouTube, then that would be so cool that you could leave a note or a thumbs up.

Whatever you can do to help support the channel, I would be indebted to you. So if you're getting something out of this, and by the way, I just have to say I'm getting all kinds of positive feedback from folks who have been listening to the podcast and have been telling me about their successes. It's been overwhelming and really, really cool. So I appreciate that more than you know. If you haven't written or you haven't sent me a note or you haven't done a review, come on, what are you waiting for? I've been doing these podcasts for about three years now. I'm having a great time doing it. By the way, I don't do this during normal work hours. This is me on my own time putting these podcasts together for you.

I don't want you to have to deal with some of the stuff I had to deal with when I was an actor. I've now been casting for 13 years now, and I can tell you it's an excellent time to be an actor, but I do think that there's some information that might be vital to helping you and your career. So please pass this along, write a review, do whatever you can. It would mean the world to me. Now, finally, my little shout out to my friends at Actors Connection, ActorsConnection.com/slash New York. By the way, I'll be teaching a class there. It's just two sessions, and it's called From Stage to Screen. For those of you who have a solid stage background and you're interested in moving into film and television, I am there to help you do that in this two session workshop.

There's all kinds of other classes and seminars and workshops going on at ActorsConnection.com/slash New York, all with professionals in the industry. So it's a really solid place for you to get good, up to date information on what it is to be a professional actor.

[4:15] Jeffrey Dreisbach: All right, let's jump into the subject at hand, shall we? As we talk about how to find the best material for you. Again, whether this is for a class or doing monologues or just something to work on, there are common issues that I've seen in a lot of actors' work lately that I wanted to address. And so we've got a list of things to share with you that I hope you'll find useful and helpful as you decide what new material you should be looking for and how to look for it. So, number one, I want you to cast yourself well. You know, it's so crazy to me that I still see actors saying, "Well, I want to, you know, I want to think outside of the box, and I want to do some gender bending." And, you know, I understand that, and I think that that is very commendable.

I think taking risks is really healthy. That's what it's all about. But I also think that there is something to be said about casting yourself in roles that you see yourself playing in film and television and theater now. That means age appropriate. That means what is your demographic? What are your sensibilities? In other words, showing me exactly how you're marketing yourself in terms of the choices you make with your material can be extremely helpful and healthy. That comes out to helpfully. So what suits you in terms of your demographic, your age, your sensibility, that would be material that would be excellent from you.

[5:55] Jeffrey Dreisbach: Point number two, I would suggest that you refrain from the obvious. There's lots of material out there, monologues and even scenes that are just overdone that I've seen so many times. There's to the point where because I know the material so well, I'm now thinking about the last time I saw it done well. And now I'm comparing you to somebody else. And if you didn't have that same material, I wouldn't be doing that. So I would just try to make sure that you're staying away from the obvious. Be creative in the material that you find. Be creative in the way you put it together. As long as you are targeting the kinds of jobs that you are castable in, the kinds of roles that you would be cast in.

That is a great filter. So whether it's a monologue or a scene, please stay away from obvious choices. Now here's a suggestion I've made in the past, and I want to just make this again. I think this is such a great idea. I suggest that you transcribe material from TV or films, even new theater pieces. If it's hard to find that material, I know actors who will record the show and then transcribe the scene because they like the scene so much. Or monologue, for example. I've said this a couple of times in the past, but you know, if you're watching an episode of This Is Us, there's no reason why you couldn't stop after the recording, go back, transcribe that monologue and make it yours. Make it for you.

There are really excellent ways of finding material. If you are watching binging on something and you know that this is something you would be cast or you'd be perfectly well suited to be cast in, then why not pick a scene from a show that you know you could and would do? So those are some ideas that are outside of the box ways of approaching getting new material.

[7:56] Jeffrey Dreisbach: So I guess the question becomes a way to just simply ask yourself, what does this choice of material show someone who has never met me before? See what I'm saying? If you find material, you need to ask yourself, how is this going to affect somebody who doesn't know me? Does this say as much as I want it or need it to say about me from somebody who doesn't know me? That would be an excellent choice of material once you have the answer to that question. Number five, let your emotional connection to the material be only one part of the decision that you make. I oftentimes will ask an actor after they do a scene or a monologue, why did you choose this material? And the question is, oh, well, I can relate to the person's experience because I had a similar experience in my life.

So now what I'm hearing are emotional decisions. Now there's nothing wrong with that. But if that's the very first answer, if it's not, I see myself playing these kinds of roles, then you have to really be careful because you're making an emotional choice as opposed to a choice that is both emotional and one that is good for business. I think, and hope that that makes sense to you, because I think that's really important information right there. So when you let your emotional connection to the material be the only decision that you make, then you lose out on all kinds of things that you can show those who are watching you. One is your marketability, another your range. A third is the different levels that you see in the character that you are playing.

Another is the arc, the transformational experience. How are you different at the end of the monologue or scene than you were at the beginning of that monologue or scene? Make sense? You're giving me much more information about your technique as an actor, your training, your background. All of that comes into play, not just that the scene spoke to you.

[10:09] Jeffrey Dreisbach: Number six, I want you to really invest time in making interesting choices. Don't make obvious choices. This is that outside of the box thinking. Interesting choices are not just sort of default settings that you have based on previous experience in classes or in other projects that you've worked on. Really think in terms of approaching the character in a different way than you normally would. Understand your default setting for playing a character, and then play around with that. My biggest, I don't want to say complaint, but my biggest issue many, many times is that actors have not spent enough time trying and playing around with interesting choices, different ways that you can go with a scene.

And once you've invested that amount of time, you're now going to be able to make really spontaneous creative choices in the work itself. That's why I think it is so valuable. Here's another suggestion. After you've done the work, after you've found the material, after you've opened up whatever the choices might be for the way you're going to play this part, I would love for you to think about finding a trusted someone to coach you on the material. It doesn't have to be a professional director, it could be somebody who knows your work really well, or just putting it on its feet and having someone giving you feedback. Once you have that level of approach to the work, so that you can show someone for feedback, you're going to find that the feedback you get is only going to be helpful.

It could be critical feedback is really useful, but it also could be positive. You really get a sense of what's working and maybe what's not working so that you can make it better. But finding a trusted someone is a step that I don't see a lot of actors taking. They rely on their own choices and their own instincts and wait until they're actually in front of casting before they really have given it the option of spontaneity.

[12:24] Jeffrey Dreisbach: Another suggestion I'd like to make, this is number eight, by the way, if you're calling. Record and play back with specific questions and no judgment. So ask yourself when you record yourself, and this is I think useful, especially for film and television material. It's not that I want you to get invested in sort of watching yourself generally, but when you watch yourself on playback, if you have specific questions that you are there to answer, you're going to find that to be a much more rewarding and valuable experience. So specific questions that you might have are Am I achieving the objective of the scene? Have I changed enough? Have I shown as much transformation as I need to from the beginning to the end of the scene, the arc of the scene?

Did I allow that anger to express where I was coming from in a very truthful way? So those are very kinds of specific questions that you can ask yourself as you play it back material. See, the problem is on playback, I see actors too many times just sort of watching themselves generally to get some sort of an effect. And it's really challenging because you're watching yourself, and now you're watching yourself, watching yourself. It becomes really challenging. So refrain from that by asking specific questions that are there to help support your talent.

[13:49] Jeffrey Dreisbach: Number nine, once you found some material that you've worked with a little bit, I would suggest that you find similar material, whether it's from the same actor that's played it, whether it's from the same writer, maybe you know who wrote the script, maybe you can do some more research on the kind of material that they are doing. Or maybe it's even the production itself that you've had experience and you liked the production. You can really gain a lot more creative ideas from how to perform the material for how to perform the material, as well as getting some ideas about additional material that you might not know about. I hope I'm making sense here. If you are watching, for example, Stranger Things.

But who wrote Stranger Things? What actors do you emulate when you watch Stranger Things? You say, gosh, that's a role I think I could really play. Well, what else has that actor played? You see where I'm going with this. It's really valuable because you can now open up all kinds of additional research choices right there in front of you. Searching for the right material is found when you make the active decision to show specific aspects of your acting ability. So, what does that mean? I think it's also about remaining curious and really working at trying to find and challenge yourself to find material that fits.

[15:25] Jeffrey Dreisbach: Thank you for joining Casting Actors Cast. Please don't forget to review, like, and share Casting Actors Cast wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks. I'm Megan Grace Martinez.