Happy New Year!
Warning: Long read.
As a whole, I have had a LOT of fun this year, and I’m very grateful for the opportunities I had. I deemed 2007 to be “The Year of Kristal,” meaning that if I wasn’t performing, I would still be doing things to better myself – and I think I did a pretty good job of that. It takes a lot to keep going after dreams, and it’s the work (and play!) you put into them that anchors them to the ground and makes them more accessible, essentially.
Kristal’s 2007 Review & Highlights
I was more selective with auditions this year, and ended up going to 34 auditions. Not bad! 4 callbacks and 8 gigs out of those (2 of which I turned down; 1 willingly, the other not so willingly. Boo for overlapping performance dates), meaning I landed 1 job out of every 4.25 auditions. Better than last year’s 1 out of 4.93 auditions.! Now, consider the 8 jobs I got sans auditioning (hurrah!!), and it’s 1 job from every 2.125 auditions. HELL-o! Add the 3 readings I got asked to be a part of, and that becomes an awesome 1.79. I love it. Compared to last year’s 3.63? Amazing.
Not that it’s all about how how many gigs out of how many auditions yadda yadda (okay, it kind of is), but it’s fun to know!
It took a while for things to get started, but once they did, there was no stopping it! I went through a good 5 or 6 months of back to back (and sometimes overlapping) projects – it was amazing.
Getting my sketch team, Disoriental, together, was what got everything started for me. After being interviewed by Shaw, we won 3rd place the first night, and won the People’s Choy’s Award (this was with the VACT – the Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre. Choy is cabbage in Chinese and – yes, it’s an awful play on words, but I have a soft spot in my heart for those. Haha.) the second night, we performed at Lucille’s Ball, were recommended to/performed at the Chinatown Festival, and were brought down to Seattle as special guests for their sketch shows there! It all snowballed fabulously. From there…
Other performing highlights:
- Dancing at the Jessie Awards.
- Getting back on Co-op Radio, doing a reading of a show I was doing with Theatre in the Raw.
- Performing in The Kenny Rogers Experience; my first being in the Vancouver Fringe Fest! That led to two CBC spots in terms of promo - one radio ad, and one tv interview.
- Getting to play a hooker (Shadow Aspect), and a Thai masseuse (Thwackers) all within the space of 2 weeks. Haha.
And not really a highlight, but a random fact: One day in the summer, I teched and performed with Disoriental in the morning, filmed The Year Without Hockey as Janet in the afternoon, then booted it to rehearsal for The Kenny Rogers Experience. It was an insane day, and it was fantastic!
Going back to bettering myself. What exactly did I do, to do that? Let’s see:
- Continued Clowning
- Started taking tap lessons at Harbour Dance (www.harbourdance.com) -incredible amounts of fun! My only regret is that I didn’t start sooner. I start more lessons on Tuesday.
- I parted ways with my agent. I have since found a new background agency, but haven’t had a chance to really look into other agencies yet. On one hand, I’ve been busy acting and that’s great! On the other…I need to get on that. But leaving my old agent? A great move.
- Continued going to the Cold Reading Series (www.coldreadingseries.com) as well as Final Draught (www.finaldraught.com) and Scripting Aloud (www.scriptingaloud.ca)
- Was the Publicist for The Kenny Rogers Experience.
- Learned how to make a balloon penguin!! Yes, I’m still at my day job, and it’s lovely how flexible they are with me.
- Took a Voice Over workshop with Bob Bergen, and a solo session with Deb Munro. As luck would have it, any time I’m free enough to have time to look at my voice scripts, I get sick and my voice is shot, but I’m still vowing to get this demo done! What timing.
- Went on a cruise. I was actually working (no, really!) as Youth Staff with Princess Cruises, but when I wasn’t with the kids, I had a great two weeks in the Mexican Riviera! I definitely want to go again, however, I’ve told myself that as long as I have acting gigs I won’t leave, so it’s a bit win-win. I’d love to take off for a week here or there, but I’ll take performances first, please and thanks! Tons of fun, though.
- More photo shoots! Some with Charles Stuart, and another shoot with the fabulous Reinier deSmit.
- Took Tracey Erin Smith’s Solo Show Boot Camp – very inspiring.
- Currently getting my new website underway – hopefully it’s done soon! It will be grand. Along with the new business cards I’m getting done. Hurrah!
- Lots of networking! 4 of the ’gigs’ I did this year (2 readings and 2 film festival entries) I got because of knowing someone who knows someone. I was at the Fringe Club after shows all the time to network, and I went to Martini Madness and the Women in Film Holiday Gala to do the same. That’s why I go to the WIFTV breakfast meetings and cold read nights, and it’s amazing the people you meet!
And I think that’s the jist of it.
2007 was another great year for meeting people. I’ve been lucky to have had the chance to meet and work with some amazing people, who I would love to work with again. And some of you I will! It’ll just happen, and it’ll be fantastic. I’m also always reminded of how small the world is – or at least the acting community! While working on Thwackers, I knew a girl from Sketchoff, a guy from Unsatiable, and another guy who I met randomly at the Fringe, who’s friends with a girl I danced at the Jessies with. It’s fun when you go somewhere industry related and you realise that the people you know outnumber the people you don’t!
I’m going to copy and paste a bit from an entry last year, because I really like it:
To all of you who I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and/or working with, thank you! We all have to learn from each other. It doesn’t matter whether or not the experience was a great one, or not so pleasant – we still learn. That helps us to be the best performers that we can be.
And thanks for 2007. It wasn’t a smooth ride the entire way through, but that would just make life far too easy. It’s been interesting, at the very least! And we learn. That’s the important part. We learn about ourselves, about how we deal with things, how we are. We learn about the people we surround ourselves with, how they deal with things, how they are, and you learn whether or not they are the kind of people you want in your life. If they are, great! If they’re not, ties get cut – well, that’s okay too. Just know why. Be curious!
I’m excited about 2008. I am! I’m feeling very pro-active about the year. (A proper sleep schedule would be a good thing to be pro-active about. As I write this, I realise it’s 3:11am.) I’ve started organizing my taxes (I bought myself the new edition of The Actor’s Survival Kit and I plan on reading that and Larry Moss’s The Intent to Live) and I’ve got a night shoot next week for Casino Life – first gig of the year! And I’m working on my game plan for the year. I’m gonna be moving up and moving ahead! 2008 is The Year of Kristal, Continued. Clever, yes?
Here’s to a happy, healthy, successful and fulfilling 2008 – time to follow dreams. All the best to you and yours!
Love, Kristal
