It's Audition Season!

Please don't sue me, Warner Brothers...

So, after my super-long posts about tracking your acting career, I thought I'd take a little time this morning to update you all on what's been going on with Trish and I.

There's been a whole mess of auditions this past week... unfortunately, none of them have yielded any work (yet), but things are happening. My ActorTrack calendar has a sea of red "A's" (the code for "Auditions") on it.

Trish and I both auditioned for a production of Bell Book and Candle at Lakewood this past weekend. We were called back, but neither of us were cast... one bright spot, though, is that the director (local actor Bruce Blanchard) is planning another production in the fall of 2008 that he's considering me for.

Twice now our upcoming trip to the Last Frontier Theater Conference has gotten in the way at an audition... I did an industrial audition on Tuesday that I felt pretty good about, but part of the gig is a live event in Las Vegas right in the middle of the conference. Then, yesterday, I was called in to Lana Veenker Casting at the last minute to read for a Nintendo spot, but again... the spot shoots during the conference.

It's always lame to lose out on the possibility of work... but we knew this was going to happen. Summer is film season in Oregon, and taking a trip in the summer can get in the way. By the same token, you can't let the possibility that you might lose out on work control your life. If you do, you'll never get around to doing the things you want to, like travel. I've seen far too many people wait for their retirement to travel... and by the time they get there, they're too tired out from a lifetime of working to enjoy it.

I have to say, heading up to the Conference is more than worth missing out on the possibility of a few gigs - check out the people we'll be hanging out with for a week in Valdez, and some of the events and panel discussions going on. It's going to be an educational, fun week... but it'll be a working vacation. Trish and I are both going to be appearing in readings as part of the Playlab sessions, and we're going to be in a show that's part of the Last Frontier Theater Conference Fringe Festival (Two-Thirty by Rand Higbee; the details are posted at http://www.haroldphillips.net/).

It occurs to me that I haven't really posted a lot of details about the upcoming trip... for those of you keeping track (like, say, my fellow Alaskans who might want to hook up with me in the great white north?), here's the rough itinerary:

June 13th We drive up to Seattle and leave the car at our friend Beth's house (who's graciously allowed us to use her parking place). It'll be a good excuse to see Beth again; we haven't talked to her in, like, a hundred years. That night we fly up to Anchorage, pick up a rental car, and stay overnight with one of my best friends in the world, Kert LaBelle.

June 14th We drive from Anchorage to Valdez and start attending the conference. We'll be in Valdez through...

...June 22nd when we drive back to Anchorage. There was supposed to be a reunion in Anchorage for people who were part of the University of Alaska, Anchorage Theater Department from the mid-80's through the mid-90's... but even though Jeff Seastone made a Herculean effort to try to pull it together, not enough people bought tickets for the events he'd set up.

So, other than a pot-luck picnic at Goose Lake (which Trish and I may be able to make, depending on how long it takes to drive back from Valdez) and a possible tour of the Theater Arts building on campus, the formal "reunion" is off. That means Trish and I have three days to hang out in "AnchAk" and revisit my old haunts, hook up with friends who are still up there, and stay up all night because of the (almost) twenty-four hours of daylight. It'll be a blast! Leroy's and Koot's, here I come!

June 26th sees us flying back to Seattle to pick up the car, and then a lengthy drive home (considering we'll have been up most of the night).

So, that's the Alaska plan... all you Anchor-rats, drop me a line so we can hook up when I'm in town!

In other news... Trish shout an industrial for ORCAS yesterday that went really well. It was directed by Will Doolittle, a phenomenal director down in Eugene (he made the trip up to Portland to shoot the project, so Trish didn't have to get up at 3am to make the drive down to his part of Oregon). She says the shoot went really well, and that everyone's happy with the results. We're working on expanding her web site at http://www.trishegan.com/; once we get the new site content up (and a copy of what she shot yesterday) we'll be sure to put it up there.

Well, that's pretty much what's been going on this week... time for me to sign off and head to a print audition. Hope everything's goin' well for y'all...

-Harold