Auditioning: I Really Need This Job!

12:00–1:30 P.M. – 2nd Floor
Many actors say they hate them, but auditions are a necessary part of the casting process. How do you overcome your fear and loathing and give a great audition? What are the people on the other side of the table thinking as you give your all? Casting directors from stage and screen offer advice on how to improve your auditioning skills and get your big break. Moderated by Erik Haagensen, Columns Editor, New York Reviews Editor, Co-First-String Theater Critic, Back Stage.

Speakers:
-- Jodi Collins, Casting Director, JLC Entertainment Group
-- Stuart Howard, Casting Director, SH Entertainment
-- Stephanie Klapper, Casting Director, Stephanie Klapper Casting
-- Paul Russell, Casting Director, Paul Russell Casting
-- David Vaccari, Casting Director, Telsey + Company

SPEAKER BIOS

Jodi Collins, Casting Director, JLC Entertainment Group
Jodi Collins has been a respected casting director in the industry for many years; her specialty has been comedy in all media.

While she has cast many varieties of projects, she has also always been known to be an actor's casting director, due to her love of directing, developing, and nurturing talent. This has also led to her teaching classes at New York University on "the business of the business" and also running regularly sold-out workshops at One on One on comedy auditions, improv, and strategic branding.

Her acting, advertising, and marketing background has imbued this from an additional knowledge base. JLC Entertainment Group LLC became a result of all of the above, inclusive of developing content, selling and producing shows, and managing "hyphenate" talent from the worlds of acting, writing, directing, and composing.

Stuart Howard, Casting Director, SH Entertainment
Stuart Howard has been casting for stage, film, TV, and commercials for nearly 30 years. On Broadway, his credits range from the original production of "La Cage aux Folles" and "Moose Murders" to the more recent "West Side Story" revival, Twyla Tharp's "Come Fly Away," and the Pulitzer Prize–winning "August: Osage County."

He is resident casting director for Off-Broadway's Mint Theater Company and has cast for many regional theaters, including Washington, D.C.'s Signature Theatre, Arena Stage, Studio Theatre, and Shakespeare Theatre Company; Connecticut's Hartford Stage Company and Goodspeed Opera House; Seattle Repertory Theatre; Houston's Alley Theatre; and the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival. Film work includes "The Feud," "The Virgin Suicides," and "Walls of Glass."

TV work encompasses "Fosse," "Gypsy," the 1997 version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella," and "In the Shadow of Love: A Teen AIDS Story." Howard has degrees in drama from Carnegie Mellon and Purdue universities and a Certificate in Cultural Study from the Sorbonne in Paris.

Paul Russell, Casting Director, Paul Russell Casting
Paul Russell, casting director, director, and author of "Acting: Make It Your Business—How to Avoid Mistakes and Achieve Success as a Working Actor" (Random House/Back Stage Books), has 30 years' experience in entertainment, including film, TV, and Broadway.

His career journey began as a successful working actor. As an independent casting director, he has cast principals for major studios, including 20th Century Fox, HBO, and Warner Bros., plus New York and regional theater. An SDC director, Paul has directed shows at Tony Award–winning LORT theaters and Off-Broadway productions.

He was a faculty member for the NYU Tisch theater arts program at the Atlantic Theater Company, teaching audition technique and the business of acting. He's also been invited as a guest lecturer to the campuses of some of America's most prominent performing arts schools, including Yale, Elon, Temple University, the University of the Arts, James Madison University, and Northeastern University.

Paul has contributed to Back Stage's Casting Cues and authors the blog Answers for Actors.

David Vaccari, Casting Director, Telsey + Company
David Vaccari casts movies, TV, commercials, plays, and musicals at Telsey + Company. Recent film projects include "Friends With Kids," with Jon Hamm and Kristen Wiig; "TWV," produced by Zach Quinto; "Howl," with James Franco; "Jonah Hex," with Josh Brolin; "Main Street," with Orlando Bloom; Gus Van Sant's "Restless" and "The Odd Life of Timothy Green," with Jennifer Garner.

Previous films include "Rachel Getting Married," "Paranoid Park," "Then She Found Me," "Across the Universe," "Ira & Abby," "Rent," "Pieces of April," "The Bone Collector," "Keane," and "Finding Forrester." Recent TV projects include the pilots for "A Gifted Man" on CBS, "Smash" on NBC, as well as "The Big C" on Showtime. Other TV includes "Whoopi" on NBC and "Hope Against Hope" for J.J. Abrams.

His work on musicals includes the casting of "Rent," "The Capeman," "Hedwig," "Martin Short—Fame Becomes Me," "Hairspray," "In the Heights," and "Million Dollar Quartet." Plays include "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "The Cryptogram" by David Mamet and "A Second Hand Memory" and "Writer's Block" by Woody Allen.

Commercials include Embassy Suites, GEICO, Apple ("Mac vs. PC"), Bing ("Easy Rider"), New York Lottery, Dodge ("Code of the West"), Edge Shave Gel, PlayStation, and Puma.

MODERATOR

Erik Haagensen, Columns Editor, New York Reviews Editor, Co-First-String Theater Critic, Back Stage
Erik Haagensen is Back Stage's columns editor, New York reviews editor, and co-first-string theater critic. As a journalist and theater historian, he has written for Back Stage, Show Music magazine, The Seattle Review, the Kurt Weill Newsletter, and the Dramatists Guild Newsletter.

Erik is also a Richard Rodgers Award–winning playwright-lyricist whose musicals include "Summer," "A Fine and Private Place," "Taking a Chance on Love: The Lyrics and Life of John Latouche," "How It Was Done in Odessa," and "O. Henry Duet," which have been seen Off-Broadway; regionally at such venues as the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, Goodspeed Musicals, the Walnut Street Theatre, and the American Stage Company; and in the U.K.

He reconstructed Alan Jay Lerner and Leonard Bernstein's original pre-Broadway version of their 1976 musical "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," and then directed it in a production by Indiana University Opera Theatre that was presented at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., to critical acclaim. Erik revised and adapted the Jule Styne–E.Y. Harburg–Nunnally Johnson musical "Darling of the Day" for York Theatre Company's Musicals in Mufti concert reading series. Time magazine named it one of the 10 best shows of 2005, and the show subsequently had a well-received fully staged production at Light Opera Works in Chicago.