Transcript - Ian Hersey Interview
(note - there may be typos in this transcript since it was done fairly quickly)
Martin: We have Ian Hersey today who does a lot of acting coaching, you coach actors on their actual acting ability. You have a big background in stage and Shakespeare. You also know a lot about promoting and presenting yourself as an actor and working in your authentic, genuine brand. So if you don't mind, tell us a little bit about what you do, how you got into it and what maybe one or two of your biggest accomplishments have been so far. Feel free to talk about your acting maybe first and then how you started doing your acting coaching work as well.
Ian: I actually got started when I was a kid. My mom was a dancer and a creative movement teacher and I went into drama classes as a very young kid. It was kind of all I ever wanted to do was be an actor, except for a brief period where I wanted to be a lawyer, which probably would've been more lucrative. Then I moved to New York in 1984 to go to NYU and go to the Stella Adler Studio. But got kind of distracted by moving to New York City. It's so funny when I was 22 and I graduated from college, I got a degree in philosophy rather than acting because I dropped out of NYU. I thought at 22 I was like, "Oh, I'm much too old now. I've missed my chance to be an actor." I went and studied playwriting and it's through studying playwriting, everybody was always asking me to read their scripts and then their scripts would go to the playwriting festival. Then they say, "Hey, would you be in my play?" Then I realized, well, "I really don't want to be a playwright. I want to be actor." One of the guys who had been in one of my playwriting classes was this guy named Frank Donaley, who has really good friends with Michael Kahn who ran the Julliard School and the Shakespeare Theater in DC at the time.
So I called Michael 'cause I knew him through Frank and said, "Michael, I really want to do Shakespeare, what do I do?" He said, "Well, you can come to Washington and study with me, or they just started this program at the Public called the Shakespeare Lab, maybe you to apply to that. If that doesn't work, there's this guy named Barry Edelstein who teaches for me at Julliard and maybe you want to study with him." So I called the Public and the Shakespeare Lab had already finished for that year. It was the first year and it had already finished. I didn't really want to go to Washington, so I called this guy Barry Edelstein and I studied with him one on one for like a year just doing Shakespeare coaching. Then I ended up going to the Shakespeare Lab the next year. That was kind of a funny story cause I had an audition to be in the non-equity company in New Jersey Shakespeare Festival and I just went for the audition at the Shakespeare Lab and they wanted me. I had not auditioned for the Shakespeare Lab yet. I had only applied and they offered me a place in the company of New Jersey Shakespeare. Then I called the Public and said, "Hey, I have this offer but I don't want accept it. I kind of want to do the Shakespeare thing. Is there a way I could audition early cause I have to give them an answer?"
Rosemary Tischler said yes and I went in and I auditioned and they said, "Okay, we'll take you into the Shakespeare Lab." That sort of began my reentry into acting after taking a hiatus for philosophy and playwriting. That's what changed my world because I got to study with this guy [inaudible 04:34] and Peter Francis James, and all these amazing people at the Shakespeare Lab. Then I continued studying with them at the Actor's Center and that's where I started teaching. It was funny, I started coaching because friends of mine started asking me to look at their Shakespeare monologues. They're like, "Hey, would you look at the Shakespeare Monologue for me? Would you do this?" I guess cause I had studied so much and I had studied with Barry. Then I realized, "Oh, I could actually charge money for this." Then it's at the Actor's Center where I was taking classes. I've got this big fellowship to study there. One year Barry Edelstein, who was also teaching at the Actor’s Center had to get a job at New York stage and film and she wasn't going to be able to teach there for the summer. Michael Miller, who was running the Actor’s Center at that point said, "Well, who do I get to teach this class?" He said, "Well, you should get Ian to do it. He knows his stuff really well now. He studied with me so much."
So I ended up teaching there and then that led to more coaching and more teaching. I moved to Miami, Florida. I got a job teaching at this performing arts school, a college and a high school of the performing arts. I taught there for a while. I came back to New York. I got a job at the Public running the Shakespeare Lab, the program that I had gone to developing other education programs. Actually when I came back to New York, I just came back and was asking for a while. I did a Law and Order, I did a commercial and then I ended up going to Grad School for Education. When I came back from that, they hired me in the Public and I started doing education programs, running this program at the Public called the Shakespeare Lab. I developed a bunch of programs there. I developed a program called mid-summer day camp. That was a lot of fun. I think one of the biggest ones was 2 years ago I played bottom weaver at the Shakespeare theatre of New Jersey and that was like a bucket list. I got to always want to play that role. I worked for that. I campaign for that role. I saw they were doing it and years before, like I said, I had auditioned for [inaudible 07:21] and ended up not doing and I ended up going to the Shakespeare Lab instead. I auditioned for them for years afterwards and they never hired me then. So I started this campaign writing the artistic directors saying, Hey, I really want to do this show. I've always wanted to play this part. I really want to do this show.
I've always wanted to play this part. I wrote the casting director and they wouldn't give me an audition appointment. I rented a car, I did a zip car and I went out to New Jersey and I did the EPA and then I got a call back from the EPA like the day before. I prepared all that, I memorized everything, I did my work on it, I went. Of course I've worked on the role forever cause I want it to play it so much. I went and I gave the audition and I really thought I did a great job at the audition. Then the casting director called me like a couple of weeks later and said, "Well, we're very interested but the artistic director has a friend who wants to play the role and she has to audition him first and he won't be in town until like April." It was like a month away. So you're going to have to wait until then. In the meantime, the Public had called me and I went into read for Julius Caesar and then I went out on the call backs for that and then they put me on hold. They were like, "Don’t take another job until you've talked to us first," and that was to do to the Julius Caesar in the park. Then I had these two pending jobs. Then New Jersey Shakespeare called and said, "Hey, we're going to offer you the role." I was so excited, yes. But then I was like, "I would love to do Shakespeare in the Park too." So I called the Public. This kind of same situation is years before, only this was the opposite, the New Jersey Shakespeare made the offer first. So I called the Public and said, "Hey, I guess it's just exactly the same, New Jersey Shakespeare made the offer first so I called the Public."
Heidi Griffin said to me "Hey, I'll get back to you by the end of the day." She did, she got back to the by the end of the day. I was directing a production of As You Like It at the time. So I'm in rehearsal, checking my phone. Then she got back to me at the end of the day and she said, "Oscar really loved you, but he doesn't really have anything for you in the park for the summer." I was like, "Great." So I took the role in New Jersey and I got great reviews and I just loved doing that show. I had a great cast, we were a big, great ensemble working together and it was good. So that was one big accomplishment. When I was working at the Public, I got to do some really cool things. One of which was I helped to start the mobile unit. One of the things that I did in the mobile unit was I would go into the prisons and shelters and old folks homes, wherever it was, mostly the prisons and the jails. I would do a Shakespeare workshop with the prisoners before the show would come in. That was really amazing. I got so much out of that and pretty rewarding. I think that was one thing that was a huge accomplishment when I was there that I built this program. There's the educational component of the mobile unit. Got a bunch of teaching artists and we would go in and we would do these things. I don't know. We would meet these people and sometimes they were just so grateful and they were so happy just to have someone pay attention to them in a way and to have something that was different.
I just remember this one guy, Jose Antonio, it was the first time we had been to a prison. It was out at the Arthur Chelsea facility, Staten Island, which has since closed. At the end of the workshop, this guy, Jose Antonio said to me, I asked everybody was there anything else that anybody wanted to say? He raised his hand and his guy was huge. He had gold teeth and his arms were like the size of my thighs. I was like uh oh. He said do you know how you said that? I had talked about Joe Papp and how Joe Papp had thought that there's nothing so bad that Shakespeare couldn't make it a little better and a little brighter. He said, "You know how that guy you worked for said that thing about Shakespeare making people's lives a little better and a little brighter?" I said, yeah. He said, "Well, you made our lives a little better and a little brighter here today. Thank you very much." I just thought that was so nice and that was like a real rewarding moment. So there's that. When I had been in Grad school I really wanted to work with teens, actually I wanted to work with prisoners and I wanted to work with teens. So with the Public, I got to do both of those things because I started a Shakespeare summer camp. You know how some people go to soccer camp or cheerleading camp.
I started to Shakespeare camp called the mid-summer day camp when I was at the Public. That ran for a number of years and was really successful. I think it was another thing where it touched a lot of lives and the kids were really happy to be there and they learned a lot. They got some real good, healthy dose of professional training. For some kids that's what it was about. For other kids that was just about living in Shakespeare for a couple of weeks. It was a really good program. I think it was successful on a personal level for them. I think it was good. It was good for the Public to develop a relationship with a younger audience. Everybody just had a really good time. So that was another big accomplishment that I really enjoyed doing and being a part of.
Martin: Awesome. That’s really cool. I do have two quick follow up questions to that. One you're talking about giving back and doing the stuff with the prisoners and all that. I just wanted you to talk a little bit more about how important you feel it is for actors to spend some of their time giving back or helping people who are in need and everything. Cause sometimes I feel like people can get so wrapped up in auditioning and trying to do their work that they sort of forget or don't think about giving back or helping other people as much. So if you talk a little bit about your experience with that or what your thoughts are, that would be great.
Ian: You got to fill the well and I think it's so easy to get distracted by the business side of things and just meeting whatever your next need is. You know that Marianne Williamson poem and she says in it, "We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us." I think that there's something that always speaks to me. Then Hamlet says this thing like, "Surely he gave us these capabilities and God, like reason [inaudible 16:31] used." I think when you're given a challenge, like we are as actors by the universe, it's kind of our duty to use it to make our corner of the world a little better and a little brighter. It's not just about our own grandization. It's not about just meeting our own needs, but the needs of the community that should be served to. I firmly believe that. That's how you fill the well and you have more experience to bring to the work that you do with also. It's like a cycle, I give out and I get back. It's not what you put out into the universe, but what you get back. It's easy to get selfish when you're thinking about your career and yourself and self-promotion all the time. But you need the balance. I think when you're a fuller person, when you go in the room, it's obvious. When you've done things, when you're out there and you're helping and doing other things? The other thing is it just makes you feel better to be of service to people. So when you're not getting the roles and you're not doing this and you're not doing that, things aren't working out the way that you want them to you have this just to feel like I've done something good today. Even if I didn't get exactly what I wanted, perhaps I got what I needed.
Martin: Something that I've actually told or recommended to some of the actors who I've worked with in the past has been sometimes people they struggle in auditions and like we're saying they forget about this. One thing that I've actually said is it can help whether you're going in for a job interview or an audition or something, what I like to do is I sort of like budget for myself. I have a simple app on my phone that kind of ads $30 or $40 or whatever dollars per month that I want to be able to give to homeless people or whoever in order to help. This budget sometimes, there might be a month or so that goes by where I forget to give money to be people and then I might have like $60 in there or something. What I've said is sometimes if you give $5 or even a $10 bill to a homeless person on the street they're really grateful and that can really make you feel good and that good feeling kind of actually goes with you. So if you do something like that around the time that you're going into an audition it sort of helps you get your mind off of the audition. It makes you feel good inside, you've helped somebody. Then when you go into the actual audition, you might even audition better because you're in a really good mood and you're thinking about how you just helped somebody instead of "I'm stressed that I have to perform perfectly."
Ian: Exactly. They did that study at Harvard the other day about what makes people happy. The only thing that they found that was consistent and making people happy was helping other people. That’s the only thing that they found that always worked. I just thought that was so interesting to me.
Martin: I have one more quick follow-up question to what you were talking about. You had talked about that specific role that you really, really wanted and how you kind of, over the course of months or so, you were thinking, "How can I make this happen?" You just kept focusing on that and eventually you actually got that role that you had wanted so much. Even though you were reaching out to people and they were kind of rejecting you and then you figured out another way by going into the EPA. Just briefly, how important do you feel setting specific goals, whether it's for a role or something you want to do is? Because I feel like actors sort of forget about that.
Ian: What I do is I set up a type of vision plan for them for like six months. I have an ultimate vision plan, but then I go through and I set up different actions that I can take throughout the six months to reach certain goals. So I have to say I want to book a costar role. Well then I'm going to go and I'm going to look at who's doing the shows that I want, who's doing shows that I see myself on. That it would make sense that I'd be on. Then I'm like, "Okay, well I'll send them letters, I'll send the headshot and resume, I'll see if they're teaching at One On One or Actor's Connection or The Network or somewhere like that and then try and meet them. So there's like steps. I have a very specific action plan to reach these goals. Now along the way, of course, the best way to make that last is make plans. So you make the plans and then things happen. But I find that whenever I set out on a path, something happens, even if it's not to get exactly what I set out to do. So having a specific action plan is absolutely important and necessary. I try and set up this is what I want and these are the steps I'm going to take to get it. Then each step I have to get it what are two things that I can do to make that step happen. So it's like a process. I set out a process for myself.
One of the things that I did last year was I organized this group of actors I’d been leading. I’d taken this class called at The Source at The Network with this guy Paul Michael who's a friend of mine. It was a really interesting course on the business of acting and, and sort of self-confidence. It was interesting, it was good. But one of the best things I got out of it was having a group of actors that I was accountable to on a weekly basis. In the class we had to read was How to Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and one of the things that he talked about over and over again was hilarious. How all these people that he interviewed all talk about having a mastermind group is what he called it. It was a group of people that he met with regularly and talked with and sort of bounced ideas off of and we're accountable to. Last year, last August I said, "I'm going to organize a bunch of actors who I like, who's work I like and see if we can meet on a weekly basis." About a year ago we started meeting on a weekly basis. It's been, I don't know, I didn't really want to call it a support group because that feels so static. So we call it the Actor's Action Group and every week we meet and we talk with each other and we go over our vision plans together and we look at each other's head shots and we help each other with branding and we support each other with this is working, this isn't working, these are great sites for you. I don't get these sites for you. We meet each other when we have an audition, we meet up and run through sides with each other before we go in for the audition. If we're going into a class for One on One, sometimes some of us will take a class together so then we can support each other through that and this has been really incredible because of that.
It's because of that group of being accountable to that group that I got my website up, that I got these new headshots that I have this business plan vision plan that I stick to because I have to come in and report to them this is my progress this week. So that's been indispensable. That's one of the most important things I think I've ever done. I had this teacher wonderful, wonderful teacher named Katheryn Kerr, I just loved Katheryn and she used to always talk about how she did this. She had a group of women that she met with every week and sometimes they'd just be putting stamps on mailings together. But they would meet every week. I forget who was in her group, but it was she and Faith Prince and June Havoc and all these people, you know who they are. I love this group that I meet with and we’re real supportive to one another. I love watching people have things happen for them. One of the guys in our group just got us to three weeks ago? He's like, I need to book a costar. I've never been on television. Then boom, last week he shot his first costar role. So it's good.
Martin: I love that. I appreciate you for bringing up the book itself. We actually have a copy, a free PDF download of the book actually available right on the website if people go onto the free stuff page. but yeah, that, that book is amazing. It gives you all kinds of ideas. Having a support group is something that any actor could set up with a group of friends. It's important, obviously be aware of who you're partnering up with. You don't want to partner up with people who are not caring and lazy and all of that, and you're very specific with the people that you worked with. If you combine the support group that kind of holds you accountable and make sure that you keep track on things with the setting of specific goals like that guy just did that you mentioned. He's like, I want to do this and then he told the group that's my goal and then he went out and felt compelled to make it happen. It's super powerful and it's a great idea. So thank you for mentioning that. Now, just to quickly follow up on your goals, what would you say currently is one or two of your top goals right now and what are the specific steps that you're taking to reach those goals?
Ian: I want to do more TV and film work. I particularly want to work with Martin McDonough. That's the director that I want to work with the most. One of the things that I've done is I've looked at who his producers are, who produces his movies. I've written to them and gotten some response from them. So that's kind of cool. I want to book more work so I'm trying to meet a TV casting director at least one a month, sometimes more. I do that through like One on One or The Network or Actor's Connection. I keep in touch with them. Whenever I have something happen I post it on my website, I let them know about it. When I got my new headshots that gave me a reason to write them and say I got these new headshots and I just try and keep in touch with them. Then when I hear about something I'll write them specifically, "Oh I hear you're casting this, can I come in for this?" That happened a few weeks ago. There was a program that I thought, "Oh, I'd be great on that." I had met one of the casting directors in the office, but not the one that was working on the particular show. So I called the one casting or I wrote the one casting director and said, "Can you recommend me to your colleague 'cause I know we've worked together in a couple of classes and I know you like my work, can you recommend me to this guy?" She said absolutely. Then the next day I got a call from my agent and said they just called from this show and they want to see you. I was like, "This is great, this is how it works."
Martin: It sort of leads into the next question, which is just kind of you're talking about certain things that you're doing. But a lot of actors wonder what would be some things that they can do on a daily or weekly basis to get more paid acting work? What should they schedule in their calendar? Like every week I have to do this or that or whatever?
Ian: It's whatever you can, but what gets you called in? Everybody’s in this to do their job well. So what can you do? Everybody’s got a problem. A casting director's problem is they need to cast a show and they need to bring in the people that the director's gonna like, so he has multiple choices. My job is to 1, let them know I’m available. 2, let them know what it is that I can do that perhaps isn't readily apparent from my resume. I think one thing is know that it's a business and know what your place is in that business and go at it from that standpoint. Keeping in touch with the casting director, meet as many casting directors as you can through EPA's and through the different pay for play classes you can take, and keep in touch with them. Work begets work. So if you're not getting the work that you want make your own. I was meeting with an agent a couple of weeks ago and it was really interesting what he said to me. He was like you go on EPAs? I was like, occasionally I haven't been in a while.
He's like you need to go to more EPAs, get a buzz going about you. I was like, well that's an interesting thing. So what is the buzz that I can get going about me? Then I was reading in this other book, the Tao of Show Business about writing press releases and figuring out what am I up to and what is news about me that I let what casting directors know? Then just taking the advice, meeting casting directors, that's kind of the way to do. So if you're bored sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring, go to an EPA, practice auditioning. I think the other thing is the unreasonable ask. This is something that is really… because there are so many things that I have not asked people for years because I've been like, "Oh my God, I'm going to be that actor who's asking for things and I'm going to do this." I've found that I just gotta ask the question. It's not my job to know whether people are gonna say yes or no to what I asked for. I found that when I asked for things like can you introduce me to your agent? Or when I wrote that casting director and say can you recommend me to your colleague. Or writing directly to a casting director saying can I be seen for this show? I find that that really helps.
It's things that like. I don’t know. I call it the unreasonable ask, but then it turns out that it's not really unreasonable, because I find that people really want to help. So if I know them and like them they usually want to help. I had a colleague that I was meeting with this guy from an agency and I looked up his clients online and I was like, Oh, I know that person. I met that person." So I called a couple people and said, "I'm meeting this guy, would you put in a good word for me?" They were both like, "Oh my God, yes." And then one of them called me like how did it go? They wanted to know. I was like, "Wow, I had this idea that I was on my own, when in reality people are willing and ready to help." Not everybody, some people don't answer. I wrote to the next student once, a former student said can you help me meet this person? I just never heard back. I was like, okay, "Yeah, that answers that."
Martin: I definitely think that that's super important bringing that up right now. With me it's a similar thing. I'm not specifically an actor and I talk about that on my site. I've looked at things from a business perspective for years. Part of what I do is cold emailing to people and lots of times with cold emails people won't respond. I remember the first couple of times that I did cold emails, it was really terrifying pressing the send button because I was like, "Oh, this person might not like me or they're going to go out and say bad things about me in the world." In reality, no one really cares... if they're going to ignore your email they will. But you can even like follow up with them and just try to make sure that your email didn't get lost spam. There's tons of ways to do it, but the main point is just to make sure that, like you said, you're not really necessarily being unreasonable by asking, especially if before you ask the question, you ask yourself how is it that by me asking this, I could actually be helping this person? Because lots of times people don't think about that and they're like if I ask for something, it's for me. But if you can figure out how it's actually for them as well, then you don't feel bad when you do it. It's like they're also more likely to say yes because they're like, "I see how I'm getting value out of this."
Ian: Yeah, exactly. I remember I was working at this restaurant cafeteria years ago and there were a bunch of actors that worked there. There's this one actress who was a hostess there and she got a fair amount of work and she was a great actress. I remember talking to her one day because I had a really hard time with auditioning because I always went in with the wrong idea. I went in there trying to get the casting director to like me rather than going in there to book the work when it didn't matter whether they liked me or not, I was there. She said, you know what, I always go in cause I figure they got a problem and I go in as a solution to the problem. They have to cast this role and they have to cast it within a certain time. I go in there with the idea that I'm offering myself as a solution to your problem. I just thought that that was one of the greatest things I've ever heard. I was like, of course, that makes perfect sense because when I worked at the Public, I would sit behind the desk. When I was around the Shakespeare Lab I would get like 600 applications from those applications I'd have to pick like 200 people to audition and then I would sit through 200 auditions. When people would come in, like almost apologizing for being there or being like, "Oh my God, thank you for seeing me," like I was doing for them some kind of a favor. I was like, "Oh my God, I don't even want to see you act now because you're just so apologetic." It was like, oh right, yeah. I went through 600 applications. I picked yours because I wanted to see you. Because you're a viable solution to my problem, which is I have to have a company of 16 actors and you were in your solution to that problem. When people came in and they were apologetic or really mouthy and I hate to say it but that cliché of a casting director knows by the way you walk in the room whether they want to you or not. 9 times out of 10 I got to say it's true. If you walk in there with confidence and like you belong there it makes a difference. If you walk in there like I've given you this audition out of pity or out of some stroke of luck that you don't deserve, then I don't really want to hire you. I've had a couple of times when people walked in and I’m like, "Oh brother." Then they come out and they do this spectacular thing and I'm like, "Wow, well I did not expect that. That's interesting." But being mouthy and playing small doesn't serve anybody.
Martin: Yeah. This is leading perfectly into our next question, which is about auditioning. But I think 1, it's extremely, extremely important that pretty much every actor who takes themselves seriously try to get on the other side of the casting director's desk at least once and either assist in a real casting or do their own sort of small project and post the thing looking for actors so that they can sort of see how it is being on the other side. But besides that you really want to think of yourself again as like I am offering that solution to the casting director. I'm not here, they're not doing me a favor. They want to just get their work done for the day and see the people that need to be seen. Even if you come in, like you said, and you're kind of the person is a little bit weird at the beginning, but then they offer a spectacular performance. If you have that it's still going to be in the back of the casting director's mind. They might be like, "Wow, they're acting was good, but they seemed a little bit off at the beginning or apologetic. So I don't know how they're gonna work on set. They might be a slightly challenging person to work with."
Ian: Absolutely. You gotta be you, you can't not be yourself. But at the same time, you gotta be with knowing that you belong there.
Martin: Going off of this, what would you say, besides what we talked about, maybe if you have one or two other tips for actors who struggle to get called back after auditioning?
Ian: Let me see if I wrote anything down on this.
Martin: I mean don't discount what we talked about, you know, what we said was amazing. So that could be enough. We can definitely move on to the next question.
Ian: I think I think about everything. I think the point is that you're there, you have a job to do which is show them what you can do, you show them you can do the job, show them you’re right for the job. I think to go in ready to work, ready to play. I think what you said about how is this person going to be on set is also very much consideration. Do they have the experience or they’ve been there before. Are they going to be a scared turtle? Are they going to be comfortable with people and easy going? I think that that's so much of it is are you a person that we're going to want to work with? Do you jazz on the work or do you shy away from it? Do you take an adjustment as a helpful thing or do you see it as a hindrance? I think when you got the adjustment it's like, go for it, play with it, be grateful for it, I guess in a way. Not grateful like, "Oh my God, thank you so much. You've saved my life." I'm like, "Oh, I hadn't thought of it that way. Let me try this."
Martin: It's like being grateful that they're helping you sort of like get better. It's not like grateful that they're giving you the opportunity. But, "Thank you for giving me this feedback because now I've learned something new."
Ian: Exactly. And not what like, "Oh my God, I fucked it up. They gave me an adjustment. I didn’t get it the first time."
Martin: This sort of relates a little bit to the next question, which is just related to getting an agent. If you had any advice on how you or a student of yours has gone about getting an agent, what would be your advice for other actors who are looking to do the same?
Ian: Getting an agent is so ridiculously hard in a way because if you don't know who they got, you don't know if you could do research and find out do they have any people of my type? Who do they represent? What type of people do they represent? You can do that kind of research. But I think one thing that we have now that we didn't use to have when I first started was we have access to a lot of agents through the different pay for play venues. I say, you got to get yourself in front of agents, as many as you can cause someone's looking for you. Someone's looking for your type. I got my agent through this class I took at The Source or The Network. They had a showcase at the end where we read for a bunch of agents and one of them was interested. I went and I met with her and her partner and did a monologue and they were like, "Yeah, and let's work together." They were the nicest, most lovely people on earth. I got them because I showed up, I was professional, I was professional in the room. I was playful, I was nice, polite, but just me, I was basically me. So that they knew what they were getting into. It turns out they didn't have anybody my age.
They didn't have any 50 year old men in their stable so to speak. So they were like, "Yeah, we'd love to bring you on." Get in front of as many as you can. Do your best work, be yourself, go in. I think there's a lot of controversy about this and a lot of different opinions on this. I guess everywhere there is many different ideas is there are people to have them. But I think you want to go in representing who you are. So I don't want to go in super chill. I did wear a jacket and a shirt and slacks because when I met with them because it was a job interview in a way. But I wasn't pinched to the nines because if you're going to send me out for pinch parts I'm never going to get them because that's not who I am. So I have to go in there with an idea of who I am and bring myself into the room with me and yeah, I have to bring my best self. But I also have to bring who I actually am so they know what the product is. I mean. I guess we're talking about branding in a way. If I go in there outside my brand and they like that, then it's not going to work because they're going to be sending me up for stuff that I could walk into the casting director's office and they're like, "What's that guy doing here? That's not him." Does that make any sense? I’m not saying go in there like looking like a slob if you're a slob. In some book I read, I remember reading this story about this woman who was funny and a little quirky. But she would always go into meetings with agents dressed in a business suit and everything perfect. So they started sending her off to role which she never got because she hadn't really gone in representing herself. But I guess that's someone else's experience, not really mine.
Martin: You want to be honest with your agents about the types of roles that you play and you can even tell them. I mean, they are people, they're not like any sort of crazy high level people that don't want to speak with you. You could say, "By the way even though I'm dressed nicely for this, these are the types of roles that I typically like to apply for," and they appreciate you for saying that actually.
Ian: Exactly. You're looking to build a relationship with this person, a business relationship. I do have one other thing to say about the agents. When you need an agent and they show interest find out who's on their client list that you know and have them say to them, "Oh yeah, I met with agent so and so and we had a good meeting. I see your a client with them. Would you tell them that you know me and that I'm a good guy?" Because you're going off a meeting and they probably want a little more information. So if they have someone from their client roster who they like and appreciate saying this guy's a stand up guy or I know this guy, we've worked together, then that helps. The other thing that really helps is if there's a casting director that you know and you've met with an agent and you had a good meeting and you have a good relationship with the casting director, you might call the casting director and say, "I met with agent so and so. We had a good meeting. Would you mind putting in a good word for me?" Because a word from a casting director really helps.
But you gotta get in a room and you've got to meet the agents because they got to see your work. We have the ability to do that today. Whereas 20 years ago it was like they might come and see you in a showcase, they might come see you do this. It might take a few times. If there's an agent you're interested in, it take a few times of meeting them and showing them different work. But if there's an agent you want go for that agent.
Martin: The final segment now is just on general advice. So my main question that I'm asking from this segment is that if you had to give some advice to an actor who feels that they're stuck at a plateau in their career, what would it be?
Ian: Don't keep doing the same thing expecting different results. Try something different, do something different. I don't know whether that's personally take a vacation? Do some volunteer work. Find some way to fill the well. Find some other way to enjoy yourself and then come back to the work. Or whether that's I'm used to my agent sending me out. I don't go out on EPAs or I don't go to these things. Well, that's the case go do it. Go out and do something different in your career. Try for a goal, audition for something else. I guess plateau maybe you're working all the time. But you're working on a certain level and you want to do something else. I don't know. It's still do something different. It's still make your own work. It's still shoot your own web series if you're stuck in the world with costars and you want to do a guest star. Or you're stuck in guest stars and you want to be a recurring regular then do that. Make it happen for yourself on your own and see what happens. But I guess that the big thing is just do something different because usually plateau means you keep doing the same things. Maybe it's a personal problem that you need to address. Maybe you need to go an outward bound thing. I would say one of the most helpful things for me has been getting a group of people together.
This guy that I met with a couple of weeks ago said, get a buzz going, however that means for you. Whether that's taking a job you wouldn't normally take that will get you seen to do other things. I think sometimes we get so caught up in the business that we forget that there was actually something about this work that we liked that brought a few in the first place. We get so desperate to get the next job that we forget that sometimes there's stuff in it that we just want to do for the sake of doing and that might be the thing too. This was a role that I really want to play, I'm gonna produce it myself. Or you get offered an Equity showcase or something and you're like, "Well that's not the kind of money that I want to make it." It's not this, but it's a really good role. You might want to do that.
Martin: So really it sounds like your general advice is to sort of do an assessment on themselves and see where are they? Because a lot of times people don't even necessarily realize that they're stuck in a plateau until it's been like a long time. With me, there was just a plateau in going to the gym. I realized after two years that I had been mostly lifting the same weight and hadn't gained any new muscle or anything. So I looked and I realized literally it's because I kept lifting the same weights for the most part and I had stopped pushing as hard as I used to. I think it's the same thing with an actor. You're saying doing different things and if people look at where they really are and they ask themselves, "I'm doing this, but what do I actually want?" It might give them some ideas on what they could actually do differently.
Ian: Absolutely. That's one of the things that I find a vision plan is so helpful for me because you'll look into what do I want? Then you set up five concrete actions you can take and you do them and then things are bound to change.
Martin: Awesome. Is there anything else that you'd like to finish up by saying?
Ian: When you talked about the agents thing, there's actually a really interesting book by Margaret Emory who is my agent actually and she was on the agent actor relationship and gave a lot of very practical advice dealing with an agent. That might be a resource to look into for people who are interested in getting an agent. The other thing that I do that I work really hard is a lot of keeping a social media presence. I link my Facebook and my website and my Instagram and I try and do new posts at least once a week that just keeps the flow going between the three of them because then that raises my visibility on Google and with the website and stuff like that. That's a little thing that's actually kind of fun to do that’s easy to take care of on a daily basis or weekly basis.
Martin: Awesome. That makes sense. The information that we had here, your tips and tricks I'm really excited because I think that people will definitely be able to pull a lot of helpful stuff. If you don't mind just for one minute or one and a half minutes, however long you need just explain a tiny bit about your own work as an acting coach cause I'd like to link to your website in case people who are reading this are looking for that. Tell us just a tiny bit about what you do outside of acting with the coach work.
Ian: Right now I teach at the Stella Adler Studio. That's my main teaching gig these days and I do a lot of coaching. I got started in coaching doing Shakespeare. Then I started teaching a scene study class at Stella Adler on 20th century work. People come to me a lot to prepare for auditions, whether it's a professional audition for television or a theater show. They also come to me for Grad school and college auditions and stuff like that. I love doing that. It's a lot of fun to help people get into like a really specific scene and trying the art. I've had some pretty good success. I've definitely had success with getting people into Grad schools. I have students who keep coming back for more coaching, students that I've worked with and that I've met as a teacher. Then other people who I've met outside of the classroom that have just been recommended to me and they come to me for work. Sometimes I come for Shakespeare, sometimes they'd come for like a TV sides. I've had a lot of experience teaching and I’ve helped a lot of people with it.
Martin: That's awesome. I appreciate you chatting with us today. We'll definitely link to your website so people can check out that. Like I said, this information is super, super helpful. So I want to thank you on behalf of everybody who's going to be listening or reading the transcript of this interview. It was really awesome. Thanks.
Ian: Thank you so much. Thanks for thinking of me. If you have any other questions feel free to call me back and I'll let you know.
Martin: We have Ian Hersey today who does a lot of acting coaching, you coach actors on their actual acting ability. You have a big background in stage and Shakespeare. You also know a lot about promoting and presenting yourself as an actor and working in your authentic, genuine brand. So if you don't mind, tell us a little bit about what you do, how you got into it and what maybe one or two of your biggest accomplishments have been so far. Feel free to talk about your acting maybe first and then how you started doing your acting coaching work as well.
Ian: I actually got started when I was a kid. My mom was a dancer and a creative movement teacher and I went into drama classes as a very young kid. It was kind of all I ever wanted to do was be an actor, except for a brief period where I wanted to be a lawyer, which probably would've been more lucrative. Then I moved to New York in 1984 to go to NYU and go to the Stella Adler Studio. But got kind of distracted by moving to New York City. It's so funny when I was 22 and I graduated from college, I got a degree in philosophy rather than acting because I dropped out of NYU. I thought at 22 I was like, "Oh, I'm much too old now. I've missed my chance to be an actor." I went and studied playwriting and it's through studying playwriting, everybody was always asking me to read their scripts and then their scripts would go to the playwriting festival. Then they say, "Hey, would you be in my play?" Then I realized, well, "I really don't want to be a playwright. I want to be actor." One of the guys who had been in one of my playwriting classes was this guy named Frank Donaley, who has really good friends with Michael Kahn who ran the Julliard School and the Shakespeare Theater in DC at the time.
So I called Michael 'cause I knew him through Frank and said, "Michael, I really want to do Shakespeare, what do I do?" He said, "Well, you can come to Washington and study with me, or they just started this program at the Public called the Shakespeare Lab, maybe you to apply to that. If that doesn't work, there's this guy named Barry Edelstein who teaches for me at Julliard and maybe you want to study with him." So I called the Public and the Shakespeare Lab had already finished for that year. It was the first year and it had already finished. I didn't really want to go to Washington, so I called this guy Barry Edelstein and I studied with him one on one for like a year just doing Shakespeare coaching. Then I ended up going to the Shakespeare Lab the next year. That was kind of a funny story cause I had an audition to be in the non-equity company in New Jersey Shakespeare Festival and I just went for the audition at the Shakespeare Lab and they wanted me. I had not auditioned for the Shakespeare Lab yet. I had only applied and they offered me a place in the company of New Jersey Shakespeare. Then I called the Public and said, "Hey, I have this offer but I don't want accept it. I kind of want to do the Shakespeare thing. Is there a way I could audition early cause I have to give them an answer?"
Rosemary Tischler said yes and I went in and I auditioned and they said, "Okay, we'll take you into the Shakespeare Lab." That sort of began my reentry into acting after taking a hiatus for philosophy and playwriting. That's what changed my world because I got to study with this guy [inaudible 04:34] and Peter Francis James, and all these amazing people at the Shakespeare Lab. Then I continued studying with them at the Actor's Center and that's where I started teaching. It was funny, I started coaching because friends of mine started asking me to look at their Shakespeare monologues. They're like, "Hey, would you look at the Shakespeare Monologue for me? Would you do this?" I guess cause I had studied so much and I had studied with Barry. Then I realized, "Oh, I could actually charge money for this." Then it's at the Actor's Center where I was taking classes. I've got this big fellowship to study there. One year Barry Edelstein, who was also teaching at the Actor’s Center had to get a job at New York stage and film and she wasn't going to be able to teach there for the summer. Michael Miller, who was running the Actor’s Center at that point said, "Well, who do I get to teach this class?" He said, "Well, you should get Ian to do it. He knows his stuff really well now. He studied with me so much."
So I ended up teaching there and then that led to more coaching and more teaching. I moved to Miami, Florida. I got a job teaching at this performing arts school, a college and a high school of the performing arts. I taught there for a while. I came back to New York. I got a job at the Public running the Shakespeare Lab, the program that I had gone to developing other education programs. Actually when I came back to New York, I just came back and was asking for a while. I did a Law and Order, I did a commercial and then I ended up going to Grad School for Education. When I came back from that, they hired me in the Public and I started doing education programs, running this program at the Public called the Shakespeare Lab. I developed a bunch of programs there. I developed a program called mid-summer day camp. That was a lot of fun. I think one of the biggest ones was 2 years ago I played bottom weaver at the Shakespeare theatre of New Jersey and that was like a bucket list. I got to always want to play that role. I worked for that. I campaign for that role. I saw they were doing it and years before, like I said, I had auditioned for [inaudible 07:21] and ended up not doing and I ended up going to the Shakespeare Lab instead. I auditioned for them for years afterwards and they never hired me then. So I started this campaign writing the artistic directors saying, Hey, I really want to do this show. I've always wanted to play this part. I really want to do this show.
I've always wanted to play this part. I wrote the casting director and they wouldn't give me an audition appointment. I rented a car, I did a zip car and I went out to New Jersey and I did the EPA and then I got a call back from the EPA like the day before. I prepared all that, I memorized everything, I did my work on it, I went. Of course I've worked on the role forever cause I want it to play it so much. I went and I gave the audition and I really thought I did a great job at the audition. Then the casting director called me like a couple of weeks later and said, "Well, we're very interested but the artistic director has a friend who wants to play the role and she has to audition him first and he won't be in town until like April." It was like a month away. So you're going to have to wait until then. In the meantime, the Public had called me and I went into read for Julius Caesar and then I went out on the call backs for that and then they put me on hold. They were like, "Don’t take another job until you've talked to us first," and that was to do to the Julius Caesar in the park. Then I had these two pending jobs. Then New Jersey Shakespeare called and said, "Hey, we're going to offer you the role." I was so excited, yes. But then I was like, "I would love to do Shakespeare in the Park too." So I called the Public. This kind of same situation is years before, only this was the opposite, the New Jersey Shakespeare made the offer first. So I called the Public and said, "Hey, I guess it's just exactly the same, New Jersey Shakespeare made the offer first so I called the Public."
Heidi Griffin said to me "Hey, I'll get back to you by the end of the day." She did, she got back to the by the end of the day. I was directing a production of As You Like It at the time. So I'm in rehearsal, checking my phone. Then she got back to me at the end of the day and she said, "Oscar really loved you, but he doesn't really have anything for you in the park for the summer." I was like, "Great." So I took the role in New Jersey and I got great reviews and I just loved doing that show. I had a great cast, we were a big, great ensemble working together and it was good. So that was one big accomplishment. When I was working at the Public, I got to do some really cool things. One of which was I helped to start the mobile unit. One of the things that I did in the mobile unit was I would go into the prisons and shelters and old folks homes, wherever it was, mostly the prisons and the jails. I would do a Shakespeare workshop with the prisoners before the show would come in. That was really amazing. I got so much out of that and pretty rewarding. I think that was one thing that was a huge accomplishment when I was there that I built this program. There's the educational component of the mobile unit. Got a bunch of teaching artists and we would go in and we would do these things. I don't know. We would meet these people and sometimes they were just so grateful and they were so happy just to have someone pay attention to them in a way and to have something that was different.
I just remember this one guy, Jose Antonio, it was the first time we had been to a prison. It was out at the Arthur Chelsea facility, Staten Island, which has since closed. At the end of the workshop, this guy, Jose Antonio said to me, I asked everybody was there anything else that anybody wanted to say? He raised his hand and his guy was huge. He had gold teeth and his arms were like the size of my thighs. I was like uh oh. He said do you know how you said that? I had talked about Joe Papp and how Joe Papp had thought that there's nothing so bad that Shakespeare couldn't make it a little better and a little brighter. He said, "You know how that guy you worked for said that thing about Shakespeare making people's lives a little better and a little brighter?" I said, yeah. He said, "Well, you made our lives a little better and a little brighter here today. Thank you very much." I just thought that was so nice and that was like a real rewarding moment. So there's that. When I had been in Grad school I really wanted to work with teens, actually I wanted to work with prisoners and I wanted to work with teens. So with the Public, I got to do both of those things because I started a Shakespeare summer camp. You know how some people go to soccer camp or cheerleading camp.
I started to Shakespeare camp called the mid-summer day camp when I was at the Public. That ran for a number of years and was really successful. I think it was another thing where it touched a lot of lives and the kids were really happy to be there and they learned a lot. They got some real good, healthy dose of professional training. For some kids that's what it was about. For other kids that was just about living in Shakespeare for a couple of weeks. It was a really good program. I think it was successful on a personal level for them. I think it was good. It was good for the Public to develop a relationship with a younger audience. Everybody just had a really good time. So that was another big accomplishment that I really enjoyed doing and being a part of.
Martin: Awesome. That’s really cool. I do have two quick follow up questions to that. One you're talking about giving back and doing the stuff with the prisoners and all that. I just wanted you to talk a little bit more about how important you feel it is for actors to spend some of their time giving back or helping people who are in need and everything. Cause sometimes I feel like people can get so wrapped up in auditioning and trying to do their work that they sort of forget or don't think about giving back or helping other people as much. So if you talk a little bit about your experience with that or what your thoughts are, that would be great.
Ian: You got to fill the well and I think it's so easy to get distracted by the business side of things and just meeting whatever your next need is. You know that Marianne Williamson poem and she says in it, "We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us." I think that there's something that always speaks to me. Then Hamlet says this thing like, "Surely he gave us these capabilities and God, like reason [inaudible 16:31] used." I think when you're given a challenge, like we are as actors by the universe, it's kind of our duty to use it to make our corner of the world a little better and a little brighter. It's not just about our own grandization. It's not about just meeting our own needs, but the needs of the community that should be served to. I firmly believe that. That's how you fill the well and you have more experience to bring to the work that you do with also. It's like a cycle, I give out and I get back. It's not what you put out into the universe, but what you get back. It's easy to get selfish when you're thinking about your career and yourself and self-promotion all the time. But you need the balance. I think when you're a fuller person, when you go in the room, it's obvious. When you've done things, when you're out there and you're helping and doing other things? The other thing is it just makes you feel better to be of service to people. So when you're not getting the roles and you're not doing this and you're not doing that, things aren't working out the way that you want them to you have this just to feel like I've done something good today. Even if I didn't get exactly what I wanted, perhaps I got what I needed.
Martin: Something that I've actually told or recommended to some of the actors who I've worked with in the past has been sometimes people they struggle in auditions and like we're saying they forget about this. One thing that I've actually said is it can help whether you're going in for a job interview or an audition or something, what I like to do is I sort of like budget for myself. I have a simple app on my phone that kind of ads $30 or $40 or whatever dollars per month that I want to be able to give to homeless people or whoever in order to help. This budget sometimes, there might be a month or so that goes by where I forget to give money to be people and then I might have like $60 in there or something. What I've said is sometimes if you give $5 or even a $10 bill to a homeless person on the street they're really grateful and that can really make you feel good and that good feeling kind of actually goes with you. So if you do something like that around the time that you're going into an audition it sort of helps you get your mind off of the audition. It makes you feel good inside, you've helped somebody. Then when you go into the actual audition, you might even audition better because you're in a really good mood and you're thinking about how you just helped somebody instead of "I'm stressed that I have to perform perfectly."
Ian: Exactly. They did that study at Harvard the other day about what makes people happy. The only thing that they found that was consistent and making people happy was helping other people. That’s the only thing that they found that always worked. I just thought that was so interesting to me.
Martin: I have one more quick follow-up question to what you were talking about. You had talked about that specific role that you really, really wanted and how you kind of, over the course of months or so, you were thinking, "How can I make this happen?" You just kept focusing on that and eventually you actually got that role that you had wanted so much. Even though you were reaching out to people and they were kind of rejecting you and then you figured out another way by going into the EPA. Just briefly, how important do you feel setting specific goals, whether it's for a role or something you want to do is? Because I feel like actors sort of forget about that.
Ian: What I do is I set up a type of vision plan for them for like six months. I have an ultimate vision plan, but then I go through and I set up different actions that I can take throughout the six months to reach certain goals. So I have to say I want to book a costar role. Well then I'm going to go and I'm going to look at who's doing the shows that I want, who's doing shows that I see myself on. That it would make sense that I'd be on. Then I'm like, "Okay, well I'll send them letters, I'll send the headshot and resume, I'll see if they're teaching at One On One or Actor's Connection or The Network or somewhere like that and then try and meet them. So there's like steps. I have a very specific action plan to reach these goals. Now along the way, of course, the best way to make that last is make plans. So you make the plans and then things happen. But I find that whenever I set out on a path, something happens, even if it's not to get exactly what I set out to do. So having a specific action plan is absolutely important and necessary. I try and set up this is what I want and these are the steps I'm going to take to get it. Then each step I have to get it what are two things that I can do to make that step happen. So it's like a process. I set out a process for myself.
One of the things that I did last year was I organized this group of actors I’d been leading. I’d taken this class called at The Source at The Network with this guy Paul Michael who's a friend of mine. It was a really interesting course on the business of acting and, and sort of self-confidence. It was interesting, it was good. But one of the best things I got out of it was having a group of actors that I was accountable to on a weekly basis. In the class we had to read was How to Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and one of the things that he talked about over and over again was hilarious. How all these people that he interviewed all talk about having a mastermind group is what he called it. It was a group of people that he met with regularly and talked with and sort of bounced ideas off of and we're accountable to. Last year, last August I said, "I'm going to organize a bunch of actors who I like, who's work I like and see if we can meet on a weekly basis." About a year ago we started meeting on a weekly basis. It's been, I don't know, I didn't really want to call it a support group because that feels so static. So we call it the Actor's Action Group and every week we meet and we talk with each other and we go over our vision plans together and we look at each other's head shots and we help each other with branding and we support each other with this is working, this isn't working, these are great sites for you. I don't get these sites for you. We meet each other when we have an audition, we meet up and run through sides with each other before we go in for the audition. If we're going into a class for One on One, sometimes some of us will take a class together so then we can support each other through that and this has been really incredible because of that.
It's because of that group of being accountable to that group that I got my website up, that I got these new headshots that I have this business plan vision plan that I stick to because I have to come in and report to them this is my progress this week. So that's been indispensable. That's one of the most important things I think I've ever done. I had this teacher wonderful, wonderful teacher named Katheryn Kerr, I just loved Katheryn and she used to always talk about how she did this. She had a group of women that she met with every week and sometimes they'd just be putting stamps on mailings together. But they would meet every week. I forget who was in her group, but it was she and Faith Prince and June Havoc and all these people, you know who they are. I love this group that I meet with and we’re real supportive to one another. I love watching people have things happen for them. One of the guys in our group just got us to three weeks ago? He's like, I need to book a costar. I've never been on television. Then boom, last week he shot his first costar role. So it's good.
Martin: I love that. I appreciate you for bringing up the book itself. We actually have a copy, a free PDF download of the book actually available right on the website if people go onto the free stuff page. but yeah, that, that book is amazing. It gives you all kinds of ideas. Having a support group is something that any actor could set up with a group of friends. It's important, obviously be aware of who you're partnering up with. You don't want to partner up with people who are not caring and lazy and all of that, and you're very specific with the people that you worked with. If you combine the support group that kind of holds you accountable and make sure that you keep track on things with the setting of specific goals like that guy just did that you mentioned. He's like, I want to do this and then he told the group that's my goal and then he went out and felt compelled to make it happen. It's super powerful and it's a great idea. So thank you for mentioning that. Now, just to quickly follow up on your goals, what would you say currently is one or two of your top goals right now and what are the specific steps that you're taking to reach those goals?
Ian: I want to do more TV and film work. I particularly want to work with Martin McDonough. That's the director that I want to work with the most. One of the things that I've done is I've looked at who his producers are, who produces his movies. I've written to them and gotten some response from them. So that's kind of cool. I want to book more work so I'm trying to meet a TV casting director at least one a month, sometimes more. I do that through like One on One or The Network or Actor's Connection. I keep in touch with them. Whenever I have something happen I post it on my website, I let them know about it. When I got my new headshots that gave me a reason to write them and say I got these new headshots and I just try and keep in touch with them. Then when I hear about something I'll write them specifically, "Oh I hear you're casting this, can I come in for this?" That happened a few weeks ago. There was a program that I thought, "Oh, I'd be great on that." I had met one of the casting directors in the office, but not the one that was working on the particular show. So I called the one casting or I wrote the one casting director and said, "Can you recommend me to your colleague 'cause I know we've worked together in a couple of classes and I know you like my work, can you recommend me to this guy?" She said absolutely. Then the next day I got a call from my agent and said they just called from this show and they want to see you. I was like, "This is great, this is how it works."
Martin: It sort of leads into the next question, which is just kind of you're talking about certain things that you're doing. But a lot of actors wonder what would be some things that they can do on a daily or weekly basis to get more paid acting work? What should they schedule in their calendar? Like every week I have to do this or that or whatever?
Ian: It's whatever you can, but what gets you called in? Everybody’s in this to do their job well. So what can you do? Everybody’s got a problem. A casting director's problem is they need to cast a show and they need to bring in the people that the director's gonna like, so he has multiple choices. My job is to 1, let them know I’m available. 2, let them know what it is that I can do that perhaps isn't readily apparent from my resume. I think one thing is know that it's a business and know what your place is in that business and go at it from that standpoint. Keeping in touch with the casting director, meet as many casting directors as you can through EPA's and through the different pay for play classes you can take, and keep in touch with them. Work begets work. So if you're not getting the work that you want make your own. I was meeting with an agent a couple of weeks ago and it was really interesting what he said to me. He was like you go on EPAs? I was like, occasionally I haven't been in a while.
He's like you need to go to more EPAs, get a buzz going about you. I was like, well that's an interesting thing. So what is the buzz that I can get going about me? Then I was reading in this other book, the Tao of Show Business about writing press releases and figuring out what am I up to and what is news about me that I let what casting directors know? Then just taking the advice, meeting casting directors, that's kind of the way to do. So if you're bored sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring, go to an EPA, practice auditioning. I think the other thing is the unreasonable ask. This is something that is really… because there are so many things that I have not asked people for years because I've been like, "Oh my God, I'm going to be that actor who's asking for things and I'm going to do this." I've found that I just gotta ask the question. It's not my job to know whether people are gonna say yes or no to what I asked for. I found that when I asked for things like can you introduce me to your agent? Or when I wrote that casting director and say can you recommend me to your colleague. Or writing directly to a casting director saying can I be seen for this show? I find that that really helps.
It's things that like. I don’t know. I call it the unreasonable ask, but then it turns out that it's not really unreasonable, because I find that people really want to help. So if I know them and like them they usually want to help. I had a colleague that I was meeting with this guy from an agency and I looked up his clients online and I was like, Oh, I know that person. I met that person." So I called a couple people and said, "I'm meeting this guy, would you put in a good word for me?" They were both like, "Oh my God, yes." And then one of them called me like how did it go? They wanted to know. I was like, "Wow, I had this idea that I was on my own, when in reality people are willing and ready to help." Not everybody, some people don't answer. I wrote to the next student once, a former student said can you help me meet this person? I just never heard back. I was like, okay, "Yeah, that answers that."
Martin: I definitely think that that's super important bringing that up right now. With me it's a similar thing. I'm not specifically an actor and I talk about that on my site. I've looked at things from a business perspective for years. Part of what I do is cold emailing to people and lots of times with cold emails people won't respond. I remember the first couple of times that I did cold emails, it was really terrifying pressing the send button because I was like, "Oh, this person might not like me or they're going to go out and say bad things about me in the world." In reality, no one really cares... if they're going to ignore your email they will. But you can even like follow up with them and just try to make sure that your email didn't get lost spam. There's tons of ways to do it, but the main point is just to make sure that, like you said, you're not really necessarily being unreasonable by asking, especially if before you ask the question, you ask yourself how is it that by me asking this, I could actually be helping this person? Because lots of times people don't think about that and they're like if I ask for something, it's for me. But if you can figure out how it's actually for them as well, then you don't feel bad when you do it. It's like they're also more likely to say yes because they're like, "I see how I'm getting value out of this."
Ian: Yeah, exactly. I remember I was working at this restaurant cafeteria years ago and there were a bunch of actors that worked there. There's this one actress who was a hostess there and she got a fair amount of work and she was a great actress. I remember talking to her one day because I had a really hard time with auditioning because I always went in with the wrong idea. I went in there trying to get the casting director to like me rather than going in there to book the work when it didn't matter whether they liked me or not, I was there. She said, you know what, I always go in cause I figure they got a problem and I go in as a solution to the problem. They have to cast this role and they have to cast it within a certain time. I go in there with the idea that I'm offering myself as a solution to your problem. I just thought that that was one of the greatest things I've ever heard. I was like, of course, that makes perfect sense because when I worked at the Public, I would sit behind the desk. When I was around the Shakespeare Lab I would get like 600 applications from those applications I'd have to pick like 200 people to audition and then I would sit through 200 auditions. When people would come in, like almost apologizing for being there or being like, "Oh my God, thank you for seeing me," like I was doing for them some kind of a favor. I was like, "Oh my God, I don't even want to see you act now because you're just so apologetic." It was like, oh right, yeah. I went through 600 applications. I picked yours because I wanted to see you. Because you're a viable solution to my problem, which is I have to have a company of 16 actors and you were in your solution to that problem. When people came in and they were apologetic or really mouthy and I hate to say it but that cliché of a casting director knows by the way you walk in the room whether they want to you or not. 9 times out of 10 I got to say it's true. If you walk in there with confidence and like you belong there it makes a difference. If you walk in there like I've given you this audition out of pity or out of some stroke of luck that you don't deserve, then I don't really want to hire you. I've had a couple of times when people walked in and I’m like, "Oh brother." Then they come out and they do this spectacular thing and I'm like, "Wow, well I did not expect that. That's interesting." But being mouthy and playing small doesn't serve anybody.
Martin: Yeah. This is leading perfectly into our next question, which is about auditioning. But I think 1, it's extremely, extremely important that pretty much every actor who takes themselves seriously try to get on the other side of the casting director's desk at least once and either assist in a real casting or do their own sort of small project and post the thing looking for actors so that they can sort of see how it is being on the other side. But besides that you really want to think of yourself again as like I am offering that solution to the casting director. I'm not here, they're not doing me a favor. They want to just get their work done for the day and see the people that need to be seen. Even if you come in, like you said, and you're kind of the person is a little bit weird at the beginning, but then they offer a spectacular performance. If you have that it's still going to be in the back of the casting director's mind. They might be like, "Wow, they're acting was good, but they seemed a little bit off at the beginning or apologetic. So I don't know how they're gonna work on set. They might be a slightly challenging person to work with."
Ian: Absolutely. You gotta be you, you can't not be yourself. But at the same time, you gotta be with knowing that you belong there.
Martin: Going off of this, what would you say, besides what we talked about, maybe if you have one or two other tips for actors who struggle to get called back after auditioning?
Ian: Let me see if I wrote anything down on this.
Martin: I mean don't discount what we talked about, you know, what we said was amazing. So that could be enough. We can definitely move on to the next question.
Ian: I think I think about everything. I think the point is that you're there, you have a job to do which is show them what you can do, you show them you can do the job, show them you’re right for the job. I think to go in ready to work, ready to play. I think what you said about how is this person going to be on set is also very much consideration. Do they have the experience or they’ve been there before. Are they going to be a scared turtle? Are they going to be comfortable with people and easy going? I think that that's so much of it is are you a person that we're going to want to work with? Do you jazz on the work or do you shy away from it? Do you take an adjustment as a helpful thing or do you see it as a hindrance? I think when you got the adjustment it's like, go for it, play with it, be grateful for it, I guess in a way. Not grateful like, "Oh my God, thank you so much. You've saved my life." I'm like, "Oh, I hadn't thought of it that way. Let me try this."
Martin: It's like being grateful that they're helping you sort of like get better. It's not like grateful that they're giving you the opportunity. But, "Thank you for giving me this feedback because now I've learned something new."
Ian: Exactly. And not what like, "Oh my God, I fucked it up. They gave me an adjustment. I didn’t get it the first time."
Martin: This sort of relates a little bit to the next question, which is just related to getting an agent. If you had any advice on how you or a student of yours has gone about getting an agent, what would be your advice for other actors who are looking to do the same?
Ian: Getting an agent is so ridiculously hard in a way because if you don't know who they got, you don't know if you could do research and find out do they have any people of my type? Who do they represent? What type of people do they represent? You can do that kind of research. But I think one thing that we have now that we didn't use to have when I first started was we have access to a lot of agents through the different pay for play venues. I say, you got to get yourself in front of agents, as many as you can cause someone's looking for you. Someone's looking for your type. I got my agent through this class I took at The Source or The Network. They had a showcase at the end where we read for a bunch of agents and one of them was interested. I went and I met with her and her partner and did a monologue and they were like, "Yeah, and let's work together." They were the nicest, most lovely people on earth. I got them because I showed up, I was professional, I was professional in the room. I was playful, I was nice, polite, but just me, I was basically me. So that they knew what they were getting into. It turns out they didn't have anybody my age.
They didn't have any 50 year old men in their stable so to speak. So they were like, "Yeah, we'd love to bring you on." Get in front of as many as you can. Do your best work, be yourself, go in. I think there's a lot of controversy about this and a lot of different opinions on this. I guess everywhere there is many different ideas is there are people to have them. But I think you want to go in representing who you are. So I don't want to go in super chill. I did wear a jacket and a shirt and slacks because when I met with them because it was a job interview in a way. But I wasn't pinched to the nines because if you're going to send me out for pinch parts I'm never going to get them because that's not who I am. So I have to go in there with an idea of who I am and bring myself into the room with me and yeah, I have to bring my best self. But I also have to bring who I actually am so they know what the product is. I mean. I guess we're talking about branding in a way. If I go in there outside my brand and they like that, then it's not going to work because they're going to be sending me up for stuff that I could walk into the casting director's office and they're like, "What's that guy doing here? That's not him." Does that make any sense? I’m not saying go in there like looking like a slob if you're a slob. In some book I read, I remember reading this story about this woman who was funny and a little quirky. But she would always go into meetings with agents dressed in a business suit and everything perfect. So they started sending her off to role which she never got because she hadn't really gone in representing herself. But I guess that's someone else's experience, not really mine.
Martin: You want to be honest with your agents about the types of roles that you play and you can even tell them. I mean, they are people, they're not like any sort of crazy high level people that don't want to speak with you. You could say, "By the way even though I'm dressed nicely for this, these are the types of roles that I typically like to apply for," and they appreciate you for saying that actually.
Ian: Exactly. You're looking to build a relationship with this person, a business relationship. I do have one other thing to say about the agents. When you need an agent and they show interest find out who's on their client list that you know and have them say to them, "Oh yeah, I met with agent so and so and we had a good meeting. I see your a client with them. Would you tell them that you know me and that I'm a good guy?" Because you're going off a meeting and they probably want a little more information. So if they have someone from their client roster who they like and appreciate saying this guy's a stand up guy or I know this guy, we've worked together, then that helps. The other thing that really helps is if there's a casting director that you know and you've met with an agent and you had a good meeting and you have a good relationship with the casting director, you might call the casting director and say, "I met with agent so and so. We had a good meeting. Would you mind putting in a good word for me?" Because a word from a casting director really helps.
But you gotta get in a room and you've got to meet the agents because they got to see your work. We have the ability to do that today. Whereas 20 years ago it was like they might come and see you in a showcase, they might come see you do this. It might take a few times. If there's an agent you're interested in, it take a few times of meeting them and showing them different work. But if there's an agent you want go for that agent.
Martin: The final segment now is just on general advice. So my main question that I'm asking from this segment is that if you had to give some advice to an actor who feels that they're stuck at a plateau in their career, what would it be?
Ian: Don't keep doing the same thing expecting different results. Try something different, do something different. I don't know whether that's personally take a vacation? Do some volunteer work. Find some way to fill the well. Find some other way to enjoy yourself and then come back to the work. Or whether that's I'm used to my agent sending me out. I don't go out on EPAs or I don't go to these things. Well, that's the case go do it. Go out and do something different in your career. Try for a goal, audition for something else. I guess plateau maybe you're working all the time. But you're working on a certain level and you want to do something else. I don't know. It's still do something different. It's still make your own work. It's still shoot your own web series if you're stuck in the world with costars and you want to do a guest star. Or you're stuck in guest stars and you want to be a recurring regular then do that. Make it happen for yourself on your own and see what happens. But I guess that the big thing is just do something different because usually plateau means you keep doing the same things. Maybe it's a personal problem that you need to address. Maybe you need to go an outward bound thing. I would say one of the most helpful things for me has been getting a group of people together.
This guy that I met with a couple of weeks ago said, get a buzz going, however that means for you. Whether that's taking a job you wouldn't normally take that will get you seen to do other things. I think sometimes we get so caught up in the business that we forget that there was actually something about this work that we liked that brought a few in the first place. We get so desperate to get the next job that we forget that sometimes there's stuff in it that we just want to do for the sake of doing and that might be the thing too. This was a role that I really want to play, I'm gonna produce it myself. Or you get offered an Equity showcase or something and you're like, "Well that's not the kind of money that I want to make it." It's not this, but it's a really good role. You might want to do that.
Martin: So really it sounds like your general advice is to sort of do an assessment on themselves and see where are they? Because a lot of times people don't even necessarily realize that they're stuck in a plateau until it's been like a long time. With me, there was just a plateau in going to the gym. I realized after two years that I had been mostly lifting the same weight and hadn't gained any new muscle or anything. So I looked and I realized literally it's because I kept lifting the same weights for the most part and I had stopped pushing as hard as I used to. I think it's the same thing with an actor. You're saying doing different things and if people look at where they really are and they ask themselves, "I'm doing this, but what do I actually want?" It might give them some ideas on what they could actually do differently.
Ian: Absolutely. That's one of the things that I find a vision plan is so helpful for me because you'll look into what do I want? Then you set up five concrete actions you can take and you do them and then things are bound to change.
Martin: Awesome. Is there anything else that you'd like to finish up by saying?
Ian: When you talked about the agents thing, there's actually a really interesting book by Margaret Emory who is my agent actually and she was on the agent actor relationship and gave a lot of very practical advice dealing with an agent. That might be a resource to look into for people who are interested in getting an agent. The other thing that I do that I work really hard is a lot of keeping a social media presence. I link my Facebook and my website and my Instagram and I try and do new posts at least once a week that just keeps the flow going between the three of them because then that raises my visibility on Google and with the website and stuff like that. That's a little thing that's actually kind of fun to do that’s easy to take care of on a daily basis or weekly basis.
Martin: Awesome. That makes sense. The information that we had here, your tips and tricks I'm really excited because I think that people will definitely be able to pull a lot of helpful stuff. If you don't mind just for one minute or one and a half minutes, however long you need just explain a tiny bit about your own work as an acting coach cause I'd like to link to your website in case people who are reading this are looking for that. Tell us just a tiny bit about what you do outside of acting with the coach work.
Ian: Right now I teach at the Stella Adler Studio. That's my main teaching gig these days and I do a lot of coaching. I got started in coaching doing Shakespeare. Then I started teaching a scene study class at Stella Adler on 20th century work. People come to me a lot to prepare for auditions, whether it's a professional audition for television or a theater show. They also come to me for Grad school and college auditions and stuff like that. I love doing that. It's a lot of fun to help people get into like a really specific scene and trying the art. I've had some pretty good success. I've definitely had success with getting people into Grad schools. I have students who keep coming back for more coaching, students that I've worked with and that I've met as a teacher. Then other people who I've met outside of the classroom that have just been recommended to me and they come to me for work. Sometimes I come for Shakespeare, sometimes they'd come for like a TV sides. I've had a lot of experience teaching and I’ve helped a lot of people with it.
Martin: That's awesome. I appreciate you chatting with us today. We'll definitely link to your website so people can check out that. Like I said, this information is super, super helpful. So I want to thank you on behalf of everybody who's going to be listening or reading the transcript of this interview. It was really awesome. Thanks.
Ian: Thank you so much. Thanks for thinking of me. If you have any other questions feel free to call me back and I'll let you know.