Autumn Updates: Agency News & Updates to Ratana.net

The start of autumn always reminds me of new beginnings: back to school, the smell of new pencils, a few new outfits (or uniforms) to replace the ones I outgrew over the summer. Even as an adult, those back to school reminders trigger the feeling that a new cycle of learning and growing has begun.

This year is no different, with many things happening over the past few weeks.

First, and foremost, I now have an agent! Earlier this month, I signed with TGMD to represent me for all things voiceover. I'm excited about this partnership, and working with an agency who seems committed to their clients and building their brands & their business together. The process of getting an agent is different for everyone (and could be a much longer, more in depth post), but the timing for me was serendipitous. I truly believe that luck = preparation + timing. Because at the end of the day, sometimes that's what it boils down to.

Second, if you surf on over to my website you might notice a few new things. Such as an Improv page, pulling in videos from past performances of my improv group, Team X. I love performing with that crew, and am thrilled to be able to show them off in this venue. We have been performing every first & third Monday since summer began, and will continue to do so through the fall. For more info on performances, keep an eye on my News page, or visit our home theater, M.i.'s Westside Comedy Theater website.

Finally, I've added a page for images on my website - headshots as well as pictures from a photoshoot I did over the summer, a fashion take on the movie Kill Bill. The Kill Bill pictures and some of my headshots are courtesy of my friend and uber talented photographer Jack Manning. (More on that experience in a future post.) Head on over to http://www.ratana.net/, and let me know what you think!

Summer flew by in a flurry of marketing, modeling, improvising, rehearsing, studying VO and networking. The fall promises more of the same and then some. I'm looking forward to re-balancing my workloads to meet the challenges of being an artist and marketer, and what the future brings. But first...a trip to Staples for some new pencils!

Feeling Stuck? Freeze!

Tonight, my improv team, Team X, has a show. Last week, we got together for our weekly rehearsal. One of the exercises from our rehearsal involved playing a form of Freeze. Two of us got up to play a scene, but first our teammates posed our bodies into whatever form & configuration they wanted - heads, arms, legs, faces. In a regular game of Freeze, the players justify the pose. But this game of Freeze had a twist: rather than justify the pose, become the character who would stand in this manner. The idea was to get us out of our heads, and into the heads & bodies of these characters.



How liberating! As a VO actor, I use my face and hands to give energy to my words, but my feet stay planted. I am a talking head. There's a technical reason for this: the mics in a professional studio are so sensitive it will even pick up the slightest extra sounds - paper shuffling, clothing rustling. Because of this, I sometimes forget on stage that I am free to "move about the cabin" - so to speak. And I have to remind myself not to be a "talking head" - just standing on stage with nothing to do but yammer on. The game allowed me to be a completely different character, one I had never given voice to before. It's a bolder, scarier, more liberating thing to embody a different character with both voice and physicality - there is fear, trust, discovery, commitment, freedom, play. And I loved it.



I think the idea here is to walk a mile not only in someone else's shoes, but in their whole person. In the corporate world (especially Marketing) we have an activity something like this: job rotation, a regular pattern of changing brands over the course of one's career. In my relatively short corporate life, I have switched careers once (from consulting to marketing) and managed over a dozen different brands across several companies.

Because the days of 30+year tenure followed by gold Rolex retirements is long gone, we don't expect to stay in the same job or function for our entire careers. We expect to do this throughout our lives - job rotation, internships, cross-training with other functions, and plain old career switching. There's a reason for this: switching gears into a new brand, or a new function gets you out of your head, and opens up new ways of thinking.

While the process of both creating characters and changing jobs can be scary or the learning curve daunting, it's also a great opportunity for renewal and rediscovery: You are able to create something new that adds to your professional character. You are able to connect new ideas to old ways, or to question the status quo and create new solutions that benefit the entire enterprise. It keeps you from thinking that "it is what it is" and that you can't change the process or the system. It puts you into a new frame of reference. And it becomes a part of you, something you can file away and pull out for future reference. I suppose, that if you feel stuck in what you're doing, maybe it's time to play a game of Freeze.

it's a matter of choice

In the world of acting - there is a thing called "choices". It's the way we approach a line, or the attitude we give to a character. It's our intention, emotion, action. And we commit to those choices to (hopefully) create a memorable experience for those listening to or watching us. While we may have a director or a booth engineer offering us guidance for where to take our performance, ultimately the decision rests with the actor. Her choice will either get her the job, or it won't. There is no one to blame or to hide behind. It's up to you, as the actor, to perform balls out - leaving nothing out. Whatever you decide, it will be out there for all the world to see or hear.

There are choices in corporate america too, but usually it is the choice to defer the decision. Or, in the words of Cinderella in Sondheim's Into the Woods: "I know what my decision is, which is not to decide..." It's a curious paradox of leadership -that in order to make a decision, we must validate (or deny) what our gut tells us in favor of group concensus. Sure, it may be good team building, but in some ways, I think it reduces the trust we have in ourselves - to make good, strong choices and follow them with conviction. Instead, we put our faith in the whims of many, anonymizing the decision and therefore the responsibility.

When a choice made in error by a committee fails, who shoulders the blame? How many cooks do we really need in the kitchen?

While I believe in the value of group consensus, I also believe that strong leadership is more important. If we are always checking in with others, we ultimately learn to question our own judgement in deference to the group. Self doubt increases our unwillingness to commit, and our fear of reprisal when we do take a stand. And so we revert to the coward's way of making a choice: Choosing not to decide.

That's no way to live a life, whether it's on a stage or in a cubicle.

From this moment forward, make a choice. Choose something. Argue passionately. Lead with conviction. Don't take a backseat. Don't be passive. Don't wake up 10 years from now filled with regret, because you let others dictate your path. Choose.