Hi Reader,

Who am I to tell you what your casting identity is?

Quick context in case you're new here, or you've been skimming (no judgment — I skim too): I run a 90-day program for actors called Casting DNA™. You figure out what your work is actually transmitting, then build two scenes that show it on purpose. Enrollment closes next Monday. 🧬

So the question above is a fair one to put to me. Here's the answer:

I am not a casting director. I've cast my own projects, but I have never sat on that side of the table for a living — so I can't tell you what's going on inside an actual CD's head, and I'm not going to pretend I can.

I'd go further: I don't think there's ONE head to get inside! Casting directors are individual people, with individual taste, on individual projects, answering to individual producers. "What casting wants" doesn't exist in the singular. So when somebody hands actors the code for it, they either got it from one CD on one job — or they made it up. 💭

What I am is an actor in the trenches. Thirty years, still auditioning, still working, and still constantly buffering to keep up with what's working right now. NYU, Larry Moss, Groundlings, Playwrights Horizons, Meisner, a few decades on actual sets and in actual rooms, and now filming actual self-tapes and uploading them in the middle of the night…

Everything I teach comes from running this career myself and watching what actually works (and what doesn't) — on my own materials, and on the actors I coach. Not from a room I've never sat in.

I also spent years carrying the wrong material around town. Not bad work — just the wrong evidence. Nobody flagged it, bc it is nobody's job to flag it — that's mine. 📼

So here's the one thing I can do that you can't do for yourself: look at your work from the outside.

You're the only person in the world who never gets to watch you walk in. Everyone else has been forming an impression of you since your headshot loaded. You've been in the house the whole time, and you can't see the house from inside the house. 🏠

That's not a talent problem and it's not a training problem. It's a vantage point, and the only fix for it is somebody standing outside with no stake in it.

Now the part where I tell you what Casting DNA™ isn't. Because honestly, the limits are the credential:

• 🎥 I don't film anything. No reel gets shot inside the ninety days. You leave with two fully developed scenes and a shoot-day plan — you'll know what you're shooting, who you need, and what it has to look like, so you can go make it with whoever ends up behind the camera.
• 🚫 I can't promise you a booking or an agent. Nobody can. Anyone who does should worry you.
• 🎯 I'm not going to tell you what you should be getting cast as. You don't get to choose that. You take the auditions and the jobs you get, and nobody in this business turns down a good role bc it's off-brand.

What I'm after is your essence — who you are in story. Once you know it, you carry it into everything you play, whatever the role turns out to be. That alignment, every single time, is what I believe helps actors book. Not playing to a type. Being unmistakably yourself inside whatever you're handed.

And it's the same thing your materials have to carry, bc your materials walk into rooms that you don't get to. 📡

Here's what I will say, bc it's true and it's mine to say: actors I've coached have signed with their first agents and managers, and booked their first jobs (and their second, third, and twentieth). 🎉 That's their work and their timing — I won't take credit for their accomplishments and I'm not handing it to you as a forecast. I'm just telling you I've been along for the winning ride more than once.

What's left after all that is smaller than a promise and more useful than one: I can show you what's already legible in your work, and then we build two scenes that demonstrate it on purpose. 🧬

You are not inventing yourself. You are uncovering yourself.

Still deciding? Take fifteen minutes with me. No pitch. You tell me where you actually are, I'll tell you straight whether this is the right thing for you right now — and sometimes the answer is no. ☎️

​Grab 15 minutes with me →​

Enrollment is open through Monday, September 21 at 11:59 PM PT. It's $997, or four payments of $298. 💳

​The whole 90-Day Program is described here​ →​
​
​Already know you're in? 👇🏼

Questions? Hit reply — I'll write right back. 💌

P.S. — Program runs September 22 through December 20. Six live calls, all recorded and yours to download, and if you can't make one live you can send your work in ahead. 🗓️

P.P.S. Did a friend send this your way? If so, you can get your own subscription: Subscribe here 💌