BWW Blog: Answering Acting Interview Questions

For this blog post, I thought it would be interesting to find interview questions online for actresses and try to answer them. So, here goes!

What attracted you to begin a career as an actor?

When I was younger, I always knew that I was interested in the performing arts. But it wasn't until my parents took my brother and I to see Wicked in New York City that I became serious about it. I had done community theatre in my area for a long time but never thought about making a career out of it. I knew that I never really wanted a job where I was working at a desk or a routine 9-5 job. I wanted to tell stories and meet people.

What has been your greatest accomplishment as an actor?

My greatest accomplishment as an actor has been going to the University of Illinois to study musical theatre. Not only have I learned so much, but I've met some amazing people and been in great shows. My favorite show that I got to work on at Illinois was A Funny Thing happened on the way to the Forum. I learned that putting on a show that big is a huge process. Our director allowed us to have an input in how we wanted the show to look and we were able to experiment with our acting which made the process so much more fun, regardless of the show being a comedy.

What am I doing in quarantine to stay fresh?

To stay fresh, I've been making self tapes and learning new monologues from both TV, movies and plays. In one of my previous posts, I talked about finding monologues from television shows like Community and movies like the Social Network. I watched a Youtube video recently of a casting director saying that if you're in an audition room and they hear something they haven't heard before, it catches their attention. It shows off a different side of yourself, say, if you're more of a comedic actor and you choose a dramatic monologue. Speaking of casting directors/actors, I've been keeping up with Backstage and emails from my school about Zoom webinars and Youtube livestreams with different actors. It's really amazing how much more accessible the performing arts industry is right now, even though it's being pushed online. When the pandemic first started back in March, pretty much every summer stock program was accepting headshots, resumes, and self tapes. Even if you don't hear back from them, as an actor, it's a good opportunity to put yourself out there. They may contact you in the future for another project. Also, I've been active on TikTok where many accompanists are posting videos to duet and there's even TikTok/online musicals being created!

What is the most creative/innovative project you've worked on?

The most creative/innovative project I've done so far is with an accompanist from University of Illinois named Mike McAndrew. He's being doing a project called Art Song at Home where he makes instrumental recordings of Art songs and musical theatre songs so people can record themselves singing to them. The first few videos he did were mainly arias/classical music, but his project has gotten so much bigger since then. We've done classical music, musical theatre, Disney and now he is doing a Gender bend series! (Look out for an article soon about when I played a guy in a musical ;))

If you're curious about my school's musical theatre/voice program, click here for our website!