Success can look like a lot of different things:
- Appearing on Broadway.
- Starring on Broadway.
- Appearing in a big budget feature film.
- Starring in a big budget feature film.
- Booking with a new-to-you theatre.
- Booking a role outside your bullseye.
- Meeting two new gatekeepers (casting director, agent, etc) in the industry (and making a meaningful connection with them).
- Earning enough money through various acting endeavors to sustain yourself.
The list could go on; suffice it to say, only you can decide how you will define success. And here’s why that is important:
People who are not in this business have a lot of different ideas about it. Of course they do, our work is, by nature, public. That means they also unwittingly try to define for you what success in this industry looks like. I truly believe no one does this out of spite, but rather from a misunderstanding of the many layers of this career, and how your needs, realities, and dreams shift within it, year to year. It is easy to feel elated about the direction of your career, only to have your confidence undercut by a casual, comment from an acquaintance during small talk at a coffee shop.
By taking the time to define what you want in the context of this business, you provide for yourself a clearer direction in which to move, plus it is much easier to answer the unintentionally annoying questions from well-meaning humans you encounter.
There are a lot of goal-setting resources out there, but two I have found extraordinarily helpful are:
Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans
Two Stanford professors walk readers through the same process they have used with students who are about to graduate. Such a great process to suss out what really makes you tick and get specific about what you want and how to get there.
The Organized Actor by Leslie Becker
Leslie has a fabulous goal-setting process for actors that comprises the first chunk of her book. Great for working actors and budding actors, alike. Learn that this is a business AND an art early, folks!