David Chiu

My commercial agent’s assistant called me yesterday and I answered the phone kind of nonchalantly, expecting to hear “we need more pictures”. Instead I was pleasantly surprised to hear “you have an audition”. So today I went out for a national AT&T commercial audition under the character of “20-something”.

There wasn’t a lot of people at the audition today. After filling out the initial paperwork I sat in one of the chairs in the lobby next to a typical asian guy with spikey hair looking over the provided copy. I looked at the script myself and started trying to “relate” to the words in the script so it wouldn’t be as if I was just saying lines. Two more people arrived and we were told that we would all go in as a group and could wait outside the studio room door.

As we all stood and waited outside the studio door, the girl in our group looked at me and said “your fly is open”. Now in the past, I would have been very embarassed but in this moment I handled it all with a bit of confidence. I said “thank you” and zipped up my pants. Then I quipped, “I was just trying to give them a little extra somethin’, somethin’, but now you’ve blown my game.” She replied laughing, “hey, you do what you gotta do”.

A moment later we were all brought into the room and one by one, we each said our three lines directly to the camera. Then it was over and we were all thanked and dismissed.

Boy would it be nice to land a national commercial as my first acting gig for 2004…

Last night my partner and I rehearsed our scene from The Woolgatherers and worked out the blocking. Neither of us are off-book as of yet but hope to be by tomorrow(!). The scene itself is really fun and full of dramatics. The female character “Rose” basically has a mental breakdown in the scene and flips out while my character “Cliff” tries to hang in there with her and console her (because he wants to sleep with her). Our rehearsal went well and we made a lot of progress with the piece. Tomorrow will be our dress rehearsal. Luckily we won’t be performing on Sat which is the first day of Master Class and we will be able to watch to see how harsh Joanne will be on the actors and scene. It will also give us a chance to rehearse our lines a couple more times before our performance on Sun.

Tonight I performed the paraphrased version of the Edmund Pollard monologue. I felt very commanding and confident and was sure to really play the audience and address each person with my eyes. Tom liked it a lot but said that right now I am “performing” it instead of relating to every word. He also thought that my delivery was too clean and more like an oration. He wants more passion, sensuality, more from the guts and the heart. More bohemian, raw, inspiring but edgy. Less poetic and formal.

I sent my headshot to New York today for a Meryl Streep movie that will begin shooting this summer. I was told that they are looking for an asian actor to play a native born Chinese character which has a major part in the movie. I’m not sure I can pass for a native born Chinese, at least probably not the “look” that they want. Some of my asian friends actually thought I was Thai or Hawaiian when they first met me. Plus, I honestly can’t do a Chinese accent. But you never know… maybe there is another part in the movie that I might fit better. If not this movie, maybe another movie. Heck, any studio movie will do. But what an incredible opportunity! Working with Meryl Streep would be amazing!

I’ve picked out a 10min scene from the Woolgatherers. It’s in Act II when my character “Cliff” freaks out ’cause he thinks Rose is cheating on him. In the process of him trying to catch her in a lie (which she isn’t lying, per se…) she flips out because of a traumatic experience that happened in the past. It’s all pretty dramatic. We now have one week to get it into performance shape complete with costumes and props. Luckily the costumes and props won’t be that hard. It’s just memorizing the scene and getting it in good shape that I’m worried about.

I’m REALLY worried about it…

On the positive side, I rocked in my paraphrased performance of the Edmund Pollard monologue for class. My paraphrase was more like a modernized spoken word, R&B singing type of thing. I know they weren’t expecting that. Just imagine me in a toga performing spoken word and singing R&B… It was a lot of fun and my acting coach said that I have the “actions” and “emotional line” down so I can now start incorporating the original text with my paraphrase.