#Reeltalk
As a coach who works with a growing number of men and women in the entertainment industry, I’m a fan of smart, honest talk about what means it be a working professional actor. I’m a produced playwright, I work with a number of artists in different fields, and I know how tough it is to choose to make your living in the arts. How much that choice determines, and changes, for better or for worse, your life, and the lives of your friends and family. How many times that choice will make, and maybe even, break you.
Some of my most exciting clients right now are men and women in their 80s, who have been making art since they were small children, and who still are full of piss and vinegar and passion. Ugh, I have such a crush on these kinds of people!
But in America there is also, unfortunately, this mystical and dangerous fixation on being a success, without the understanding of what goes into being a success, of the hard, exhausting work that success entails. Not to mention, the reality that success can, and must, evoke different outcomes and goals for different people. Some people become so obsessed with being a success, that they can’t give voice to all the creativity inside of them. Now, once we add race to that equation, shit gets real.
All of which to say, this being Black History Month, I was nagging talking to my friend, the How to Make It in America actor, Tuffy Questell about his own usage of social media, and we came up with the notion of creating a Twitter chat, by and for, black male actors and filmmakers. To that end, we’ve got a great line-up:
Grizz Chapman (@grizz30rock): http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2445098/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
Craig Mums Grant (@sirmumsila): http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0196185/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
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