A Podcast Hangout (or Observing A Vocal Class)

This past weekend the podcast I work for hosted an event for our members and listeners. I love that through the podcast not only have a made so many amazing friends, but I’ve found a community of actors who are really supportive and are not just waiting for the phone to ring with their next audition. They are out and creating work and that’s partly what inspired me to try to work on creating my own work as well.

Our events in the past have been hikes, parties, and lots of fun social gatherings. This time the event was a vocal class with my friend Darci Monet. I love that we were able to do an event that is education! Darci is an amazing singer and teacher, and I met her through Marie and Chris (and that group of friends). I know several friends who have taken vocal lessons from Darci and they have all said the most wonderful things about her as a teacher. So we asked if she wouldn’t mind doing a free class for the podcast and she agreed!

We hosted our event at Acting Up Network, which was a very lucky find for us. I learned about Acting Up when I was dropping off some donations for my friend Dea after her house burned down. Jodie, who owns Acting Up, was collecting donations for Dea at her studio and I got to check it out. It’s such an amazing location and space and Jodie was super generous to donate the space to us to use! If any of you are looking for some great acting classes (or need a space to rent for classes you are running), I highly recommend talking to Jodie about Acting Up!

The vocal class we had wasn’t that big, but I think that might have been best. Everyone who wanted to sing had the chance to get up to sing and have Darci give some pointers or work with them on one or two things that she noticed. It was really great to watch Darci work with people because you could really see people gaining confidence in their singing or improve something that they had been working on. Watching the results happen right in front of us was fun and I’m glad that everybody there got to leave with something new to work on.

I didn’t sing (I’m tone-deaf and have been told by other vocal coaches that because of that I’m not that teachable), but I may take a lesson with Darci to see what she says. She believes that pretty much anybody can learn to sing, so maybe there is some hope for me. I don’t feel like I need to sing (I don’t really like music that much), but it would be nice to be able to carry a tune a bit and not to sound like a cat being strangled when I try.

Our class lasted about 2 hours, and while that is longer than the typically class I think it worked out really well for everyone there. We didn’t feel rushed at all and everyone could take their time to calm their nerves before singing. Even though I would have loved to have more podcast listeners there, I love that we had a small and really supportive group for everyone who was there.

We are hoping to do more and more events like this for the podcast. It’s really important as actors that we work on new special skills or make sure that we are keeping up with the ones that we already have on our resumes. I think we are planning on a few other classes coming up that will be about special skills like singing soon and I can’t wait to see what they are! And if you are interested in doing those I highly recommend signing up for our mailing list and also becoming a member!

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