When an actor books a contract allowing them to tour - that's a fabulous achievement! You get to do what you love, full time, with guaranteed work for a locked in period of time. Who wouldn't want to tour, right?
But what happens when the tour starts to come close to the end?
You start to panic. You start to have FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out for us oldies) because you can see your peers are booking. And you don't have anything to jump into next.
Why?
Because life is still going on. The world is still turning.
Just because you're on tour doesn't mean the industry has stopped. It doesn't mean you're entitled to jump into another job - you have to EARN it just like you earned the contract you're about to come off of.
The hard pill to swallow is this: if you haven't taken precaution for the industry to be kept updated with who you are and your work while you're on tour, then the reality is they may forget about you. Because there are constantly actors graduating and moving to your area competing and getting themselves and their work known with the buyers.
So what do you do?
If you didn't have a plan to keep the industry updated (or if you did and you didn't stick to it), then you need to do a few things:
CHECKLIST
1. TRAINING - get back into training. If you're touring, you've most likely been touring in theatre or musical theatre. Chances are your buyers in the screen world won't have seen you during your tour AND your stage abilities will be stronger. But chances are your screen abilities will have declined. So get straight back into training and work those muscles back to how they were before you hit the road.
2. STRATEGY - set up a meeting with your reps so they can assess your current abilities as to how they can sell you at this time while you are training. You and your rep should come up with a plan to get you back in the game as quick as possible as very few actors will be able to just jump in straight away.
3. RESET - you need to have some you time. Allow yourself to reset. Absorb everything from the tour, let it settle, find yourself and give yourself a well deserved break! You can use the time during your break to set the previous points but you do need to rest - especially if it's been a long tour!
4. PLAY - Get back into class and workshops and auditioning and start playing again once you're all rested and ready to go.
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