Woo HOO!
In 1999, Bonnie Gillespie was an actor in Hollywood, having moved *back* to LA to give the dream “one more shot” after the Northridge Earthquake had her rethink grad school… back east.
One of Bon’s pledges: “No golden handcuffs!”
See, in 1993, she’d taken on a really spectacular job in the recording industry — as lead assistant to the president of a small record label and not-small management firm — and that’s part of why leaving Los Angeles in 1994 became such an easy choice.
Golden handcuffs meant Bon was working all the time, making really great money, but no longer hustling for her own dreams to come true. Sure, they told her she could leave for auditions, take days off for shoots… but when was that happening? Golden handcuffs. Never again.
Cut to 1999 and there are a dozen “crap jobs” making up Bon’s strategy for pulling together rent. There’s pet-sitting, there’s tutoring SAT-prep for high school students, there’s teaching people in assisted living how to use their computers, there’s improv comedy traffic school, and there’s writing for actors.
Who knew there was an empire to build there? That the questions emailed in from actors all over the world would somehow lead to the curriculum upon which so much of “how we approach showbiz” is now built? Wow.
So!
To commemorate these humble beginnings, we’re celebrating SMF-mAy! That’s SMFA (the acronym for Self-Management for Actors, Bonnie’s top-selling book, in its 4th edition — 5th printing!!) for the month of May, 2019!
Twenty free trainings via livestream — all posted for replay at YouTube now — that happened all throughout the month of May, each day a new topic specifically designed to support your joy-filled journey as an actor.
All for the price of SHOWING UP.
Let’s be clear though, showing up is tough for some folks to do. All the more reason for you to take a peek at the calendar of events, plot out these live training sessions on your calendar, set reminders for yourself, prepare your scholarship application, and then thank yourself for the investment of TIME in your commitment to your creative career.
What?!? Scholarship application? Oh, yeah!
Heard great things about our life-changing 100-day membership program built on Bonnie Gillespie’s curriculum? Get all the details here.
UPDATE: Scholarship applications for Get in Gear for the Next Tier are now CLOSED. Thank you to everyone who entered during SMF-mAy! We are honored to have witnessed your heartfelt and #SoOnBrand vids! Congratulations to our winners: Aisha Holden, Ara Ding, and Gina Taliaferro! See y’all in the dojo!
Ooh, this is all so good and we’re JUST getting started!
For a master list of all 20 FREE actor training vids from Bonnie Gillespie, head over here.
If you haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading Self-Management for Actors, let’s fix that up here:
Buy it now!
Okay, be sure you wall off time to make this happen, babe! 🙂 We’re about to make leaps like never before!
Thank you for celebrating 20 years of actor goodness from Bonnie Gillespie! We’re so excited to enjoy this milestone together!
– Team Bon