What’s your second act? You know, that thing you’ll do once you have gotten that first “break” and have shown this town what you’re about. Thinking you can cross that bridge when you get to it? Think again. Your second act had better be queued up and ready to roll before you hit intermission, or you may not be given the opportunity to show it off again.

Recently a producer friend of mine asked me to get a few actors together for a show he produces. He’d need them to pitch their concepts to him and he’d probably put up their stuff in two months. But he also had a slot for this month’s show. Who scored that slot? My friend who already had so many ideas wound up that when she pitched one to him, and he — as producers do during pitches — asked, “What else ya got?” was ready to pitch another. And another. And then she was booked.

Everyone else? Maybe next month. Or the next. Or never.

I met with my manager last month and while the agenda item was one project, we ended up talking about several others. All good, viable, marketable, sellable concepts. Because he’s not sending me into pitch meetings about one thing. He’s sending me in as someone with plenty of good ideas. That’s smart money.

So, you’re an awesome actor. You’re ready for that opportunity. And it comes. You score that meeting with the agent you’ve been stalking — I mean, targeting — for months and you’re asked to do a monologue. Done. No problem. You’re a smart actor and you always have something ready to show off. You do it. It’s great. Then the agent does the unthinkable: asks if you have anything else. Oops. You kind of have this other piece, but it’s a little rusty and not something you’ve rehearsed in a long while. Do you mention it and run the risk that you’ll have to do it? Do you say you have nothing else prepared? While you’re spinning your wheels here, the agent is imagining how you might freeze up during the dreaded, “So, tell me about yourself” moment if she were to send you out as her client on a general with a casting director.

Ah, crap. No second act.

Or you’re given the opportunity to do five minutes on stage as a stand-up. Awesome. You have a great five minutes. You even have a great seven minutes, but they asked for five so you edit your stuff down and are ready to rock. You do. And they ask you to come back for the late show, doing 15 minutes. Different stuff. And you just used up your best five of seven getting that opportunity. Those five minutes have been worked out over months in class and at open-mic nights. That’s your A-list stuff! Do you try and scribble out a 15-minute set between now and the late show? Or do you turn down this opportunity, promising next time you’ll be ready.

What next time? This was your shot.

You don’t put out a single without having enough songs to fill an album.

You don’t premiere your web series without several episodes already shot, edited, and ready to go, one right after the other.

You don’t enter a screenplay contest, win, and have no other scripts to cart around to your many, many post-contest meetings.

Look, when I wrote for Back Stage West, my beat was casting. I interviewed a couple hundred casting directors and when I published my first book, Casting Qs (a compilation of 120 of those interviews), I thought that was going to be my thing. That’s what I’d be known for. But I had this “second act” book, in case people wanted it. It was a concept I had been knocking around, called Self-Management for Actors. I knew I needed to have a second act, and that was going to be it. And my third book was going to be Casting Calendar and the fourth would be Casting 101 and so on. Nope. No need for third and fourth, as the second would become “it” (three editions, thus far). And there’d be a different third one, Acting Qs, with a co-author. But my point is that I had a second act planned. And thank goodness for that! It became what I’m known for. Cool.

I work with directors who try to minimize the impact of their first films, when they’re inspired by, excited by, motivated by their second films. “That first one was my starter wife. I made all of my mistakes on that one. This one, we’re calling my baby. This is the one I’ll be known for,” they’ll say.

Okay, that’s fine. That’s spin. That’s cool. But the point is that these guys had a second act ready to go (maybe even a better, cooler, more important film) before they even finished shooting their first. They knew the second one was potentially much more important to their careers.

Whenever I follow someone new on Twitter or start keeping up with someone’s blog or vlog, I wonder whether they’ll keep going beyond those first few, exciting posts. When the feedback wanes, when their enthusiasm settles down a bit, when they start having to stretch to come up with something to say, they stop posting. And the Internet is littered with the carcasses of blogs, vlogs, journals at social networking sites, etc., created by well-meaning but “no-second-act-having” folks. It’s why it’s so tough to want to get invested, when new ones start up. Heck, take this column! I keep a running list of topic ideas, because some weeks, the topics don’t just “pop” into my head. I visit my list and find one there. When inspiration strikes, I either start writing a column way before I need it or I add a brief outline to my topic list for future use.

A bunch, bunch, bunch of second acts!

Maybe you won’t need most of ’em, but it’s good for your creative spirit to always be generating ideas, concepts, even harebrained schemes. And, hey, someone may buy ’em from you someday!

Bonnie Gillespie is living her dreams by helping others figure out how to live theirs. Wanna work with Bon? Start here. Thanks!

Originally published by Actors Access at http://more.showfax.com/columns/avoice/archives/001062.html. Please support the many wonderful resources provided by the Breakdown Services family. This posting is the author’s personal archive.