Hey, there!

How’s your website looking? Did someone stop by today, hopeful you might be the right person to bring in for an audition (or receive a direct offer!), and did they find what they needed …

...or were they left cold and moved on?

Let’s make sure in your case, it’s the first option!

(Recently I’ve been doing some casting for a variety of projects for myself and others, and have found more often than not websites are overcomplicated, cluttered, confusing, or missing some essential items necessary to recommend someone for casting.)

Your website should be clean, simple, and effective, and give people the MOST USEFUL information AS QUICKLY as possible. It isn’t a memorial page for your life; it isn’t a theme park in your honor we have to explore; it’s a digital business card.

A GREAT website has the following qualities:

STRONG LANDING PAGE

The first thing we see is your beautiful face — can be a headshot, but a “promotional / lifestyle shot” would be even better
We see your perfect, professional name — ideally it’s what most people in the industry will call you. If you use a nickname 99% of the time, why not make sure that’s the name you consistently use everywhere else?
A branding statement — NOT an “about” paragraph (more on that later)
POSSIBLY: a featured video that you feel is the best “welcome to the heart of me, and by the way, this video is f*cking great.”
POSSIBLY: a current or upcoming project you’re working on, if you feel it’s super cool and attention-grabby. (Make sure to take it down once it’s passed though!)

AVOID OVERLY-LONG, NARRATIVE "ABOUT ME" SECTIONS

It’s super tempting to have a long 200+ word section that tells us about the day you were born, the first time you saw Wicked, why Momo got you into theatre, and the dream roles you aspire to one day play — but this is all, unfortunately, not the information we are interested in at the moment. And really, once we ARE interested, we aren’t likely to go back and read this anyway. So you don’t really ever need this paragraph! YES, have an “About Me,” but it should be short and ideally in the form of a branding statement.

A BRANDING STATEMENT

A branding statement is 1-3 sentences which clearly communicate your:

VOICE TYPE and any musical genres you really specialize in
YOUR STYLE, if you associate strongly with a particular look (they can see your photos so you don’t have to describe your body necessarily)
YOUR ENERGY if there is something powerful immutable about your demeanor that is useful in your storytelling
OPTIONAL: YOUR AUTHENTICITY if you’d like to communicate that hear – queerness, ethnicity, nationality, disability, etc., whatever you want people to know that you proudly identify as (aka, if there is a story about that authenticity, YOU should be the one to tell it!)

Something in the form of:

BILLY JAMISON is a ROCK-SCRELTING TENOR despite the fact that he’s giving you FULL NERD VIBES. He’s a QUEER storyteller from the BRONX and is ready to rock your world.

(Or something!)

VIDEOS

At minimum, have 2-3 videos of good quality that showcase your classic, radio, and contemporary MT go-to cuts.
At max, you may want videos of all your audition cuts so that people can quickly click on the songs in the genre they might be exploring
You may also have production videos IF you are prominently featured and the performance is impressive (be mindful: the fact that you were in a show isn’t, on its own, impressive)

A NOTE ON VIDEOS:

Don’t worry about the video quality as long as you’re mostly in frame. Self-tapes are totally fine!
Make sure the accompaniment is loud enough to balance with your voice; sometimes if it’s not quite loud enough, you may come off as pitchy (when you’re not) or unsupported by the accompaniment.
Cuts OR full songs are fine; many people will scrub to 2/3 of the way through on your video for the climax to see what’s going on, and if they’re interested, they may then watch the whole thing.
Don’t include links to videos that may require passwords or may be difficult in ANY way to access — and do not make us download anything!

REELS ARE...EH

Avoid musical theater reels — we don’t need to know generally all the styles you sing in in one video, where we have to watch 7 minutes to get the starting info we want in 30 seconds.
It’s better to have separated videos than a reel combining songs.
Monologues are also better separated out, but an acting reel is better than an MT reel.
However: film/TV reels are fine as are dance reels!

PHOTOS

Please NOT a gallery of 40 photos. A few contrasting headshots are great.
A few lifestyle / promo shots are also great.
Full body or dancing shots may be useful.
Photos from shows are good IF the production value is high and elevates you — if you look great but the show looks bustatron, it may distract from how awesome YOU are.

HEADSHOT & RESUME

Obviously, have a good headshot (professionally taken, ideally in NYC), and up to 2-3 contrasting
Your resume wants to look polished and clear. No need to add every time you stepped foot onstage — only roles you feel are useful to selling what you can do.
If you’ve worked at great theatres or with great directors, include them
On education/master classes, ONLY include names of people who would give you a solid recommendation if they got texted asking about you (aka, not a celebrity you spent 5 minutes with 10 years ago)
Don’t make us download your headshot/resume to view it!

CONTACT

If you have reps, include their contact info
I hate “contact forms” that basically just email you … better to include your OWN email address and let people contact you directly (and when some creeper uses your email from your website because you’ve become so famoso, THEN you take your address down)
Include your Instagram and/or TikTok IF you feel they are useful parts of your brand

And that’s it!! You really don’t need much else.

NOTE: Many people feel it's important to have a clean mobile version of your site as well. I know this can be easy to overlook, but check it out on your phone too, to make sure it functions well on a device.

FAQS

Does domain name matter? I know some people will do www.myname.wixsite.com, etc. Is it important to own a domain that's easy to remember/type in from a resume?

Yes, I think you want www.yourname.com, or even www.yournameActor.com, ideally. Make it intuitive. You also don’t want a domain, ideally, that looks like you got it for free; it is helpful too look like you’ve invested in your career, as they want to invest $$$$ in you.

Should I include other things I do, like my voice studio I started or my work as a yoga teacher, etc.?

I would not. They should be separate websites unless you only act while teaching yoga (that’s a joke).

How do you feel about a "news" section? I know a ton of people do this, and it's kind of a way to track what a person's been up to lately. It's more in-depth than the one-off section about an upcoming project, so is it useful or does it just create more clutter?

I have no problem with a news section, as long as you keep it updated regularly. When I see a news section that hasn’t been updated in 4+ months, it is not really useful. Also, you could consider attaching your Instagram feed (the actual posts) as a news section, if you’re posting professional news there. (If it’s all hang-outs with friends, that might not be totally useful though.)

A NOTE ON POSTURING:

Please honor yourself and be “as big as you are” — no more, no less. I have noticed an interesting thing with early-career artists: sometimes, they want to give people the impression they’re “very professional” and “have a team of gatekeepers working for them” and are “a very big deal” — while knowing deeply they are really excited for an opportunity and would love to be paid to do the thing they love!

Some artists think that by maintaining a thick sheen of “professionalism,” people will take them more seriously. But the reality is, more often than not, casting and creative folks quickly see through that and sense that perhaps this artist is fooling no one but themselves — and worse, may be difficult to bring into the cast or difficult to work with in the room.

We always want you to protect yourself and ensure you’re not being taken advantage of — but give yourself the chance to be strongly considered, get the offer, and then ask the right questions (and/or let your reps do the hard work) — by being easy-going, warm, open-hearted, flexible and passionate to begin with.

The people you want to work with are casting HUMANS, not “Ack-tors,” and I’d go so far as to say they’d like to believe they’re casting future friends, not future lines on a resume.

So, with all this in mind, go with the digital Gods and get that website in tip-top shape!!!

-RSO