 Hi, my name is Belchika and I'm an actress and this is Cynthia de Haller and today we are going to announce the winner of the monologue competition that we hosted. We saw lots of submissions, right? We enjoyed a lot of them. So first I do want to thank everybody for taking the time. I know you took some time to modify the monologue or memorize the monologue, film, really appreciate everybody. There were a lot of really great submissions and we are going to be announcing the winner at the end of the video. Today we wanted to talk about just some things that we weren't taught in college because we both went to college. Was your major acting specifically or what was your major in college? Yeah, I majored in theater and I minored in mass communications and I almost finished dance but then I did it. Yeah, I feel like you told me this during the first video. Yeah, I went into college to study acting specifically and then I also ended up doing a bunch of dance so I ended up with an option in acting and an option in dance by the end of it. They were like you have enough credit so you just need to do this and I was okay. We were both saying how in college they teach you a lot of acting but they don't really teach you about the business and that's such a huge part because you can be the most talented person in the world and still not make any money or really get anywhere because you don't know how to do it. So what did you do when you first got out of college? Well, when I first got out of college, I moved straight to LA. I spent like a month home and I was like oh I'm over this, I'm going to LA. So I came out to LA, hit the ground running. A lot of actors may or may not go through this background work, signing up for that but I wanted to get my vouchers and validate getting my SAG card as quickly as possible so I hit the ground running doing that. I got my part-time jobs. When I moved out, I was working as a summer camp counselor then I moved on to like a personal trainer. You know really flexible jobs that Google basically told me like I would be able to like survive and like do acting with. So it was really really cool. Very eye-opening first year. I mean I had my first agent within my first year being here. I had my first manager within my first year being here. I was sent out on some really cool auditions within my first year being here. I booked you know shorts. I got involved in a whole bunch of classes, ECB, scene work. So it was it was it was an interesting first first year in LA and like pursuing the acting. Going back to the business of acting, what is something that you think in college they didn't teach you that you would want people to know as far as the business side? How to be a business person? Yeah and I'd say that with like a little bit of salt because like our jobs our job is not to be the business person right? That's why we have like agents and managers and things like that. But we do have to have some skill skill set in it. We we have to be able to know how to market ourselves, how to maintain business relationships, how to you know network with these people. And I don't that's definitely something that wasn't taught in college right? Like we were taught how to break down a scene. We learned all the great playwrights. Which is really important. Which is very important. Yeah. Which is very important. And then you know they would mention like yeah you have to do auditions and like you have to meet casting directors but like okay how right? Like how do you do that stuff? It's not forming business relationships is not as simple as like we are all like at a mutual friends party and we like talk to each other. Like you actually have to put yourself in those situations. You have to put more effort into it. So yeah I feel like that was definitely not taught and it was something that like kind of in my face. Yeah and I'm still learning how to do it today. What that made me think of was that acting is a career so you should come into it treating it like so. Sure you can get an agent without any experience but that agent's gonna probably be a really small agency for commercials, non-speaking roles. You were saying that you did some background work. I definitely have done a lot of background work because sometimes I'm not booked on anything and they asked to book me for a background work and it's you know $350 a day or something plus overtime so I'm gonna say yes to it especially if it's gonna be like a week of that. I'm like okay don't put it on your resume, don't put it on your real professionals don't want to see that and I just want to you know make that aware or people aware of that. I definitely have done a lot of background work. I definitely have done things for free. I've definitely negotiated more money into a project like a commercial. There's just a lot of things that you almost have to learn while doing them because we can tell that we can we can tell you you know treat it like a business and you're like no no no my talent will get me there but then you will see eventually that you need to put in the work. You need to audition so so many times. Something that we have in common is that we started in theater and I think that's so important. You know so funny I was actually having like a little conversation with this with like some director friends of mine. People like think they can prove you wrong but I'm one of the one of the people that come with the facts like I study the trends I see what's happening and like there's no negating it. Theater has such a good foundational work for actors right and it's like rigorous training right. Rigorous training, learning how to to work with ensembles sometimes not majority of times but the formula way back when used to be like if they're like the top theater actress like they can translate really well on camera some of our favorites like Viola Davis like she came from theater. Actors who kind of start off on tv they don't necessarily translate very well to film. There hasn't been many examples of like that that actually happening but people who start out in film always can go back and forth and my favorite example again is Viola Davis. She's such a good actress. Such a good oh my gosh her last movie Ma Rainey's Black I don't know just like yes girl it just gave me life for everything but she transitions very well back and forth into film and there's a trend right now with that happening right like Taraji P. Henson same thing with Angela Bassett you know there she was a very very strong film actress and now she's probably not on tv. As long as you have that good foundation I feel like especially with theater all these actresses that I mentioned graduated with theater degrees from prestigious colleges they do really really well. And not to say that that's the only way that you can become like a talented actor is by going to school in theater but it's just such a great in my experience it was such a great way to start. Having a background in theater I would suggest it to anybody interested in acting because I often get messages or comments where they're like oh what advice do you have for me I want to get started in acting and my advice is always to get training and right now with COVID it's still hard because there's not very many theaters that are open but if you have the opportunity to go be in some theater productions or go take some like some course in a community college university high school that's theater oriented I definitely suggest it because it's a great way to discover your acting. Maybe we should move on to announcing the winner and um yeah so Cynthia yeah who's monologue competition or monologue submission did you enjoy the most? Well because I want to do a whole story about it we got a lot of submissions from all over the place we had someone from England people from South America, India um so it was really really cool thank you for all your submissions I watched all of them. We had a handful both me and Bill he kind of agreed that there was like a handful of good people everyone did an amazing job um but we both surprisingly agreed on the same person. We both had the same top two people. We both had the same top two first people and then we picked one and that person is can I get a little drum roll please? Look out! So we are going to play the uh submission for you guys we really enjoyed her use of space um how much she really understood the monologue her performance was amazing so here it is. Hello my name is Teresita Brown and I'll be doing a monologue called clogged drain by Cynthia D. Hillary living with a white roommate it's a hidden miss and if you miss it oh that shit sucks I once had a white roommate once said I'm not paying to plumb the drain that's you and all your wigs I collect all my hair at my shower what the fuck is that supposed to mean Heather? I don't collect my hair so out of the entire year of us living here I clog a drain all by myself out of the two times a month that I wash my natural hair in the one time a month that I wash my wigs compared to your every other day necessity to wash that black mop on top of your head you cannot possibly assume that I clogged the drain all by myself but did you not want to be responsible for me and my wigs so I paid the full $40 to have the plumber plumber drain my therapist said that it was the grown-up thing to do in that situation but I don't want to be grown and that shit literally killed me not only did she overpower me in the comfortability of my hair but now she was intruding on my finances roommates are supposed to go half bitch so go half that's half of your needle thin hair down the drain and half of my bouncy curls that's half if you're in shower pee and half of my daily tears half of your dead white sails and half of my life spent tending to my hair much like a drain a home is supposed to be a safe place in the pocket hole that collects all the anxiety and frustrations and joy for the day titanium fortress that carries most of your inner thoughts and as I decompress I feel safe and welcome I can't do that the bitch don't like my hair and so Teresita you are the winner of $200 plus a copy of a sit-down with sin my lots of black girls you'll get that honey $100 will be in a form of a visa debit card to use towards purchases of anything you would like and then a hundred dollar gift card to your choosing um either if you want to participate in some actors play classes or yeah with uh Jackie Dallas who does acting consulting and I think of course will be in the description but Teresita I'm so excited thank you guys so much for submitting so many great talented amazing people and if you didn't win this time especially if this was your first time ever auditioning for anything please do not be discouraged acting is a numbers game I can't tell you how many times I've auditioned I've auditioned hundreds of times um so I mean even in this youtube channel you're gonna have more opportunities because I'm definitely going to do this again in the future thank you Cynthia so so much I'm so excited that you reached out so excited about your monologue book and I hope that um you know we become friends in real life hopefully I get to meet you soon and um of course all of the links to Cynthia's stuff will be on the screen and in the description do you want to plug anything else while we're still here um I hope you guys have a beautiful day thank you for participating on this journey with us um and keep fighting the fight yes uh and at the end of every video I feature another channel this is today's feature if you would like to be featured on my next video make sure you're subscribed like this video and leave me a comment thank you Cynthia