Free Reference Bids Farewell, with www.backstage.com
By Barry X. Miller Jul 15, 2011I’m so glad we had this time together,
Just to have a laugh or sing a song.
Seems we just get started and before you know it
Comes the time we have to say, “So long.”
I hope you’ll indulge if not forgive my wistful propensity for preciousness by way of Carol Burnett’s signature tune from her iconic 1960s–70s variety show that defined ensemble acting as we this month set free Free Reference and bid adieu to a column that over the last two-plus years on the information interstate has taken in some quirky, diverse, entertaining, and—hopefully for all my public service comrades in li-barry land—useful rest stops. LJ’s decision to retire this column is not without personal significance for me as I am contemplating the end of my own library odyssey with Austin Public after a 30-year hitch. And my informed guess, based on daily reports out the wazoo, is that there are lots of boomer librarians in that proverbial 1959 Ford Fairlane Galaxie 500 with me. So, to reconnect with Carol, what will the second and third acts have in store for us? For me, the acting metaphors are dead-on as I have cultivated over the past 25 years, in addition to my tenure as an adult services librarian, a theatrical career as a professional actor and stage manager with a regional theater and proudly carry in my biker wallet my Actors’ Equity Association membership card that allows professional entrée into any audition for the theatrical stage from the smallest SPT (Small Professional Theatre) to Broadway. One of the best sources of information for me and any other professional actor seeking audition notices around the country is
www.backstage.com, the web-based version of Back Stage newspaper, for years the standard trade source for audition and casting call notices. With some 80 percent of all professional actors belonging to Equity out of work at any given time, daily searches of backstage.com are an obligatory part of the working actor’s routine. Updated daily, the site provides detailed casting calls and production information for film, theater, television, and industrial projects in major regional cities like Chicago, Seattle, and Miami, as well as New York City and Los Angeles. Subtitled “The Actor’s Resource,” the site features a busy homepage dense with information buttons and flash banners covering all aspects of concern to the professional actor. Among the homepage cornucopia are discrete sections for casting, news and features, advice columns (by actors and agents), reviews for movies/TV and theater in New York and L.A., pertinent blogs, message boards, the all-important production listings, backstage video, top stories of the day, and an actors’ yellow pages for nuts-and-bolts things like résumés and head shots. General searches are available via the prominently displayed free-text window. A secondary banner offers specific drilling into New York and L.A. actor wells.
BOTTOM LINE Librarians and actors are both inherently insecure professionally. Librarians have been institutionally marginalized and LJ’s Movers & Shakers notwithstanding, it ain’t changed a whole lot; actors lucky enough to have a job (see above statistic referring to 80 percent unemployment) are convinced they’ll never find another one and will be waiting tables forever (two men are talking at a party: “So, what do you do?” asks one. “I’m an actor,” says the other. “What restaurant?”) or that someone better/younger/prettier is just around the corner (how many actors does it take to screw in a lightbulb? 100—one to screw it in and 99 to say how much better they could have done it). But don’t cry for them, Argentina, or Peoria, or Austin. My experience is such that they are really quite happy. Backstage.com is a trick-o-the-trade that beautifully yokes librarian and actor, resource and audience.Hey, y’all, if you’re ever lucky enough to find yourselves in Austin, there’s a free ticket waiting for you to see an Austin Playhouse production, no kiddin’ (I’m very easy to find). So, visualize, if you will, Barry X. à la Carol Burnett tugging his ear and bidding this lovely Free Ref audience “good night, everybody.” —Barry X. Miller, Austin P.L., TX
