President Bill called the meeting to order at 12:19.
Eric shared in Thought of the Day that he hopes that our President can work in a more civil way with Congress.
Laura led us in the Pledge to an imaginary flag.
After lunch, David Grant announced one visiting corporate Rotarian: Mary Cherveny from the Park District.
President Bill announced two birthdays: Lee Padgitt on December 22 and Trisha Kocanda on Deccember 25. No anniversaries this week.
Announcements:
Bill asked servers Barb and Jill to join him at the podium, and presented them with holiday gifts.
Dig N Grin: David Birkenstein acknowledged his recent hospital stay and provided us with humorous “hospital terms”.
Happy Bucks:
President Bill had a buck for Eric, for helping him to keep the agenda straight. DnG and Happy Bucks were reversed, which Eric noted.
Eric offered a buck for his father David, who was featured expansively in a recent Winnetka Living magazine. It was noted that this news is a week old, but was not mentioned last week due to David’s granddaughter Julia, a Santa believer, being in attendance.
Barb had a buck to celebrate her gifted granddaughter, who rolled over at 3 months.
Our speaker was Jim Munson, retired attorney who is now pursuing an acting career. He shared the personal history of his father and his retirement. Jim decided that he would not allow himself to have a lack of purpose upon his own retirement. He made a list of to-dos, and has pursued some of them, notably acting. He began by taking classes at Oakton, and was in shows there. After Oakton he took classes at Victory Gardens theater and was in shows there. He got an agent in 2010, which has moved his career along.
He shared that Chicago has 250 theater companies, large to tiny storefronts, providing many opportunities for an actor. He works in plays, commercials, voice-overs and does print media. His career, with an agent, has been busy since 2010, with 12-13 bookings a year. He described the audition and call-back process, and noted there are 7 or 8 callbacks for each audition. One has to be prepared to be turned down.
What makes people good actors? You can’t “pretend” to have emotions – they have to be real. Compelling actors have real emotions, channeling real emotions from within.
High points in his career:
A storefront show that got 3 stars in the Tribune and got his photo in the paper.
An Onion video two years ago when he was portraying a “rich guy who didn’t care about the election”. The video has 1.5 million views…for this spot he got $300.
A 2-day video shoot for Rivers Casino, the ads are shown locally and his wife happened to spot him in one when they were walking downtown.
He shared that voiceovers are great as it is a “tiny” time commitment, therefore a great hourly rate.
The collaboration, spending time with younger, diverse actors.
Low points:
Live play called “Enron” – was in a scene with the lead character when he lost his focus and could not remember his lines. Fortunately she brought him back on track by asking him a question.
A small theater performance, with a very small audience of one – his wife.
He was prescribed steroids for an ACL injury, not realizing that a side affect was short term memory loss. His understudy was not ready, so after he admitted to the stage manager that he had no idea what his lines were, the show was cancelled.
Jim acknowledged that this has been a wonderful post-career opportunity. Q&A followed.
In our closing card draw – Mike Shelton pulled the Ace of Hearts and won the pot!
The meeting was adjourned at 1:34.
Patti Van Cleave
Scribe
The meeting was adjourned at 1:35.