Who Got the Part? Savannah Frazier

Role: Alta in ‘From the Fire,’ a nonunion musical at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Savannah Frazier

“The early bird gets the worm” may sound trite, but nonunion actor Savannah Frazier can attest to the truth of that cliché after her experience at an open call for “From the Fire,” an hourlong oratorio dramatizing the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911.

Frazier arrived at Pearl Studios in Manhattan around 4 a.m. on May 3 to sign up to audition for the nonunion national tour of “Fiddler on the Roof.” She remembered reading in Back Stage that auditions for “From the Fire” were being held next door at Ripley-Grier Studios that afternoon, so she took advantage of the extra time before her “Fiddler” audition at 10 a.m. and made hers the first name on the sign-up sheet for “From the Fire.”

Frazier was just days away from graduating from the two-year conservatory program at New York’s American Musical and Dramatic Academy, where students are encouraged to audition in the morning before attending classes later that day. “I love auditioning,” she says, “even if it’s something that I know I’m not exactly right for. Maybe they’re not going to cast me, but I love to audition. It’s seriously one of my favorite things to do.”

Who Got the Part? Colin Buckingham

Role: Santa’s helper in an episode of “30 Rock”

Colin Buckingham

Colin Buckingham arrived at Back Stage’s annual Actorfest NY event last year with copies of his headshot and résumé but only a vague idea of whom he might be able to give them to. When the hopeful young actor learned that casting director Barbara McNamara, who casts background performers for the NBC series “30 Rock,” was available for one-on-one “meet and greet” sessions in the afternoon, he immediately got in line for his chance to talk to her.

Buckingham, a nonunion actor and a sophomore in the undergraduate acting program at Pace University, says he’s been a fan of “30 Rock” since the first episode. When it was his turn to sit down for a precious few minutes with McNamara, he forced himself to be more outgoing and talkative than his normally shy personality allows.

“I talked to her about the show and how I’d been watching it for a long time, and how I really loved the witty humor,” Buckingham recalls. “She said, ‘We’d love to get you on “30 Rock,” ‘ and I did a double take. I thought I had misheard her, because I’d never done anything that big before.”

Artios Awards Honor Top Casting Directors in New York, L.A.

The casting directors of Broadway’s “The Book of Mormon” and “The Normal Heart” were among the honorees at the Casting Society of America’s 27th annual Artios Awards, which were presented Sept. 26 at District 36 in New York City and the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles.

“In a business that can often forget or ignore who actually gets things done and how, you guys have this night to always keep focused on the value of what you do,” host Nicole Sullivan told the nominees at the ceremony in Los Angeles. “Good casting is integral to having success in TV, film, and theater, and we are here to honor that.”

The term “Artios” is from the ancient Greek word meaning “perfectly fitted,” and the awards are presented for outstanding casting in theater, film, and television, based on originality, creativity, and the contribution of casting to the overall quality of the project.

“Casting directors are the unsung heroes of our business,” actor Michael Urie, who hosted the event in New York, told me before the ceremony. “They spend so much time and energy and work introducing artists to each other, and then they send them off into the world. They don’t get a lot of recognition, so I think it’s very cool that there’s a night for them, and I’m honored to be here. And I hope to get a job out of it.”

‘Tell Your Friends! The Concert Film!’ Premieres at the Paley Center in NYC

"Tell Your Friends! The Concert Film!" (left to right: Kurt Braunohler, Leo Allen, Rob Paravonian, Kristen Schaal, Liam McEneany, Victor Varnado, Christian Finnegan). Photo credit: Lindsay Aikman/Michael Priest Photography

Last night, Sketchfest NYC presented the New York premiere of Tell Your Friends! The Concert Film!, a documentary about the indie comedy scene in New York City and the long-running comedy show “Tell Your Friends!,” which is hosted each week by Liam McEneaney on the Lower East Side. McEneaney and director Victor Varnado (The Awkward Comedy Show) say their goal was to create a filmed document of the current comedy movement — like Woodstock or The Last Waltzdid for music — by combining live performances with insightful interviews and candid backstage footage to create an overall sense of the scene.

The film was shot at a live “Tell Your Friends!” show at The Bell House in Brooklyn last summer and features performances by Reggie Watts, Kurt Braunohler & Kristen Schaal, Christian Finnegan, Leo Allen, Rob Paravonian, and McEneaney. The documentary also includes interviews with comedians Janeane Garofalo, Jim Gaffigan, Colin Quinn, Marc Maron, Paul F. Tompkins, Eddie Brill, Wyatt Cenac, Hannibal Buress, and Kumail Nanjiani.

Tell Your Friends! The Concert Film! premiered at SXSW earlier this year, and has also screened at Just for Laughs in Montreal and Chicago, as well as other film festivals. Watch the trailer for the film below, then check out my video interviews with the creators and cast:

Jeremy Seglem On ‘Cop/Cop,’ Improvised Web Series at NYTVF

Jeremy Seglem began his acting career about five years ago, in a collection of short comedic web videos called “Treading Water.” Since then, in partnership with writer/director Tim Young, he’s continued to produce original video content for the web — first as the co-creator and star of the mockumentary series “Twilight with Steve Cooper” and its follow-up, “Behind the Steve,” and now as the co-creator and writer of “Cop/Cop,” a new improvised comedy series starring Tyler Gilmore and Rob Cuthill as two inept cops who will go to any lengths to get a confession.

The first episode of “Cop/Cop,” titled “Old Dogs,” premiered online this week, and another episode has been selected to debut at the Channel 101 program at this year’s New York Television Festival on Friday night in NYC. Channel 101 is a monthly series in which five-minute shows are screened for a live audience, who vote to “cancel” some series and “renew” others, new episodes of which are then presented as part of the new “prime time lineup” at the event the next month.

“I have not experienced a live situation, where people will laugh at something I’ve made,” Seglem says. “So my goal is just to have people laugh at it. That’s really all I can ask. It’d be nice to advance, but as long as people think it’s funny, I don’t care.”

Watch the first episode of “Cop/Cop” below, then read my Q&A with Seglem to learn more about his creative process, how he finds an audience for funny three-minute videos among so much competition online, and why all actors should take on the role of a casting director.

(Warning: Language and situations may be NSFW)

Marc Maron’s Comedy Pilot Premieres at NYTVF

“Two years ago, I planned on killing myself in my garage. Now, I’m in my garage doing the best work I’ve ever done.”

This is how viewers are introduced to comedian and podcast host Marc Maron in his new independent comedy pilot, which premiered as part of the New York Television Festival‘s Primetime “Opening Night Comedy Extravaganza” last night in New York City. Presented with the eponymous working title Maron, the show opens with Maron speaking directly to the camera, sharing his neuroses with someone we’d assume is his therapist. But no — he’s just trying to connect with his cat’s veterinarian.

That type of straightforward, confessional comedy has been Maron’s trademark for more than two decades as a stand-up comic. Today, he reaches hundreds of thousands of listeners as the host of WTF with Marc Maron, a popular podcast — recorded in his garage at his home near L.A. that he calls the “cat ranch” — in which he engages comedians such as Robin Williams, Maria Bamford, Garry Shandling, Louis C.K., and more than 200 others in long-form conversations.

(“When I was going to a meeting at Fox [to pitch the pilot],” Maron revealed in a Q&A with the audience following the screening, “we were walking through the parking lot and Louis was driving out. He was just alone in his car, and he was like, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ I said, ‘I’m meeting with Fox. We did a pilot presentation.’ He goes, ‘Really?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, it’s called Louie Also.”)

Last night’s NYTVF screening was the first time that the public, or Maron himself, had seen the finished pilot.

“I was excited to see me,” Maron said of his on-screen performance. “There were moments that I was embarrassed for me, because of the vulnerability that I was putting forth, but I think that’s a good thing. If I’m embarrassing me because I’m looking at myself going, ‘Holy fuck! You’re so raw and weird,’ I think we’ve accomplished something.”

Eugene Mirman’s ‘Fake’ Comedy Fest Is Real

Eugene Mirman

The Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival is a joke.

At least, that’s how the annual event began four years ago, when Brooklyn-based standup comedian Eugene Mirman told fellow comics Mike Birbiglia and Julie Smith that it would be funny to name a comedy festival after himself because “it would be a ridiculous thing to do.”

Yet Smith took him seriously enough that she recruited Caroline Creaghead, her intern at The Onion, to help them make it happen. Together they launched the first Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival in 2008.

Creaghead had no experience producing or promoting comedy events, but she soon discovered that with a name like Eugene Mirman, performers would line up to participate. “He possesses an extremely warm vibe,” Creaghead says of Mirman, “and people just want to be around him, having fun. And that’s what he loves, is just people having a good time. It’s more about the experience that other people are having. That’s been a magical thing about the festival—it’s just like inviting people to a party.”

Q&A with Comedian Maria Bamford On ‘The Maria Bamford Show’ and Controlling the Voices in Her Head

Maria Bamford

You probably recognize stand-up comic Maria Bamford, even though you might not know it. That’s because Bamford — who has been on the verge of becoming a “household name” for the past decade — is best known for her ability to manipulate her voice and facial features to embody multiple characters, ranging from her friends and dysfunctional family to more general types.

In addition to various supporting roles in movies and TV series, Bamford was featured in the documentary The Comedians of Comedy with Patton Oswalt, Zach Galifiniakis, and Brian Posehn; has taped two half-hour Comedy Central Specials; and has recorded three stand-up albums (the latest, Unwanted Thoughts Syndrome, was released in 2009 and was named one of the “Best Comedy Albums of the Decade” by The A.V. Club). She has also put her transformative abilities to use as a voiceover artist, providing voices for animated series such as Ugly Americans, Home Movies, CatDog, Hey Arnold!, and more; the Cartoon Network series Adventure Time, in which Bamford plays multiple roles, is nominated for an Emmy award this year for “Outstanding Short-format Animated Program.”

About six years ago, Bamford used her unique metamorphosis skills to create a one-woman show titled Plan B, in which she faced her fear of having a nervous breakdown by imagining what it would be like to leave show business and move back into her parents’ attic in Duluth, Minnesota. The live show was then developed into a 20-episode web series called The Maria Bamford Show for the now-defunct website Super Deluxe in 2006. Bamford played about a dozen characters in the series, including her parents, her sister,  past high school acquaintances, and other Duluth locals, to entertain viewers with a surreal yet hilarious glimpse into the mind of this self-deprecating comic.

This week, while Bamford is part of the lineup at the annual Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal, The Maria Bamford Show is being paired with the Maysles brothers’ 1975 documentary Grey Gardens for a screening at the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC.

I spoke with Bamford about having her comedy paired with a documentary about the reclusive (and possibly mentally ill) Edith and “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale, why customer service can be more difficult than comedy, how she determined that it was time to give up acting, and more. Read the Q&A below:

10 Comics to Watch: Sara Schaefer

Sara Schaefer

Hails from: Midlothian, Va. Greener pasture: New York.

Accidental dream: Schaefer was auditioning to be a “Daily Show” correspondent when instead she landed a gig hosting “The DL,” a Web series for AOL. Then, when Jimmy Fallon succeeded Conan O’Brien on “Late Night,” she was hired as the show’s head blogger, thanks as much to her Web experience as her comedic chops. “It’s great to decide on the craziest, biggest dream you can imagine,” she says. “Whatever you get on the way is probably what you were looking for in the first place.” Award-winning nerd: Schaefer and “The Late Night With Jimmy Fallon Digital Experience” were recognized at the Creative Arts Emmys in 2009 and 2010. “I have the dorkiest Emmy you could possibly get,” she jokes about her two awards for “outstanding creative achievement in interactive media, nonfiction.” After more than two years at “Late Night,” Schaefer left this month to join the writing staff of the game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”

Sara Schaefer is one of “10 Comics to Watch” in the June 2-8, 2011 “Spotlight on Comedy & Improv” issue of Back Stage.

10 Comics to Watch: Hannibal Buress

Hannibal Buress

Hails from: Chicago. Greener pasture: New York.

Ride the train: Plenty of comics leave Middle America for one of the coasts early in their careers. So why did Buress choose New York over Los Angeles? “My driver’s license was suspended for parking tickets,” he says. “I didn’t have a driver’s license, so I couldn’t be in L.A.” Once he was in Gotham with MetroCard in hand, an appearance on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” led Buress to a season writing for “Saturday Night Live,” then a job as a scribe on “30 Rock.” Typecast as a bum? After only one season of working for Tina Fey, Buress already has a recurring role—as a homeless man. Usually, writers read for small roles before actors are cast later in the week, he says, but “I got a laugh the first time it was in the script. So they were like, ‘Let’s just have Hannibal do it.’ And then they kept writing it in.”

Hannibal Buress is one of “10 Comics to Watch” in the June 2-8, 2011 “Spotlight on Comedy & Improv” issue of Back Stage.