We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Chaundre Hall-Broomfield a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Chaundre, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.
For acting, I love it rained at a four year conservatory for professional actor training and got my BFA in it from SUNY Purchase. I’m not sure what I could’ve done to speed up the process. I don’t think in that way. I sought out guidance through the program and my professors and I through myself into studying and practicing. The speed of which I was able to learn is hard for me to determine. Growth happened in its own time. I just walked the path and that’s all I can think about. Even today. To speed up is to think with the result in mind. I’m Not result oriented. I’m exploration oriented. The skills most essential I think are two things. Exercises to open myself and my expression up physically, mentally and emotionally. And secondly a technical practice of script analysis that allowed me to figure out how to use my expanded forms of expression in the proper context for whatever project I’m working on. It’s one thing to be believable, it’s another thing to tell the story. If there were any obstacles, it was only when my ego got in the way which made it harder to take in new information. Be open to what my teachers were sharing with me. Fully dive into it, and THEN decide later if it’s useful. There are things I learned in school that almost ten years later, now are making sense to me and I’m able to actively out into practice. But if I never was open to it, I wouldn’t have it to come back to now.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I’m a Newburgh, NY native who grew up as a church boy. Church was the first place that facilitated my sense of and hunger for performance. Singing in the choir and praise team, playing in the band, and speaking verses from the Bible for the congregation. Through my time in the church I looked for similar outlets outside of church. I was in all the different arts clubs and activités that my highschool had to offer. You name it, I was a part. Since then I have gone on to train professionally in college and have been a working actor since 2017. I’ve been on Broadway with Hamilton, performed nationally on the tour of hamilton, been at world renowned regional theaters doing plays, been on television as a top of show guest star with shows like Law and Order and FBI, and most recently am a series regular on the hit BET plus show, KINGDOM BUSINESS working with names such as Kirk Franklin, Michael Jai White, Michael Beach, Loretta Devine, and Yolanda Adams. in between my acting gigs, Im a musician for hire, run my own recording studio as a producer and engineer, and have taken up photography specializing in portraits. I’m proud of all the things I’ve been able to do with my art that has fulfilled me emotionally and artistically, and am also proud and grateful that I’ve been able to pay my bills only through my art since graduating.
Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?
Social Media. Growing up as an artist I had a huge focus on the art form. I fell in love with the craft of it. It’s legacy, it’s history, it’s responsibility to society. I was passionate about it. And thusly my thoughts and education about the business was little. I didn’t understand that social media is just another tool to help me in show BUSINESS. I feared it because I felt it cheapened my art. But these days I’m realizing I’m still just as much an artist and can embrace the tool and even find artistic outlets through the tool. Influencing is a job like anything else. If anything my sense of marketing has increased because of my time opening up to it.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
At the end of the day, what attracts people to you is a truthful and transparent PRESENTATION of who you are. Sometimes we feel like presenting ourselves through the medium of social media feel disingenuous. But the same way our behavior changes when we interact with our parents is different than the way we interact with our bosses, which is different than the way we interact with our best friend, you interaction with social media is also different. So once you’ve figured out the math of that platform, present yourself truthfully but through THAT medium.
Contact Info:
Image Credits
Forthrmusic (you can find them on Instagram)