Pressure of playing vulnerability

In the new play I'm in, I play a flamboyant character, comfortable through most of the play behind his bravado performance.

But there is one long emotional speech. It comes from nowhere, no build up on stage - just straight into this unselfconscious exposure of his utter vulnerability, like a gaping wound.

I was having such difficulty doing it. I dreaded it. I arrogantly presumed the writing wasn't good enough, or blamed the lack of truth on not having learnt the lines. But really, it was just that I couldn't take the pressure. The blatancy that I wasn't doing it as well as it could be done.

So I kept forcing it harder and harder. Like constipation - desperately trying to get something out but to no avail. No truth came.

And then the assistant director managed to do what this unfortunate, bumbling, insecure writer/director couldn't. She managed to make me relax. To realise that all I needed to do was tell the story. Gently. Calmly. And let the emotion come if and when it comes.

And, of course, it did. Tears started to surface, but I held them back. I had to tell the story. And it felt true. It was no longer painful to do.

Two days later, I somehow went halfway back - gesturing too much, not connecting with the thoughts. The director tried to find a way of getting it back to what it was. The other actors all joined in with their tuppence worth on how to do it - inevitable what with the director not being strong enough.

While they were all talking, I declined suggestions such as "say the speech in your own words - not the characters" and just tried to think of what he wanted to gain from the other characters on each sentence. (Good old intentions and actions!)

Realising that one line could be played as "Shut Up" suddenly opened up the emotions, the need to tell the story. And again it worked truthfully. There was a different tension in the air; I felt vulnerable, but happy to expose myself. When I finished the director stood and flung her arms around me - the very first time she had touched me.

I just hope I'll be able to create the same connection when there's an audience there.

Resolutions...

...that I probably won't keep

1.) Take a month off alcohol and narcotics
Wouldn't it be great to see if I could last a whole month. Drugs would be easy, I do them very rarely. But booze... it's everywhere. Could I go out and socialise and just stay on the tap water. People do. Would I have the willpower? I guess it's fine to have a glass or two here and there, but wouldn't it be great to see what it felt like without any booze.

2.) Exercise
Just tried to go for a run. Beautiful day, if a little windy. Kept stopping and walking. No real desire to push through. Good to get out of the house and work up a little bit of a sweat, but where's the willpower to get really fit. Maybe tomorrow, eh, maybe tomorrow?

3.) Give something back
Do some charity work or drama workshops. I'm sure this wouldn't be entirely selfless as surely I would get a lot out of it. For a start, it might make me feel a good deal less despondant, make me feel like I'm putting something into this world for once. My occasional bouts of despair come from having nothing valuable to do. I could do something valuable and help others feel like they're creating something worthwhile perhaps.
But, oh, why don't I? Because I fear I'll be missing out on something else! An audition might come up. Or, more likely, I could be at home trying to write some great work of art. As I so often am of late. Trying. Writing but 500 words, before realising I'm not certain why I'm writing, what I'm trying to say.

What am I trying to say?

Despondant

is how I feel.

Is it that my life is too easy - nothing to really struggle against? Is it that I find it impossible to find anyone to fall in love with?

Or is it just that I'm still recovering from staying up till 8am on Sat/Sun on MDMA?

First rejection

Drama Centre, who I got a recall from, have just emailed to say I ain't made the grade. I was feeling pretty indestrucible, being in two plays and having just had my RADA recall and soon to have my Bristol Old Vic recall. But now it dawns on me that it's quite quite possible that I won't get into anywhere.

The curious thing is that I haven't fully decided that I want to go to drama school, but I sure as hell want the option to. And the confirmation that I can act.

But then, it's a lottery. Hundreds go that never do act... and hundreds don't go that are very successful. I guess we all find our own route. It'd be nice if mine wasn't studded with too many rebuttals though.

But I accept that rejection is par for the course

Ironing...

...is so incredibly frustrating. No matter how long I spend on each shirt they still seem quite wrinkled.

Is there a knack to it? Is it better to do it straight after washing?

The idea of paying someone to iron for me is ludicrous right now, but it can get pretty damned tempting.

Rollercoaster of emotions

Three weeks of the show have gone by and we're now heading into the final week. I've flicked between extremes of feeling very low - feeling shameful and apologetic towards certain audiences - to feeling very contented, accepting the silliness of it all, finding moments of truth and learning a hell of a lot about the craft of being on stage.

After all my secret snootiness towards the show, I found myself gobbling a large piece of humble pie as I realised a couple of important things. Firstly, it's become apparent during the run that the other actors realise the script is heavily flawed, but that they have just been getting on with it. The defence mechanism of flippantly chanting "it's only acting, dahling" makes a little more sense now.

Secondly, I've realised with material as simple and crass as this, it's essential to play it openly, to let the audience see your face, and to revel in the ridiculousness of it all. For ages I was trying to play it all for truth, and also hiding from the audience a bit, never really letting them see my eyes, apologising for the material instead of sending it up, and sharing the cheap gags openly with them.

One of the actors told me a terrible but fascinating trick that I guess must be used by all veteran actors. He often takes a step upstage away from the audience so that he can still look at the other characters on stage but that the audience can still see his face. Upstaging at it's finest. Obviously to do this all the time would be awful but on important moments, it's really useful to know.

Let the audience see your face and stay completely in the moment (even on nights when the audience clearly detest the show) and they'll thank you for it, much more than if you make the whole thing more uncomfortable by apologising for it.

Glitter rolling

That's my job now.

You can't polish a turd. But you can roll it in glitter

Champagne, flowers and delusion

Press night tonight. No press arrived.

I fluffed a series of lines and stood back stage imagining myself in a melancholy film following a failing actor. But then the audience seemed to enjoy it all the same. Were they all friends?

Flowers at the curtain call. Champagne and canapes at the pub afterwards. I feel awful for thinking what I think of the whole thing, because at heart they're all such decent people. Decent, yes, but also so utterly deluded.

You can't make people want to see a show, or enjoy it when they do, just by being nice. You've got to be talented, and even then you also need to get advice, to polish the whole affair.

I find it complete insanity that I'm the only person (other than the designer) working on this project who isn't a friend. To presume that you'll be able to write a great play, make a great press release, design a good flyer without asking advice from people who do it for a living is just retarded.

No writer worth his salt doesn't go through an editor, even if that editor is simply a discriminating friend - one who's willing to disagree.

What worries me even more is that maybe the writer/director/producer didn't presume anything, but instead simply didn't think about making the script/press release/flyer the best it could be. Simply didn't think

4 weeks are looking like a very long time

"It's only acting, darling...", drones the overly camp, prematurely senile actor for the fiftieth time, "...it's only a comedy"

I'm silent. But I want to throttle him and shout, "Shut up, shut up, shut up, you stupid old queen"

If your so blase about it all, why don't you f*&k off and leave it to someone who cares... and would therefore create something infinitely more watchable and truthful than the stock camp moments you create.

And as for saying "It's only a comedy" - you f*&kwit, comedy needs twice the discipline to be genuinely, deeply funny.

Four weeks to go - I can't imagine how we'll continue to get audiences. I anticipate the reviews with equal dread and masochistic pleasure.

Forgotten Scenes

It always happens on the nights leading up to the opening of a new show. A dream. I'm playing one of the scenes, but can't remember half the lines. The scene fades in and out of my grasp and I struggle to wake myself up, to find the safety of the script.

But when I do, the scene isn't there either. It never was. I'd made it up.

Long ago, on a French exchange, I had a similar experience. I was dreaming in French, chatting to my exchange's father, whilst we rowed in the middle of a gigantic lake. I understood everything he said, but one word. So, on waking, I looked up the word in a huge French dictionary.

I am the inventor of brand new French words - if I only I knew what they meant.

Taste (buds)

Funny how it changes. Funny how they change. I love a good Ale now. Never used to touch the stuff. Wouldn't drink it on a big night out - but my taste for those is on the decline.

But for a casual pint after a good day's rehearsals, it's quite quite delicious. And with the very slight inebriation it brings me I feel a huge desire to exclaim,

"God, it's good to be British"

Three come at once

Tonight was my first public screening of a short film I've acted in. And the second. And the third. Over the last three months I've been in about 9 shorts and the first three to screen all screened on the same night. One at a central London cinema, then the following two at a major art gallery in London - luckily pretty close.

Then I got drunk, kissed the girl who was in the third short and cycled home in the pouring rain. I've sobered up a little now... but I'm still wet.

I was feeling like a student again, utterly careless. But as I looked in the mirror I was drawn to the lines appearing under my eyes. Only in my mid-twenties, and the fear of old age is already setting in. I tell myself it's ridiculous, that you should accept you are and how you change.

Yet at the same time my vanity shrieks out the lack of time. Age hurtling onwards as youth slips inescapably away; a previously unwanted treasure sinking into the depths, forever further out of reach.

Narcissistic fool

Fearful Dreams

How ridiculous! I woke up in a state at 3am this morning. I was dreaming that the cast and creators of this pantomimic comedy had read my first blog (below) and were deeply hurt by what I wrote. It was so utterly real. So hard to tell myself it was jut a dream and I could go back to sleep. That I didn't need to do anything about it.

In the clear light of day, I see it's just foolishness (it's an anonymous post after all), mixed with an equal measure of arrogance (that anyone would be reading this blog yet, let alone the technophobic old queens I'm working with). Strangely enough, they weren't angry, just hurt. Which was infinitely worse.

"Gosh, if only it were a tandem"

These were the words uttered to me as I prepared to hop on my bicycle just now. It was only as I cycled away I realised that this might have been a chat-up line.

Which bothers me. She may have been drunk, but she was also beautiful and charming. She didn't bark out some drunken slur, but rather just turned when I accidentally rang my bell and said "Bbbbrrring!"

"Sorry, I hit it by... Sorry" I said, as I hopped on

"Gosh, if only it were a tandem", winking, smiling. I'm sure. I cycled off

I didn't say "You can sit on the pannier". I didn't cycle her back to hers. We didn't swap numbers. She didn't invite me in for a drink. We didn't suddenly find that we had an incontrollable attraction to each other. We didn't start making mad, passionate love.

I just cycled off, fast at first, then slowing as the realisation washed over me. It might have been nothing. Most likely. But I'm single. And it saddens me not to give things a chance. Not to at least talk to someone, who seems (on very first impressions) to... impress.

More shame than glory

Will it be everything I feared it would?

After accepting this, my first paid theatre role, and signing the contract it suddenly dawned on me that I may have opened the door to a whole world of shame... and little or no glory. The contract surely couldn't have any real legal hold on me. We hadn't started rehearsing and I wouldn't be taken to court over something as trifling as this. But it did bind me morally. It was too late to change my mind now.

"You make your bed, you have to lie in it", my Dad declared apologetically when I told him of my fears. My fears of ridicule - paying audiences and reviewers watching me churn out cheap gags and camp innuendos.

My cheeks redden with embarrassment thinking about it.

Why did I accept this? There's many others who would have happily filled the role saying, "it's your first offer of paid theatre, how could you turn it down"... well, the answer is I couldn't. Not because of the money, but because I felt I should. Swept along by the excitement of winning a paid theatre role, I failed utterly to listen to myself screaming "Don't do it, they'll be something else around the corner"

But would there be? Maybe not immediately, but wouldn't waiting be better than prostituting myself for a show I don't believe in. A show that my parents, my friends, even distant acquaintances are going to pay to see.

Maybe it won't be as bad as I imagine. Maybe we might manage to find some kind of truth in this vainly concealed pantomime. But with one week's rehearsals down and only one left to go, I still feel lost.

Yet the director is delighted. For him all is going to plan.

I suppose it's all a matter of taste. If only it were to mine.