Saturday I had my final for Advanced Acting for Film. Next week we watch the final cuts so I’m looking forward to that but the filming we did on Saturday sort of firmed up some ideas in my mind.
I had the chance to have an on camera experience that I did not really enjoy. Up until this point I’ve always felt lucky that I have had the experiences with acting and crew and material I was having fun with. Up till this class, I have only done acting and film work because I love it so much, I’ve had fun with it – it was simply - playtime.
I felt though that I need more tools so I signed up for this class which was the antithesis of everything I’ve ever found pleasing about the sport of being an actress. It was simply - work.
I don’t think I would have had this revelation had I not had the experience. I watched myself on screen and camera for the multiple cuts after working for weeks on the same scene. And quite honestly I can say – it was obvious – in this new frame of experience that I was not in my element.
I have struggled for a long time with how I want to talk about this class. While I consider it valuable and really dug the teaching and tools by Barry Hunt, I am also at a place for the first time in my life where I’m questioning how badly I want to do this for a living.
That questioning in and of itself has made the whole experience worth its weight in gold.
When I was working on Hex with peeps in SE and on Animals with my friends – I have had the luxury of choosing my experience. I could choose the level of involvement and fun even when we were shooting till 3am and I didn’t get home till 4 after a full day at work and 20 hours of being on my feet – I had a shitty grin and although I fell into bed exhausted I burned with a light that was fulfilled and warm.
After class on Saturday I went home and paced, then went out and drank too much. I texted friends to join me for pool – I reached out on a massive scale for contact which I haven’t needed to do in a really long time. I drunken texted and I pushed boundaries in an attempt to meet a need in me – a sense of something lacking. I did not have the warm glow of satisfaction, that sense of having lost myself in a story and character and lived another lifetime and come out of it forgetting what time of day it was. For the first time, I was entirely conscious as I performed in front of the camera and with my scene partner. I was conscious and therefore damnably self-conscious. And it showed.
Is this because I didn’t choose my level of involvement? It is because I was assigned work rather than picking it? Is it because I was given a scene partner rather than earning one? And if this is the case… how can I expect to take my acting to the next level? How can I ever hope to jump if my sense of fun is dictated by a sense of being in control? Because I can pretty much guarantee that the dream I have of acting on a large scale means I will have little or no control over what I get to do and who I work with.
On a different note but also worth examining is my scene partner. Great guy. No fun to work with. I’ve fought with myself over the wisdom of posting anything negative about my experience with him but it does directly affect the way I think about this class and my future as an actress. Working with him brought out the latent elitist I hoped I never had in me. My frustration levels capped about three weeks ago and I locked myself in my room to meditate on it with this in mind. I had this conversation with myself, “Athena, if you want to be a writer/actress you are going to be working with people who may push your buttons, make you crazy and infuriate you to no end. Are you good enough to take it? Are you a good enough actress that you can do a scene with someone you want to throttle and not let anyone suspect that you would happily commit harm? Are you that good? Because if you can’t pass this test, you have no place in this line of work.”
Several times in the last weeks I have been face to face with him – a great guy, and the way I prepped myself is, “Athena, how good are you? Pass this test. Find the good in him and play to it.”
I felt entirely disingenuous. Fake. A feeling that sits on my skin like oil and I hated it. HATED it. I could tell it affected my interactions with everyone in my class and it bothered me that I felt like I had to maintain a veneer of artificiality with people I might like to make friends with – and there was no emotional contact because of it – and that bothered me more.
It is not in my nature to be so fake and it irked me deeply and each time it did and I returned to my scene I would ask myself, “Athena, how good are you? Because this may be what you will have to learn to deal with. How good are you?”
Here’s where it bent my brain. TOTAL mind-fuck.
I did this all to myself. I made the choice to struggle with my scene partner’s lack of experience. I made the choice to let it bother me. I made the choice to not let myself play. I made the decision to be less than I knew I was capable of being and I allowed myself to become self-conscious because I didn’t claim my truth and ability.
I made a choice to be shut down and fake and the ramifications were ten-fold a down hill spiral.
I made a choice that brought me face to face with a person in me that I don’t like. A person I didn’t know I was capable of being, and I don’t want her to have any foothold in my persona. At all.
All of this brought me back to the very first indicator of something being wrong. I was not having fun. The whole reason I do this – is because it is fun. Even on days when it feels like work and I’m tired and burned out – I still love it and it’s enjoyable.
Why was this experience different? Why and when did I make the choice to let it be other than that? I suspect it was around week four but I can’t be certain yet.
It’s food for thought, and a glimpse at a potential trigger that I believe is important enough to find the root of. This could be the key to something about my ability to go further with this craft and I feel like this awareness of my dark side and unpleasant experience has uncovered a way to help me understand it better. Plan A hangs in the balance of understanding this.
6 Comments(+Add)
a) Doing anything you enjoy for work is going to make for a difficult transition. It’s always another matter to find a way to enjoy it as work.
b) What are friends for?
c) It is supremely difficult to avoid a veneer of elitism in anything one pursues in a serious fashion. I know I have a difficult time taking many cyclists and climbers seriously. When you’ve immersed yourself in a field, you are simply going to approach it in a different manner than the casual participant. You enjoy it for different reasons. That’s not inherently bad, but it requires tact to deal with. Also, as I always remind myself, there’s always someone better than I am. Usually by a pretty significant degree.
this is not related to what you wrote, but I did find it in a Neil Gaiman post, and it is neat, and you are a writer, so you may be able to find it humorous/pointed/applicable to your artistic process in general. I love you. I wish I were more awake and could give you better advice, but it’ll have to wait till lunch some time!
*hugs*
from Samuel R. Delaney’s “About Writing” (first paragraph neil)
“I was just struck by this paragraph from one of the letters — to someone who wishes he or she was a writer, but probably isn’t. And I thought, I should put it up here for all the people who write to me convinced that they would be happy if only they were writers.
Writers are people who write. By and large, they are not happy people. They’re not good at relationships. Often they’re drunks. And writing — good writing — does not get easier and easier with practice. It gets harder and harder — so eventually the writer must stall out into silence.The silence that waits for every writer and that, inevitably, if only with death (if we’re lucky the two may happen at the same time: but they are still two, and their coincidence is rare), the writer must fall into is angst-ridden and terrifying - and often drives us mad. (In a letter to Allen Tate, the poet Hart Crane once described writing as “dancing on dynamite.”) So if you’re not a writer, consider yourself fortunate.”
If I may, I believe the process you struggled with in class, many actors continue to struggle with in film, and on stage. Not only reacting and finding the beats and the chemistry with those others in the scene, but the challenges with the script and even the environment itself. Many amatuers laugh and scoff at how easy it appears - yet the good actors make it look that way.
Yet, as you may know, we’ve all seen great actors do work in terrible movies. Not because they, themselves, were bad, however the other stuff (ie. script, other actors, direction, editing, producers, etc) might have been to blame.
Or the actor had a bad day.
I’ve never seen your work, and do not know the specifics of everything you put in to this scene, yet I can empathise with you. I was an actor/improviser for a while, working with other entertainers far better (and worse) than I, and I found growth in everything I did. Just having the experience itself, in and of itself, is something you can take away. The biggest thing I recommend to you is to have a thick skin and communicate in a productive way during the process. Because I don’t believe anyone else wants the outcome to be crap either. Or feel the way you felt (are feeling) after your last go-around.
It’s tough, yet please know, Athena, you are not alone.
Jordan, I adore you
Just so you know.
Megan, I love that quote!
“Dancing on dynamite.”
Awesome. Totally awesome.
Wecker!
Thanks for stopping in and for all the great commentary.
Welcome to the BlissQuest.
I don’t believe you’ve ever posted before
You had great advice and I agree with you, it’s not easy, and I do need to communicate productively.
It’s good to know I am not alone in the journey of physical storytelling. Thanks for the reminder
Have a great day!