Trust

I had a good class last night. In all honesty, though, I wish I had the opportunity to work more. This is the one problem with scene study classes - if you have six groups who all need to do their scenes in a three hour class, each group should get a half an hour, but if one group goes over, everyone else gets less time. Such is life. And I know it all evens out because different groups go first every week, but still. I wish I had gotten to work more last night.

But the teacher said I did some very good work. I still have some homework to do in terms of building my character's world, and my partner has some work of his own to do which I think will give me more to work off of which will allow me to give him more to work off of and so on and so on and so on. But for a table read, it wasn't bad. The scream that happened at the end of my scene wasn't the noise I had wanted to make just then, but I guess you can't go into this sort of thing hoping to make a certain noise at a certain time. It has to just happen organically. Truthfully. And truthfully, that was the sound that came out of me in response to what was going on.

But what struck me between my audition over the weekend for the show in which I did not get cast and my class last night was, I feel like I'm moving towards the place where I trust myself as a performer. I know I can get up there and give it my all. I'm losing the fear of failure because I think I'm learning that the only way to really fail at this is to not try. I may try the wrong thing and the director might ask me to do something else, but as long as I make strong choices and commit to them fully, I will look like an actor who is fearless and full of life and engaging to watch.

Another thing that came up again last night was intimidation. I was "intimidating as hell," I think someone said. I think this scene calls for it, but I think I also got some of the vulnerability of the character in there, too. Which may also be intimidating because supposedly my husband is still in love with me and for me to be able to be vulnerable with him when he just shattered my entire world has to kill him, too. Or something. But I don't want to be generally intimidating. That's not what I'm after. I want to be the sort of performer who inspires other people, not scares them. I hope, I really truly hope, that my friends and peers feel comfortable talking to me about things. Even performance things. I have one friend who I get together with and we talk theater and I love it. I love talking to her about the problems we are each having with our creative journeys because we usually get to some place where we get an idea for something to try next time. It's great. And if she was intimidated by me, I don't think that would work. I hope she's not. Just like if I ever start teaching this stuff, I want to be an approachable, encouraging teacher. I would want people to see my work and think, "Wow, I want to be able to do that. Maybe she'll let me pick her brain," instead of, "She's so much better than me." I don't know how much control I have over that. I just hope I come off as open and approachable, not as untouchable.

It's funny that it has taken me fifteen years of studying this stuff to get to this point. To start to get to this point. But I'm glad I'm moving in this direction. If I'm going to be a David Tennant kind of actor, I have to be fearless and give it my all. And it's nice to know I can.