A non-actor's actor's notebook

So, it's escaped mention in any version of my journal thus far (as has most of my life in the past four months following the loss of the journal), but one fact I should note is that the reading of Anger Box in January did lead me to successfully audition for the same role in the full production that Cherry Red is mounting, a show that opens in preview a week from tonight.

I'm not an actor. If I'd had any predilections otherwise, they've been quashed, which is just as well. This process - learning nearly 2,000 words and getting them all in the right order, then adding characterizations, and then movement, and then transitions, and then this weekend all the tech stuff - well, it's been a difficult road.

The thing that I'm, at this moment anyway, having the most difficulty with is being a consistent performer. At the rehearsal last night, I was harried coming into it because of dealing with the car issue (yet another clutch, yet another $700... for more see yesterday's entry). So when we started the run, about 10 minutes after I got there, I wasn't focused, wasn't prepared mentally or physically. As a result, despite having more or less nailed the monologue at my previous one-on-one with Michelle (Hall, director), what ended up coming out of my mouth last night resembled only in the vaguest way what she and I had worked on. My hope is that when I do have the time to focus, and I'm no longer thrown by the fact that I'm attempting to fo this in front of people that it will settle down and become something at least close to what Michelle's looking for. And hopefully that settling will begin no sooner and no later than when it is in that ideal state.

Problem is, as I was talking to Glee, one of my fellow cast members, I realized that I don't have that instinct that trained actors do. I can't rest on what I know, because - and this is the one thing I shall take away from this process more than anything else - I really don't know anything about performing. The characterizations that Michelle gives me shouldn't be hard, but I don't think I'm really getting them alot of the time, or it takes me too long to get them... I can't always show her what she wants to see in the moment. I have to take it home and think about it and dwell and let it sink in before I'm able to give the sort of thing she's expecting.

I don't know. I don't want to get too down on myself because I know that somewhere in this muddled mind of mine, somewhere in this ill-conditioned body of mine, is the monologue that will work. I just hope I can find it in the next seven days.