On Acting and Its (welcome) Challenges.

(It's been a while. Sorry I'm not sorry.)

I never want acting to be easy. How boring would it be to spend your life doing something that was never a challenge to you? Thankfully, it isn't. Acting is, like, hard. Like, really really hard. At least for me. There are people who can walk on stage and be brilliant without the slightest effort (at least, that's how it seems to me). In High School and the first few years of college, I longed to be the person that could breathe on stage and blow the audience away. But with every closing night I'm more and more grateful that acting is a (gigantic) challenge.

There are times when I'm cast in a role and immediately know that it's going to be a challenge. When I was cast as Bill Sykes in Oliver! I instantly thought "I am so wrong for this role." My instincts about it being a challenge were right. Bill was definitely a struggle to find. But so rewarding because of that.

And then of course there are the times when my instincts are way off. I expect a role to be painless, and it ends up being quite the opposite. So it is with Geography Club. You'd think it would be a cinch. I'm playing a gay high school student in a conservative community. How difficult could that be? I've lived it for crying out loud! But playing Kevin has been a struggle on many levels. (For one thing he's a charming, confident, athletic guy. The exact opposite of what I was in high school.) I immediately felt lost and insecure in the role. I watched as my cast mates started making discoveries and producing great work, while I brought nothing to the table. I found myself acting so hard instead of living. I was missing something. But I couldn't put my finger on what it was.

It turns out that what I'd forgotten was something simple and basic. Something that you learn in a high school drama class. But it was something that I passed over in my preparation for the role because I thought I didn't need it. I thought the piece was so straight forward that I wouldn't need to try to make it happen.

I guess I just tend to underestimate things. In Oliver! I underestimated myself and my abilities. I thought I'd never be able to pull off playing someone like Bill Sykes. With Geography Club I underestimated the role. Because the play seemed so simple and light, I didn't think I needed to take the time to build a foundation for my character to stand on. I thought my experience in the subject matter would be enough. Boy was I mistaken.

As frustrating as this rehearsal process has been, I'm grateful for it. It's been humbling and eye opening. I've always believed (I think I've said this before in another blog) that you get out of a job what you put into it. If I didn't have to work hard to be an actor, I know it wouldn't be as fulfilling for me or for the audience. And let's face it, if you aren't going to learn and grow, then why do it in the first place?

MJ