The Chicken Within
Tonight was the Open House at The Actor’s Loft. I got to meet Hugh and hear about all of the workshops they offer, including the one Nick signed me up for as my Christmas gift, The Fundamentals of Acting.
All of the workshops sound amazing, and I’m so excited to start next week, but it quickly became apparent sitting there that I am going to be the biggest fish out of the most water. A whale in a desert.
The screenwriting workshop instructor (Charles) nearly had me salivating as he described the protagonist’s necessary journey through conflict and to glorious resolution that he would be helping the writers to understand. I was literally on the edge of my seat considering sinking my teeth into a good screenplay idea. It felt so natural to consider! My constant state is running storylines through my head for believability and appeal.
The improv workshop sounded fun and interesting and attainable. I know it was a million years ago, but as I described in a previous episode of aubreii.com, I took improv classes in my youth. And they were great. I like to think on my toes and bounce ideas off of a partner.
The actual Acting class sounds so foreign. It became obvious that it’s going to be all new to me. And I realized sitting there that I have an some major insecurities I’m going to have to deal with moving forward. Shall we list the things? We all know I like to list the things:
- I have the grace of a corpse when I am nervous. My mouth will keep doing the moving and spitting out of words. But my body will take on jerky movements not unlike those of a zombie from literally any zombie movie. You know what I’m describing.
- I like to think I’m not horribly unattractive. On film, this disillusionment becomes obvious. Whatever beauty or grace I *may* possess is due to skilled chin angling and proper hair swingimg during conversation. This illusion disappears the instant I’m on film. (Whenever I doubt this I let someone try to take a good picture of me. Their increasing frustration as they ‘adjust the angle’ and eventually angrily direct me to do smoky eyes and pout at the lens until they sigh, defeated, and say ‘look how white your teeth are, so… pretty’ is all I need to remind me to avoid the camera.) This class is all about working the camera, my old foe.
- I know nothing about ‘The Craft’
- There is A Craft
- I had no idea
- Guess I will be doing some homework
- I have no future in this stuff, at least not in the immediate. I have almost zero time to do anything. I know what a time requirement something like this is. My working availability is at ’20 seconds per bathroom break every six hour’s level right now.
So I guess the biggest actual fears are that I am wasting everyone’s time, and in doing so, I’m going to make a complete fool of myself.
Acknowledging this actually makes it seem far less scary than it did earlier.
I regularly look like and idiot AND waste people’s time. And the sun still rises every morning. So what is the worst that can happen ?
