Nerve

The demands put on us Players is incredible.  Not physically, or schedule-wise, but mentally and emotionally.  We are required to bring so much more of ourselves to rehearsal than I've ever been asked to, and we can.  It's amazing.  The leaps and bounds I've taken as an "actor" have been huge.

I've put actor in quotes because most of our rehearsal is getting rid of the actor.  Crazy right?  The "actor" consciously makes choices whereas a character simply lives in the world of the play.  Our coach stops rehearsal, even run throughs if he sees even a bit of acting take place.  I have been acting a whole heck of a lot my entire life.  Very few people have called me out on my stuff so I've fallen into these patterns and ways to go about a character.  This does not fly here.


You know those moments in performance, where everything just clicks and you're totally in character and you are reacting and responding and you don't know what part of you is emerging from your body and doing all of these things?  That is what made me fall in love with acting.  Here, we get to that point the second rehearsal.  


Today we had a full run through.   It's our 5th rehearsal and everyone was near memorized.  Not because we have spent countless hours working on memorization, or as our coach says "picturing yourself in your character," but because we have learned to trust what is happening from moment to moment.  The character knows the lines.  That is the only way anybody knows a character, by what they say in the play.  I had a hard time to not decide beforehand how a line should be said.  Neither the actor or the character knows what needs to be emphasized; it just happens.  The line is not the only thing that shouldn't be predetermined.  You can never put a label on a character.  When deciding what a character is like before exploring and experiencing what they're like, you are constricted to make the character a certain way.  By doing this, you can't fully emerse yourself in a play.  


People have told me I'm a brave actress.  Two weeks ago, I was a pansy compared to where I am now.  During shows, I would have spent so much time in a practice room rolling on the floor, emphasizing lines, so I could effortlessly say them with no pre-determined emphasis.  Now, I'm getting close to the point where I can do that the first time I read the lines aloud.  I'm learning to trust the unknown and to totally lose myself into an imaginary world.  It's incredible knowing I'm capable of that!


As far as life here in Abingdon, it's great.  We get discounts to almost every restaurant in town, a free pass to the Rec Center at any time, and everyone here looks upon you with awe because you work at the Barter.  We're basically the bread and butter of the town.  


The days are getting longer.  This week I've spent hours in the costume shop, hours in "Three Little Pigs" rehearsal,  and hours watching the Mainstage rehearsals to prepare for understudy work.  We just got our "Beauty and the Beast" tech assignments (what we will be helping out with backstage), and tech rehearsals for the show begin Tuesday for the opening of the show next Saturday.  Tomorrow night, I'll be in the main theater, which is haunted by civil war ghosts (no joke, actually a lot of places around here are haunted), doing changeover (rehanging lights between the different rep seasons) from 11-2.  I'm glad I got the early shift, some have to work starting at 4:30...


I'm off to bed.  Our coach said we may have only 5 more rehearsals left of "Pigs" before tech on the 31st and tomorrow is one of the rehearsals.  Here's to show biz!