He also reminded me that going to get my eyelashes and eyebrows tinted was no more vain or stupid than getting my hair dyed or my nails done...if it makes me feel confident enough to walk into a class where most of the other students are going to be a good ten years younger... and be secure enough to be emotionally vulnerable on stage and able to open my heart to the learning process....then who cares?!
So that's exactly what I did. Went to a salon and gave myself a little boost of confidence. £19 later I have the white rabbit temporarily dyed into submission.
Next I tackled the gym and met with a trainer to work on the neck down. It is a state-of-the-art fitness center with a huge pool, two floors of equipment, three class studios, saunas, steam rooms, spas...the works. And all I could do was remind him how likely I was to get bored with working out. I think when you say that to a trainer, it must be like when people tell me that theatre bores them. I just can't comprehend it. "Hey, I know it is what you do for a living. And that you're passionate about how good it is for body, mind and soul to participate in it. But can you give me an edited version? 'Cause I'm likely to get bored and walk out otherwise." ugh. I have pity. Because I know how difficult it must be to hear. But let's be honest.
At the end of the night, I sat down and talked with my flatmate about Spotlight - one of London's more active casting networks and databases. I showed her my commercial demo reel and headshots. She noted that I would have to have my headshots changed to work in London. Why? Because the only headshot format used here is portrait composition...in BLACK AND WHITE. Really, London? 1994 called and they want their format back. I explained that even the smaller cities in the US had updated to color shots - since ALL film, commercial, print or stage work is done in color. And that most were leaning towards the landscape format, since it better reflects how your head will read on a television or movie screen (let's be honest, even stage actors had better be ready to work on film). But apparently, color, landscape shots are simply not acceptable here. Headshot: cut, paste, effects...presto new format. Strange, though.
So, here I sit, contemplating the readjustments. I wonder how flexible I am going to prove to be. How open I am going to be to the learning process? How able I will be to give up the comfortable and comforting in order to go through the aches and pains of growth? I have spent a lot of time as a working actor. I have developed a strategy and a technique that (for better or for worse) has sustained me in a pretty impressive career so far. Will I be able to put down - even temporarily abandon - the ways of thought and action that have been my way-of-working for so many years and allow new thoughts, new methods? I certainly hope so.
I keep reflecting on the welcome letter I received for the school and what excitement and thrill it sent through me:
You will be entering one of the most famous drama schools in the English-speaking world to study an art of life and immediacy two-and-a-half thousand years old. From the great mythological dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripedes to the commedia tradition of the European Renaissance, and from the collision of Medieval belief systems with the modern mind in Shakespeare's plays to the proto-naturalism of the work of Chekhov an Stanislavski, you will learn from and partake in a rich and humane aesthetic. You will be apprised of both the history and the contemporaneity of the theatrical tradition, and take on the responsibility to forge anew that tradition for the 21st century.
The art and craft of the actor is that of empathy: the ability to exist with complete conviction in an imaginary situation, and to project onto that situation the actor's own humanity, creating and earning sensation and effect in the audience.
I look forward to honoring myself, my history and my future by being open to any form of learning that is brought before me. It may or may not ultimately work its way into my toolbox for the rest of my life. But I am here to grow.
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| Me in my blacks, sans makeup with a rubbing of Shakepeare's tomb as inspiration |
Readjustments are tough. Even in 1994.
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