Forgive me, friends, it's been a very rough week.
Immediately following my personal London crawl over the weekend, I realized that I had temporarily forgotten that I am still an actor in London, and not just a passer-by. Monday morning hit me square in the face with Romeo and Juliet in Shakespeare class, absolutely failing at playing mafia in Movement, and dodging going up with my scene in High Comedy. We did, however, learn the names of the plays that we will be performing at the end of the semester! They are The Revenger's Tragedy, The Sea Voyage, and Undermilk Wood. Unfortunately, none of these plays are by Shakespeare, but working on any of them is looking to still be fun!
Immediately after classes on Monday, our group booked it down to the Charing Cross Station to get to our play of the week: The Importance of Being Earnest at the Vaudeville Theatre. This is the play that made me fall in love with Oscar Wilde's work and wit my freshman year of high school. I have loved his style ever since, but until now, I'd never seen a production of "Earnest" onstage before. That said, I knew I was bound to love it before I got there. It's such a fun, witty, clever play that you can read or see a hundred times and still be surprised by the ending. It's just fantastic. The production we saw featured David Suchet as Lady Bracknell- a unique choice, but a fun, fun opportunity for him as a well-known actor and for the public. The production was remarkably enjoyable, actually! I found it a great deal of fun, and was laughing at most all the right places. David Suchet was undoubtedly clever as Lady Bracknell, of course, but I also really enjoyed the performances of the actors playing Algernon and Jack. They had a very strong, clear relationship onstage that made them fun to watch. The ladies, Gwendolyn and Cecily, did fine, but tended towards caricaturing their roles around a few basic facts about them. Their voices were very difficult to get used to as well- they were high, shrill, frilly, and often hard to understand. Nevertheless, the tea scene in the garden was brilliant, as it should be.
Tuesday was, therefore, preceded with very little time for homework, again. On top of that, I was asked to present my monologue to my Shakespeare class- the monologue I had barely worked on, even though I knew the words, absolutely had no idea how to connect to, and was feeling really stuck over. I basically just made myself look stupid and felt bad about it the entire rest of the day. Even Philip and stage combat, two things I absolutely love, didn't quite shake the feeling.
Wednesday didn't help. I enjoyed the play we discussed in Theatre History, and when my scene went up for High Comedy we actually did surprisingly well. Modern Physical was fine, though I didn't really do very well (again), and by Voice I was so stressed it was hard to relax. I was able to calm down that night at dinner, luckily. It was Olivia's 21st birthday, so a large group of us went out to dinner and it turned out to be very, very fun!!! Happy Birthday to her!!!
All day though, I couldn't stop thinking about the monologue I had done the day before. I turned it over in my head over and over, went home and paraphrased it, repeated the lines to myself, tried to work on it, but just got completely stuck. All of this made me feel incredibly stupid, since the monologue is from a very well-known and simple character from another simple and well-known play: Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream. By the end of my railings, whether out of frustration or actual epiphany, I decided I really dislike Helena. I do. I don't like her decisions as a character. I think she blows things out of proportion and is far too hung up over Demetrius and she just doesn't make sense to me.
So that's the frustration I had with me going into Thursday, where I had to say lines of this speech in Voice and Shakespeare. I expressed my opinion in both classes, instead of bursting out in tears of shame, embarrassment, and frustration, but then I felt even worse: I'm not supposed to be judging my character. My job, as an actor, is to find a way to connect to the character and bring them to life, not to judge who they are or have extreme opinions about them as people and the decisions they make. That's not my job in real life, so why should it be for this very real, fictional person? It was, again, humiliating. I don't actually remember what got me to calm down about this monologue besides talking with Russ about it, allowing him to tell me to let it rest for now, and suggesting I work on my favorite Shakespeare play/slowly becoming my favorite play in general, Hamlet.
Nevertheless, I don't want to stop working on Helena now. Yes, I got frustrated and stuck. Yes, I made a stupid pretentious fool out of myself in class. Yes, Helena sucks. But I feel like letting this piece drop is the same as giving up. I want to figure out how to make even this difficult piece of text, for me, work. I'm ashamed to say that it is a difficult piece, but that doesn't mean I don't want to figure it out. Hopefully, I can still do that this weekend.
The other thing that helped on Thursday was distraction and some alone time. I took myself out to tea in Camden Market before coming back to the Landward to my beautiful flatmates, furiously figuring out outlines for Theatre History papers. I joined the party.
We all ended up staying up much, much later than normal/recommended. Even now, I'm up much later than I'd like to be, but last night's lateness was ridiculous. But we all persevered, and the papers are now done. To be honest, the paper didn't stress me as much as the monologue did in the slightest. The paper made me groan with the anticipation of a tedious but necessary task. The monologue made me want to pass out. Plus, I really enjoyed my paper topic and the play I was writing about, which helped the process a lot. I wrote about a character named Bosola from John Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi." 7.5/10, I recommend.
Thanks to last night's lateness, getting out of bed this morning was a bit of a struggle. Luckily, it was much easier to be awake and function as a human being going throughout my day. Actually, I didn't nearly as tired as I thought I would. I had coffee anyways after another successful dodging of scene presentation in High Comedy, and in Dramatic Cricticism we turned in our papers (some more frantically than others, but all in eventually) and had a chance to discuss the Henry V we saw at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Then, to add a cherry on top of the end of a long week, we had a master class from Pippa Nixon- a successful British actress. She came to talk to us and help us with audition technique, which I needed badly. All that she said was really, really helpful, actually, and I feel much more confident having the tools she gave us for going into auditions. I even got a chance to ask her about preparing for Disneyland auditions, though I approached her on this after class since it was such a specific topic.
The weather was beautiful again, the Landward was cozy, I had a blanket and Much Ado about Nothing and soup, and as Olivia took a nap, all was well. And then she woke up, and we decided to go see a show, and everything got better.
Olivia and I rushed Gypsy at the Savoy Theatre. It stars Imelda Staunton as Mama Rose and Lara Pulver as Louise. If you don't know those names, perhaps you know them as Doloros Umbridge in the Harry Potter films and Irene Adler (aka THE Woman) in Sherlock. Yes. I saw them both onstage.
I want to type about Gypsy. I want to write all about it, and how amazing it was as a story, and how incredible the actors were, and how the set was just fantastic. Honestly though, there are no words accurate enough to describe the awe and reverence I feel about the show or to describe the show itself well enough. Olivia and I stood up to give Imelda a standing ovation, and the rest of the cast an ovation, and then left the theatre in complete silence. There are simply no words. This is frustrating because I want to describe my feelings about the show but there are just too many.
It is indescribable. It is beyond compliment. This play was so. good. I'm still not emotionally or mentally recovered. It's hard to type this without wanting to merely stare into space and continue examining and soaking in those brain waves the show has left in my mind. It is beyond wonderful.
We went to find the stage door afterwards, which resulted in a fairly long wait for our two actors of interest to come out. It was worth it though. I fought to shake Lara Pulver's hand, since a) she was a stunning Louise and b) she is the primary character in my favorite episode of my favorite TV show. Olivia and I made some friends, also waiting by the stage door, and chatted with them until Imelda Staunton finally came outside. She was so sweet, and had a pen with her to sign programs (she signed mine!!!), and took care to take her time. I told her, when she got to me, that the show was brilliant and I was a big fan, and she thanked me very kindly and sweetly. I'd love to have a normal conversation with her and see more of what she's like as a person. I've seen her play, on screen and stage, very powerful, grounded, overbearing characters, and it would be fun to see how similar this character type is to her.
Long story short, Lara and Imelda. Oh my gosh.
We got back to the flat just in time to gush about the play to Alexa, and then the boys, who showed up for tea the second time this week. We all had pretty crazy days today, so it was nice to relax, recover from Gypsy, and catch up after we've all been working so hard. I love having the boys over for tea, and I'm glad they come often. It leaves a terrible mess of dishes in our sink, but they're very good company and we've had some great conversations, tonight included. We'll be spending more time together, the 3 boys and 3 of us from my flat, tomorrow and this weekend.
It's been a long journey this week. It's hard to remember, sometimes, that being an actor is hard. It's some of the hardest work I've had to do because in order for it to work, you have to work hard at it, and a lot of that work requires all the physical, emotional, and mental strength and recall and useage that you can muster. It's exhausting. This week was one where I doubted my decision to be an actor. I'm so grateful for pieces like The Importance of Being Earnest and Gypsy to remind me why it is I want to act, and why I'm doing what I'm doing. Sure, the performance requires a lot of me, but at the end of the day, it's not about me- It's about spreading and sharing some pretty incredible stories and ideas, my ideas, with the world. If at first you don't succeed, try try again.
I will continue to work on Helena though. Mark my words...
Fight on, friends.
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