Ok. Periodically, I'll revisit those basic and horribly tricky questions that utterly stumped me last time round, but which I'm already giving considerable thought to. I fully anticipate these will change and develop over the next year or so, but it'll be interesting to look back and track that.
Who am I? I'm a 30-something child at heart. I tread a fine line between introvert and extrovert - I love spending time with friends, particularly playing board games or roleplaying (or just takeout and a movie with a few awesome people) and I miss those few close friends I have terribly if I go too long without at least chatting online. But I definitely need to recharge alone. I've heard the phrase "social introvert" used and that's probably about right. Pretty much all of my hobbies are creative in some way, I'm a tremendous gamer geek and have in the last few years started going to a couple of gaming conventions (small compared to the American ones, but there's one I get to every year now where I've started doing cosplay, which I've realised is pretty much free reign to play those characters I might never otherwise have the chance to do (I was Rafiki, with the stage facepaint and a fallen branch from the local park, this year... but any version of the show and/or costume shots I've seen suggest I have rather the wrong colouring to ever land the part, not to mention only having a halting and terribly-accented smattering of swahili) and the opportunity to have a lot more interaction with my "audience" than I ever did on stage at school - we were never allowed to be seen by the audience in our costumes off stage. I remember being absolutely captivated as a kid the first time I saw Cats and the bar area was quite literally crawling with costumed characters.
What do I want out of training? (note: some of this I'm intending to address over the coming year!) As much as I enjoy shakespeare and musicals, I have had a bit of a blind spot for modern plays, as well as the historical Shakespeare plays. From an acting point of view I'd like to learn to open up more easily - practicing at home I can get quite self-conscious of "what the neighbours think" if I were to project properly! The same feeling can mean I'm physically "smaller" with my emotions than I want to be when acting. It's come out once or twice, that I've really been able to let go and just give a good performance and I want to be able to do that every time. So mostly: exposure to more range of material (and learning to appreciate it), and opening up more emotionally to give a good performance.
What are some specific aspirations? Due to a very long standing love-hate relationship with A Midsummer Night's Dream, I'd love to direct it one day. I've got a lot to learn before I get there, but it would bury a lot of ghosts for me. I've read rumours of one of Anne McCaffrey's books being made into a film (Dragonriders of Pern) - it's actually her other books that I loved as a child (particularly the Tower and Hive series, and Crystal singer, and the Dragondrums trilogy) - if any of those got made into a movie eventually that'd be great to get involved in.
If you have questions to suggest I use the next time I do one of these, leave them in the comments!
So we're one month (ish) in already. How's it all going? Obviously we have the blog here, but how are you managing the work behind the blog?
ReplyDeleteIn terms of other question type things...
If you woke up tomorrow through the other side of drama school, what would you want to do first?
How would you hate to be described (primarily as an actor, but you know)?
Why does pizza come in a square box?