Getting Started

Waiting for a callback is the hardest part of being an actor.  Well, it's not really.  But it feels like it when you have nothing else to do.  You can practice a lot of things in your own.  Playing guitar.  Singing a song.  Baking a cake.  You can't really practice acting alone though.  Sure, you can do a monologue a million times in your room, but without a scene partner, without an audience, it's not going to get you very far. 

Every acting teacher and class I've had has taught me that sitting around and doing nothing while you wait for a part in a play is death for your growth as a performer.  Which is easy to say when you're a working actor/teacher and fucking hard to do when you're someone who wants to perform and isn't getting cast.  How, may I ask, can I grow as an actor when there is no one to act with?  Sure, I can ask a friend.  But acting requires space (or more than I have in my small apartment at the least), a certain amount of privacy, and ideally someone to watch and give you feedback of some sort.  It's hard to hear your mistakes when you're performing a monologue for yourself and your cat.  Or in my case, yourself and your cockroach neighbors.  I'm not kidding.  They come out to watch me practice.  It's creepy.

So I've decided to try another route.  It's not novel or surprising, but it's a challenge.  I am going to spend the next few months reading plays and books on directing and blogging about them.  Maybe a short synopsis, character breakdowns, any good monologues or scenes in them, opinions.  Thoughts about whether or not I would want to perform in them or direct them .  Occasionally I hope to read really terrible plays because those are always more fun to judge than the good ones, but mostly I want to create a library of good scripts for youngish female parts.  Surprisingly there aren't a lot of them.  If you're a young man, really any age, there will always be parts for you.  Good parts.  Interesting characters who want more than a lover or freedom from a bad lover.  Less so when it comes to women parts.  And even when there are interesting female parts, they're small or there's only one female role in the whole script.  So at least this will be a place that tells you what those roles and scripts are.  Or a play with all men that would be fun for a woman (mostly me, but sure, any woman if you want to think of it that way) to direct.  Hell, why can't a woman play Willy Loman?  It would be weird, but if it's done for a reason, I'm sure a woman could kick the ass of that part.

So here goes the beginning of a trial.  We'll see how far it lasts, wish me luck!