So I’m currently in rehearsals for a new original play called Zombie Town, a documentary play about zombies taking over a small town in Texas. So you know, it’s totally fact-based.
The nature of the piece is such that I, like everyone else, am playing several roles. Two of them are fairly large, the other three fairly small. It’s fun and challenging, plus we talk about zombies, so there’s that too.
Part of the challenge is that not only am I working on several distinct characters but that they all have Texas accents. I’m not really good enough with accents to give them all distinct Texas accents from different parts of the state or anything, but I do have to distinguish their voices in tone and rhythm, since costume changes are more or less out of the question.
In other words, this play is a hell of a lot more work than I’m used to.
Take also my recent second audition for NBC’s Trauma. I found out at around 1 PM last Thursday that I had an audition at 5:55 PM… last Thursday. OK, mad scramble to get home and get the car, back to work for a little bit, grab the grooming creme to get my hair in shape, and in the interstices try to memorize the scene.
See I don’t normally bother memorizing lines for auditions around here. The stuff we do is mostly corporate, talking-head, jargon-speak type stuff that you couldn’t memorize anyway without totally butchering. But this was a Big Time Network Audition. So again, more work than I’m used to doing as an actor.
Now all of this is not to say that I’m a lazy actor!
Actually no, upon re-reading what I wrote it would seem that I am actually a lazy actor.
That’s overstating things just a little. I was recently told by someone at my agency that I’m one of their most motivated actors. If I weren’t so stoic this would have hit me like a ton of bricks. Instead I think I arched an eyebrow, maybe two. Or more. Here I think I’m scooting by on the bare minimum, yet I’m being told that I book more work than most of the other actors at the agency actually bother to show up to audition for.
Unravel the structure of that last sentence and you have quite a statement on your hands.
It’s kind of like how in school I kept being told that I had “potential”. Remind me to never use that word with my son, it does nothing to motivate people, it’s like saying “God you’re such a fuck-up, can’t you actually DO anything?”
That’s all, just thought I’d share.
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