Thursday

Venting out my frustration with shoes hurting my feet helped me to remember that in previous pairs of hiking boots, I laced them different.  So, trying that.  Feels like someone is sticking a knife in my foot, all shoes hurt now.  Hurts to be barefoot, too.  Irritated a nerve, I guess.  (Have had this problem before, though, different part of foot.)  I have time to break them in, but I want this pair to work, so that I can move on to other things.

Fingers crossed that I got into a Fringe show next month.  Tentative.  Working on a new scene, playing a 13 year-old that just found out she's pregnant.  (Loretta Lynn, "Coal Miner's Daughter.")  Had a bit of an epiphany as to her mindset when I woke up this morning.  Need to write it down before I forget.  When I read the first half of the screenplay, I'm just filled with sadness, thinking about her family, and a headstrong teenager who believes, "I know what is good for me, I know what I want, how no one else has ever felt this way before, and how I know what I'm doing.  You're old you don't understand."  Though, I wonder why her parents didn't protest more.  Her family loved her, fiercely, but didn't put up much of a barrier to her marrying Doo.  And she was wrong about what she thought she knew.  And he complains that she's not good at anything, but...yeah, man, she was basically still a child when he decided to marry her, what do you expect?

Anyway, still have a lot of work to do.   He always asks, "What is this scene about?"  And again, it's not about the obvious thing on the surface, it's not about the literal words.  What does each character want?  And how are they using the language to get it?  And why is this scene in the script, how does it serve the story?  Need to go over this more with my scene partner.  We went through it pretty fast in class.  I know where it turns, but it's not internal, yet.

Got a bunch of scripts I need to read (for monologues), plus the Fringe thing.  And yet, last night sat around and watched youtube videos about the medieval world.  Have started reading, Uta Hagen's, "A Challenge for the Actor,"  it's not the one suggested, "Respect for Acting," (which I also have), but I came across it in a used bookstore last week.  And I need to find something to wear for head shots.  And just remembered I have two singing gigs next Saturday.  Really need to keep a better calendar.

You gotta show up everyday and do the work you say you want to do.  And it's easy to make excuses not to do it.  Or think, "I'll do it later."  Later comes along, and there's always something easier to do in the moment.  What are the barriers, what are the internal conflicts that keep me from showing up?

And then, "on paper" some things don't make sense, and it should be, "move along, nothing to see here," and yet...I've stopped anyway.

Tunnel vision

Feel like I'm treading water, and have been for a while.  Never seem to even know what day it is anymore.  And I feel out of touch with people, even though, I've had more "real" conversations with people in the past week than I have in a long while (ran into someone I'd had a fallen out of touch with, outside a grocery store, and we sat and talked for almost two hours, for one, but not the only).  I think I'm trying to block out all the negativity that's in the media, and flooding my inbox.

And then there's the film class, which is the highlight of my week, and one of the best decisions I've made in a while.  The genuine support for us to be successful is somewhat staggering, can't remember the last time I've had that, if ever.  (Maybe in elementary school or junior high?)  And it's practical, i.e., I asked for monologue ideas, and he sent me 20-30.  And the feedback is helpful, and said in a way I can hear it and accept it and do something about it.  Again, it's practical, so, useful.

We filmed our scenes last night.  Went better than it felt, but I didn't do enough beat work, and I should've gone with my first instincts...but, something to work on going forward.  (I enjoyed working with my scene partner.)  We are getting new scenes/partners for next week.  And I need to start reading the scripts the monologues are from, and book a head-shot session, or at least make contact.  The photographer I had been hoping to work with just stopped doing them, so I'll have to choose someone else.

The Meisner group has ended for the time being, mostly it was just the two of us showing up.  Fine with me, I was starting to have an aversion to it, which initially I put down to my usual anxiety, but since I don't feel that for the film class, maybe it was real.

Saw the show the actor gave me the discount code to, "A Winter's Tale" at Seattle Shakespeare.  All-around pretty stellar, great cast, great choreography (especially the fighting), and everyone had a solid grasp on the language.  Would recommend.  (We went out for a drink before I had to go to the Meisner group.  He seems cool, I made an ass of myself, though, nervous and talking too much.)

Woke up early to go to a "grand opening" of a Bartell's in the ID on Saturday.  Didn't get there in time (still, somehow made it out of the house before I ever seem to on a weekday.)  They were giving away gift cards to the first 200 people.  Apparently, those went really fast, one was for $500.  Heard they would be doing some other give away at 10 am, and wandered around and ate ice cream, and then had coffee, since they sell both (along with growlers of beer) at that location.  Didn't buy beer.  Chatted with other people hanging around.  Got my box of things, and left.  The wind had kicked up, blowing through a construction site, the air full of swirling bits of insulation that had ripped free.

Found myself at the waterfall park in Pioneer Square.  Have only ever been there three times.  The first was in the late 80's, I'd moved to Bellingham, but had driven back to contest a parking ticket.  I remember my father saying that it was hardly worth the gas money, and I said something about "the principle of the thing."  They almost always dropped or halved the amount if you bothered to show up.  Anyway, was just gonna walk through, but found myself mesmerized by the sound of the water crashing down.  Stood there for 20 minutes, suddenly felt emotional, and tried to stay with it, but couldn't place where it was coming from.

Walked to Occidental park, people were setting up for a block party.  Someone had left a big sign of apology of flaunting privilege, and kicking the downtrodden out, and making life harder.  While I was reading that, someone shouted to me, offering me breakfast because someone was serving breakfast to the people in Pioneer Square.  It was one of the men I had been talking to in Bartell's.  I declined, but I thought the offer was sweet.

Haven't figured it out yet

I have no idea why this scene is in the screenplay, which might be why we got it:  a challenge.  There's a power shift happening, where, basically, Thelma didn't have any, or didn't exercise any, and Louise had been making decisions, calling the shots, but then once Thelma had JD, and then committed the armed-robbery (and found she was good at it), things started to shift.  She made decisions, and acted on them.  Right before this scene, the reason Louise won't go through Texas is revealed, both as a realization to Thelma, and the FBI/cop get the file.  (It can also be thought that if she had been willing to go through Texas, they might have escaped.  So, this carried more weight for her than escaping.)  After this scene, Louise is on the phone with the detective, and Thelma reaches over and ends the call, which to me, is when the power completely shifts over.  She wouldn't have had the idea or nerve to do that before.

The scene we're working on is about beef jerky and Wild Turkey, and a reiteration of why they didn't got to the police in the first place...except, it's not about that.  Them just words.  Something else is going on, but I haven't figured that out.  Because, with the exception of Thelma saying, "Thank you," to Louise, on the surface, it's the only scene which doesn't drive the plot forward.  Also, Thelma comes across as subservient, and given what has just happened, that doesn't make sense.  And we're first up tonight.

All this, digging into human nature, trying to feel what someone else feels, or thinks, is fun.

The What If

And then there is the existential angst that came up from class (and life, in general) this week, of "Do I want my life to change?"  Because if I act on the things I've been asked to, it will.  What then?  What do I want?  I need to take those first steps anyway, and I do have a choice.  Doing nothing is a choice, but that's not really working.  Yeah?  Yeah.

Stories

My sleep schedule is messed up, to put it mildly.  At any rate, I fell asleep early, then woke up some time during the 1 o'clock hour and decided I needed to re-read the screenplay, and also, try to format it to fit on fewer pages, so that I could print it and make notes on it.  That took until after 4 am, and I fell back asleep and then woke up from a dream ("Thelma and Louise" was somehow entwined in the dream) and sat straight up and said, "Oh, God, it's almost 8."  I was supposed to be somewhere at 8:30.  I did make it.  More of the interview project I'm working on, and I had to be on camera today, so I felt like I wanted to wash my hair.  It went well.  At least one person I wanted to keep interviewing, on tangential subjects, but didn't have the time.

This project is more targeted than the one I still want: I want to hear about people's lives, oral histories while they are still alive.  All of which stems from going to a lot of memorial services and realizing how little we really know the people in our lives.  How we only know them at the stage of life where we interact, but they have this whole other history that made them who they are.  Part of it is that I feel we are all so quick to judge one another, especially people we've never met, as if we have some authority, and we know so little about anyone.  But knowing someone takes effort.  Putting a label on someone, or a whole group of someones, is easier, because then we have a box where we "understand" and can move onto the next thing.  I get it, we're busy, have other things to do.  But we're also complicated, we want someone to be all bad or all good, but none of us are that.  Anyway, I''m not asking those questions (much) right now, I'm supposed to be following a script (for editing purposes), but some people want to go off script, and some people I want to go off-script with.  And it all might be cut, but at least I got to have the conversation with them once.  (I'm conducting the interviews, for most of it.)

As far as the screenplay goes, I am liking the story more.  And since I had the option to choose, I chose Thelma because she's the one I'd be least likely to be cast as, so it's more of a challenge.  I think we all have the seeds of the characters within us, it's a matter of accessing it.  And what I have of her in me, is repressed, so...it'll be a challenge.  I like the characters, it's just the whole "women have to be saints, or sinners" thing, that they had to die to win.  I do get why that happens in the story.  For Thelma, once she was "free" going back to her old life wasn't an option.  It was more of the larger options for women that bothered me.

I've also heard that the original ending didn't have them die, but at some point in the process it was decided that that was the ending that was called for.  And escape doesn't make sense, not in the context of the rest of the story.

Anyway, got a lot of work to do.  And I need to read another play, and deal with groceries/cooking.  And god, is it gorgeous out today.  (I can take ol' Bill to the park, but I'm waiting for laundry.)

Of all the scripts in the world

Ha! I was assigned "Thelma and Louise."  That's an ironic form of awesome.

Back to Life

Back to doing more acting (formalized) training after a mostly stagnant (black hole of a) summer.  Makes me excited about life again.  The idea came up from two others tonight, and for me last week in the Meisner group:  "Why is some past failure keeping us stuck?"  That super-introverted, terrified, 12-year old who was unprepared to give a speech, and just stood there and stared back at her classmates doesn't have to define me...and yet, always comes back to this.  And I tell myself that I didn't actually know how to write a speech, it's not like we were given any instructions on how to step-by-step create one...I don't know, maybe I missed that year, or class or whatever, but I didn't know how to start.  At least I know it's a trigger.  Telling myself I can learn, using logic on it, doesn't exercise the ghost.

And the thing is, you can learn.  You can break it down to the bones and build it back up.  That's what Meisner was for (as far as acting goes.)  (And on that note, I need to find my notes on working with text, since we have to prep a scene/character before next week.)  And getting over all this, this being in front of people, this saying something, was why I started taking acting classes in college, though deep down, perhaps I always wanted to be an actor, a performer, I just didn't think I had the talent.  I probably didn't.  (And talent can also be a burden, what if you are naturally good at something, so you don't try something outside that realm that you might like, or if you don't want to pursue the talent, but feel a pressure to, because, "Oh, but you're so gifted!")  But again, it's more about learning how to work, and then doing the work, and showing up and failing, and learning, and showing up and failing, and learning, and growing, and getting better, than it is about innate talent.

And yet our culture has a bias against failure; the whole idea that failure makes you "a loser."  And we live in fear of being seen as a loser.  How many times have we held back because of that fear?  The fear of incompetence, of being found out, of being judged.  Most of us won't know we can be good at something we've never done before, or that if we do the work, that we can get good at it.  At some point, you just give it a shot.  And lately, I find myself cowering, guarded, holding back.  I wasn't always like this.  I was once more gutsy, cared less about being judged and found lacking.  Someone has said they've finally learned to cut the negative voices out of their life, to only be with those that challenge you to be better, or that lift you up.  Although that's harder to do when you've internalized the voice, let it hold a seat of power without questioning its right be be there.

Just a matter of doing the work, to eventually prove that voice, that memory wrong.  Wrong about defining me.  Wrong about defeating me before I even start.  Wrong to make up excuses and live in fear.

Oh, and we're all supposed to go out and get ourselves an agent by the end of the eight weeks.  Which means, I have to stop making excuses and cough up the money for head-shots.  Stop making excuses.