Getting out of character.
I am an actor and part of how I work is taking on other people’s thoughts, movements and beliefs. It is a fascinating dive into the empathy realm and the playing with the line of reality. What is reality. What is YOUR reality and what is their’s and sometimes that line bleeds…if you are lucky, if I am lucky I am so believing in my role that even I don’t know where Susie starts and this new role ends.
It is the ultimate necessity to be an actor. To have the fearlessness to release yourself and that is what it is all about. Being able to walk up those never ending stairs- movement by movement -or belief by belief or word by word or action by action into another dimension.
This is the scariest thing mostly because you k now somewhere in this journey you are sacrificing parts of your own self and like a diver..how long can you be under water without suffering from vertigo or whatever it is called where you can’t remember which way is up?
Acting…FOR ME….is like that…I get lost…usurped by the role and disappear…I keep a shell of myself and my world and my family and kids and husband represent that but more than that and the entry is harder…so I shed a lot…I let go of comipments and relationships and I disappear…
Maybe not to the naked eye but to any would seeker or evenly worker they’ll see..I am slipping…
One day after I had returned to acting after raising my young children into semi functioning children I was heading home and I remember as I opened the front door….Oh, Yeah…my kids.
It struck me as funny but the idea that I can release my motherhood role was fascinating.. and to do it to such a point that I had to actively remember it…well.it was all a bit MENTAL to say the least.
Then one day after playing a very lovely part who loved to cook but not into sex so much…my husband asked..When in Susie coming home?
IT made me stop chopping my scallions and look up. “Excuse me” I said or she said…who knows…
Steve repeated the question and it slowly sank in….HE KNOWS…he knows I am not quite myself …even in my own kitchen…
I smiled and said…”don’t you like her…she loves to cook…”
She is fine but I miss Susie he said and in that moment the veil of delete that I am perhaps many actors live with was revealed…I was missing…
Give your heart to someone…even another version of your self and it can be tricky to find the door to unbolt and retrieve yourself..
Unless you build a very clear path back to it…to her…. And that is what I have been working on.
Finding first who SUSIE is and then venturing off and trying to return sans too much collateral damage.
What I am about to share with you look me years to articulate but recently I was speaking at the Miami Beach chamber of commerce to their health and wellness committee and they received it…they didn’t;t run to take my class because the idea is still touchy but they got it and I felt in that room…they felt the idea flicker in their mind…
What if THEY TOO were still in character and if they were…what role was it and what would they be without it…
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