School Play

It had all started that night you see, my final performance in the school play.  I lived in the small, culture free town and was quite a shy little girl. Most actors are, though I'm loud enough now to make up for it. My teacher at school saw something in me no one else did I guess. We were auditioning for the school pantomime and although I read quite well I had never ever been given a proper part due to my shyness. I was expecting the same part as last year “chorus” where if you were really lucky you got to turn the page on the pianists sheet music.

 Myself and another girl were suggested for the main comic role of a great big Dame. All doll faced and heaving bosom. With a yokel accent and supposedly a hilarious laugh. You got that part or the genie. We sat in the large dusty hall, after the obligatory Friday round of head shoulders knees and toes and we did our auditions. David went first. He was tall for his age, friendly and undeniably cute. He would of course be Aladdin (despite being blue eyed and blonde to the point of looking like a poster boy for Ikea.) He read beautifully as all the other boys in our class kicked their heels nervously or swung back on the gym benches.

Next was Sophie Ederton all big curls, slightly buck teeth and a lisp. “Thank you Sophie” barked my nemesis year 4 teacher let’s call her Mrs Crall, wizened with meanness yet raised herself up to full height on her own self importance. She was always unwilling to give anyone a chance. Sophie if I remember played third Sheppard to the left. Sheep in Aladdin? I ask you?! Then it was my turn to read my stapled together dog eared script. My God I was crap. I was nervous and I couldn't really do the laugh or any laugh in fact. Louise (the other child) who they cruelly put straight after me for ultimate juxtaposition did it really well and my only chance had been lost.

 Everyone started to gossip about how much better Louise was and then Mark Aiden peed himself and we filed out of the hall with a slow tread as if we were facing a firing squad rather than Maths cards.

When I grow up I want to be an actor.

God knows when I got it into my head acting would be a good idea. When I was 5 I remember wanting to work part time as a teacher and part time as a check-out girl at Sainsbury's. I think it was the beep on the supermarket till that I was drawn to. Bizarrely I have just realised that has partly come true. (The teaching not Sainsbury's.) Anyway, I digress. (You'll have to get use to my asides.)



Now this is a tale about a jobbing actor not one who just gets discovered and it's all nice and easy and I dunno a Casting Director sees you at your showcase and you end up in a 3 film deal for an award winning Director or your spotted while having an argument with your bank manager and ooh a producer thinks you have star potential. All actors dream that will happen and for Orlando Bloom and Charlise Theron respectively they were indeed that lucky but we know that's not real life. Most actors who make it in that sense aren't just lucky but have a lot on their side. Namely contacts and money. I had neither.



I come from a really small but lovely one-horse town in Devon. It is literally one horse. I remember as a kid the local gypsy's riding their cart through on a Saturday, in the shadow of the honey bricked church, while everyone turned and stared I did too as I plodded my way up the hill on my way to the now defunct Woolworths to buy a record with my Dad. The concept of acting in this setting is simply ludicrous. It rears its head only yearly in the format of a Panto at the county town or a Kiss Me Quick show at the local pier. Not exactly a Mecca for art let’s say. It's all very sweet and sedentary, all uneven cobbles, little shops with nothing of much importance other than trinkets in them and the spring fair. Which is brilliant I might add? May polls, Morris dancing and tons of beer like something out of a Hardy novel. As I walked along the aisles I perused the pick and mix before my train of thought was jolted by a seven year old boy diving headlong for the fizzy cola bottles. “Tristan!” screamed his mother as his sweaty and possibly snotty hand drove itself unbidden into the plastic shoe box grabbing a cluster of flying saucers. I pondered the night before.

Jobbing Actor

actor

noun 1. A person whose profession is acting. 2. A participant in an action or process.

The first is quite rudimentary but the second is more interesting and I think still applies to the first.




Someone once asked me "If you're not acting right now can you still call yourself an actor?"




To be an "actor" do you have to be in "the action or process" of acting? If that is the case then hardly any of us are. I read today in a job description of professions that an actor is unemployed or "resting" (God I hate that phrase) 80% of the time. That is so depressing but that's the truth isn't it? What about the rest of us poor bastards who aren't Hollywood stars? Are we just pretending then? Or perhaps, it's more of a state of mind. Sounds a bit up your own arse to me.




I want to lift the lid on what it is like for the rest of us. The 80%. How you become an actor, get into drama school, get an agent. Having auditions. Trying to get auditions in the first place. Being rejected and actually working! The bizarre, funny, breathtaking people you meet. The numb expanse of nothingness between work where you wonder what to actually do with your life, because lets face it this isn't a real job. The joy of getting your first role, then every role thereafter and living half your life in another persona. In my other shoes I guess. The shoes where I'm not a wife or a mother a daughter or a friend. Where most of the time I'm not even me but a persona or a range of characters I carry round with me like accessories in a handbag to pull out and put on at any given moment.
So for anyone who is considering this as a career option, I want to give you the advice no-one ever gave me and for those who are just curious, the chance to see what it's like in someone else's shoes.