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Blogs by Christine Boyce
10-minute play 8/17/2005 10:33:08 AM
"These artists are performing because they want to perform." On Monday I performed a ten-minute play I wrote, called "Ashley", at the Source Theatre in D.C. It was part of a two day festival of ten-minute plays, with no vetting process: anyone who had a new ten minute play, actors and a director was set to go if they had the guts to do it. And it actually worked!
I think the person who coordinated the festival--and did it in just four weeks, by the way--may have had some doubts about me. I saw the ad on the Actor's Center website when it was already more than a week old. I formed my play idea and emailed saying that I wanted to perform a ten-minute monologue I had written, called "Ashley." This was before I had actually written the play.
And then, after I wrote the play(by improv process with a tape recorder), I dismayed the coordinator by saying I didn't have a director, and that I didn't think I could find one on such short notice. Her Friday ultimatum--find one by Sunday--actually ended up in me finding one by Friday night. A former teacher of mine was able to direct me for one rehearsal--and after that I was on my own.
And it was great! Better than I had any right to expect. This isn't to say that the play was great or that my acting was great--but it was great knowing that they were good enough to make the audience laugh; good enough to get a reaction out of people!
I'm a nerdy, nearly asexual, bisexual girl with glasses and a partial club foot. Sounds pretty unsexy, doesn't it? But this past March, when I was working as a stage manager, an actor I had gotten to know told me I could do better if I bothered to try.
I was pretty upset, as you can imagine. Because I've always been someone who likes wearing something that she can do anything in--paint walls, mix concrete, wash a floor, make mud pies--anything. For years I've been someone who likes her hair short--very short. Someone who prefers glasses over contacts, and bent glasses over new ones. A person who is incredulistic about our materialist society--which is really over the top, don't you think? Our society IS really over the top in its materialism.
How does a person like me succeed as an actor-or in anything else for that matter? I'm a person people seek out to ask for directions, or to ask for a quarter or the time--people ask ME all the time, even if I'm standing in a crowd. I don't mind that--I guess it's because I look friendly. And at the same time, I'm the person who looks a little bit(or a lot) different from the norm when I walk into an audition or job interview. Every time I get the impression--we don't want you, because you look like you're still fourteen. We don't want you, because you look down when you walk, and you're awkward. We don't want you because you have this spacy depressed thoughtfulness which we know from experience will only be a detriment to our company. And on top of all that, you're incompetent.
So, to go back to that comment about bothering to try. If acting is all that can get me out of depression, I figured I had better try. So I tried--I tried to let go of all the phobias about female stereotypes, hairstyles, makeup and clothes. I went on stage with new contact lenses, not glasses. I put a special lotion on my hair to control the frizz in the humidity. I wore makeup, of course--because everyone does on stage. But then I came back for the next night of shows and wore makeup again--this time because I didn't want those people I had been flirting with the previous night to see me as nerdy.
I'm rather strange as a person, I suppose. I have a high voice and no interest in sports, but I won't shy away from trying anything, even if it scares me. I took Stagecraft in college and used power tools. I programmed a light board for the first time while working on my first post college play. I put up curtains on all the windows in my grandmother's apartment, so I suppose I have some skills--or just the guts to try to attain the skills in the heat of the moment.
Acting feminine is yet another skill. But maybe I've been a deep down lipstick lesbian all along.
