Acting

About the Play, and About Me

I die early in the play. It's strange to think that the audience will be sad because someone they don't know pretended to die, but I go to plays and musicals and I cry when everyone else just looks mildly sad. I guess I'm just oversensitive. I get later parts though, when the main character, Lacey, thinks about my character.

We have another rehearsal today. It's going well, and I know most of my lines now. Kayla has a lot more lines than me though, but she's learnt more than me! I feel like I should be working harder. The rest of us are doing great, even James, who could probably forget his own name if everyone didn't say it when he mucked up. The atmosphere here is strangely friendly for something so big and expensive. We are being sponsored by one of the most valuable companies in the world, but no one minds if we're too slow. Maybe the new special effects things aren't actually finished yet.

I feel more comfortable now. I know everyone better. I always get like this at anything where I have to meet new people. I usually need Kayla to get me through it. The casting choices seem strange, though. Putting a comedy actor as a murderer in a serious play usually ruins it. It seems like they just wanted a bunch of well known actors to draw in a big audience. But there's no point in having a big audience for a bad play unless you want knowledge of the badness to spread faster, so that's probably not it. In James' defence, he is doing amazingly in his role, so the choice was a surprisingly good one, but that sort of risk is unusual for something like this.

But I'm being rude. This play is going to be brilliant, hopefully, and I can't wait to see what the effects are like. It's a difficult balance, making effects for plays. You want to add to the realness without taking away from the fun of the play and being there. If the effects go too far one way, you might as well be watching television, and too far the other way and they have no reason to be there.

I am happy to be able to actually hold conversation with my castmembers though. It's nice to not have to mumble some form of greeting and flee to the other side of the room so I can hide behind Kayla. Instead I can speak normally and be happy and laugh and smile and somewhat resemble a functioning human being. People spent so much time with friends that they don't realise the happiness that comes with them, and soul-crushing sadness that can appear out of nowhere when you are without any.

I always got so confused when I was little and I went somewhere with the school and we would come back and lots of people would say:
"That was boring" and
"I hated it" and
"There was nothing to do."
I couldn't understand how someone could come out of a day of spending time with their friends, of chatting and laughing, and say that it was boring.

Those were the days I treasured the most.