Tomorrow, or maybe Friday...

So, I had originally intended to post on Monday about this whole play thing as I've been pitched headfirst, overbalancing slightly, into rehearsals for Closer as of Sunday. We'd had a couple of preliminary meetings; a readthrough and a long discussion on characterisation, using personality tests as the main focus, which was new and different, but Sunday was our first standing-up-moving-around-doing-talking type rehearsal. I had been struggling with the character and the play since being cast. I feel a little intimidated by the character, she feels a bit like the cool girls in school to me. Effortlessly well-groomed, sardonic, completely comfortable with themselves and their attractiveness, intelligent and flirtatious. Next to them I always felt a bit like an idiotic and clumsy child, as I struggled to understand boys, do anything with my hair or have any conversation outside of my immediate, similarly insecure and socially inept, group of friends. So to be playing the character feels strangely presumptuous. Like I'm trying to be someone I'm not. Which is a funny way to feel, given that is what a lot of this acting malarkey is, in essence . However, I'm perfectly content to be an Irish egg-throwing bitch, or a sad and broody victim of infidelity or even Charlotte Bronte. I'm not saying I found those easy but I could really relate to them; they were all a bit on the edge, all misfits in their own special way. Anna is almost terrifyingly normal. And it seems like a very silly thing to say, but I'm not sure how good I am at being normal.

My insecurities about the character are really bleeding into rehearsal, so I spent all of Sunday's rehearsal feeling, and probably looking, like a skittish colt. Suffice to say, terrified is not really how I see Anna. On Tuesday's rehearsal, I was less obviously nervy but I'm so thrown by the intensity of the part and the play that I kept corpsing. I had to keep apologising and didn't know how to explain that it was nerves not concentration that was the problem. And everyone else seems to find it all so easy in comparison. On the plus side, I'm kind of getting there in my head so I think I should get better at each rehearsal. For a start, this has given me the drive I needed to just get on and workout/stop eating crap. Knowing that people are going to come and see me in a play where I'm described as "beautiful" and "bloody gorgeous" is quite a good reason for me to do something about my appearance, or at least the way that I feel about my appearance. I've been trying to move differently when walking and I take more stock of my surroundings, including the people I pass, and ideas or reactions from them. I've managed to learn my lines for most of the scenes that I've already done, which is something I don't normally do so early on, but the rhythms and patterns of the language are such that it just goes in and stays there. I've been trying to think of people who remind me of Anna so that I've got a hook to start with in terms of voice and movement. I'm getting there, I just hope that the nerves die down so I can get on with it. I've got this image in my head of what I want to project. But I found a nice Mamet quote about acting while looking for something else. I do agree with him, and it is something I try to do - not to do too much but to find a way to be as honest as possible so that the audience can feel what I'm feeling:

It's not the actor's job to embellish the play, but to do something more worthwhile and difficult: to resist embellishing it. It's when one resists the impulse to help that the truth emerges. The great actors I've seen in movies or on stage are capable of being quite still, and letting their uncertainty, fear and conficting desires emerge rather than trying to cover them up with their ideas.