Saturday was crazy! An awesome sort of crazy, even if it totally kicked my ass. (Yeah, it did.)
My day started with a workshop. A local theatre offers occasional master classes, and that day they held an audition boot camp. Which was exactly as advertised. Intense and amazing, and I was more than a little discouraged when I left.
I chose Puck’s final monologue in Midsummer Night’s Dream because I’ve had it memorized since my sophomore year of high school and I’ve always adored the character of Puck.
You know how plans and intentions in your head tend to fall apart when you go to carry them out? Yeah, that’s pretty much how this went. And up on a stage, in front of a roomful of people is not how I would have chosen to find out that I still have a whole bunch of hangups and fears in relation to physicality.
I was terrible. No, really, I was.
If I make it out when the theatre has its next open audition call, that is not a monologue I will use. Puck is what I would like to achieve as an actor, but I am not there.
To get there, I have to learn how to get out of my head and into my body.
Then immediately after the class, I drove out to a video shoot. (As I said: crazy day!) A local aspiring filmmaker needed actors for a montage. Two takes and I was done, and it might amount to ten seconds of screen time if it doesn’t end up on the cutting room floor. But for less than an hour, including just waiting and gabbing, I got paid almost as much as a full day at the day job.
The best part is that now I can say I’ve been paid for acting. So that’s a milestone.
Melissa Burkart 