So I have acting class tomorrow....or well today....During the last class we were given a sheet of paper with famous actors and quotes or better yet philosophies about acting and theatre. I love quotes!! As we went through each quote it was interesting to hear the different views and approaches to acting from people who know. for example.....
Dame Peggy Ashcroft said, "You have to live in order to act and what you put into your performance is what you've learned from life."
Glenda Jackson said, "Acting provides the fulfillment of never being fulfilled. You're never as good as you'd like to be. So there's always something to hope for."
Helen Hayes said, "Childbirth is easy compared to giving birth to a role in a play"
Michael J. Fox stated, "The oldest form of theatre is the dinner table. The same people every night with a new script."
My favorite is a quote from Bob Hoskins, he said, "Whoever I play, whoever I become, I must have a starting off point. I must be sure of who I am before I become someone else."
This was the one that resinated with me the most. I was on the phone with my mother today discussing the big issue in family right now.....how old I am getting. ......its a national problem....It is weird to think that in about a month and a half I will no longer be a teen, I will be a junior in college, and searching for grad schools or places to move after graduation. The "Who I am" is a constant change process in college. You don't enter and exit as the same person. But we all have a starting off point we all came from somewhere and the stars and famous people we idolized all started and made it. And we look on their words of wisdom to help, inspire and steer us to bettering ourselves and our knowledge of the art. Their experience is acknowledged, their success is admired, and their philosophies are appreciated.
That's when Beth dropped the bomb. We had to create our own philosophies that would be shared with the class and faculty. Now some may see this as a simple assignment. But for me it racked my brain. The philosophies I have always followed were things older people had told me, or people who had been successful. Who was I to philosophize a craft in which I am constantly learning and who only a few short years ago had very little knowledge of at all.
Its was about 1 in the morning and it came to me. I was starring out my window and in the dark blue almost black sky I notice a small dot. The star glimmered and was the perfect procrastination opportunity. as I pulled the shade to expose myself to to more of the night sky I saw it, the moon. I remember laying in my hammock during summers and just watching the stars appeared and the moon would become the bright beacon in the sky. The breath taking universe slowly took over the plain canvas of blue. Stars came to view looking like a jewelry store blew it contents to the sky and they stuck, but no matter how many of the sparkling stars filled the sky it could not compare to the giant moon. I never wanted to be an astronaut, but I always found it comforting to know that there was a world outside of ours, that we aren't confined to this one place that we live in, that there is literally no limit to anything. I'd like to think that this is what Neil Armstrong thought when he first gazed at the moon. This is how I look acting, I see a show of any kind and it is like I'm gazing at the moon. I amazed by its existence, I see and am captured by the world that is developing before me, and I want and need to be part of it. When you seen a universe stretched before you, you know that anything you want to accomplish is possible. Because if the stars and moon can perform a show every night and entertain generation after generation, why can't I?
Then my homework was done.
DW
P.S. Lady Windermere's Fan opens Friday at 7:30 in the Macklenberg Playhouse!!! Get your tickets now and see this amazing show it will be fan-tastic!!!!
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