Some Charactors

     "One day the people that didn't believe in you will tell everyone how they met you" - Johnny Depp

     This year I was a ranch hand in a play. It was a pretty small part, I didn't have many lines. I mostly just got it because I was doing two plays with the same director and in one she gave me a lead so I got a small part in the second one. She was my least favorite character reading the script, and one that I thought I couldn't do much with.
     Up until the very last rehearsal we were awful. The three people that I was in the scenes with didn't know their lines and they kept making me mess up by skipping ahead or something, so I was awful too. Then the director added three more people into our scenes and we had to re-block all of them two days before the show went onstage. The director came backstage after the last dress rehearsal looking disturbed. She told the three of us, trying to be kind but failing miserably,
     "Those scenes are the worst in the entire play. The audience is going to feel sorry for you."
     Gosh, thanks a lot.
     It was awful. I was super scared that I was going to go back to being a horrible actress when I had finally started to get better. But the director let us practice one more time, just us. We went over it again, getting a little bit better every time. Finally one of the other actors had the idea to act how we do offstage onstage and see how that worked.
    This cast was a-ma-zing and so we got super crazy offstage. It's honestly a miracle that we never missed a cue and always got on stage on time. We had our own dance that basically consisted of standing in a circle and shuffling back and forth. We hit each other over the head with stick horses. It was epic.
     And then we were great the first show if I do say so myself and I do. The second show we dipped back down a little bit, but we were back on for the third play. I had many people specifically tell me how much they loved my character in that play even though I was the lead in the second.
     That's no one of my favorite characters I've played, and not just because I think that that was one of the best job's I've ever done (which isn't saying much lol) and because it was a fun part, but because I had to work so hard to do a good job. And well I was working that hard I really had to go deep into my character. 
     A couple weeks later we were at church and they read the story of the shepherds that saw the angels. My ranch hand character was supposed to be one of the shepherds. I got deeper into that part of the Christmas story than anything else, because I got so deeply into my character and that character became part of myself, and I became her, even if it was only for a couple of months. I was so deep that I can still relate to her.
     Some people don't get why I love acting so much. People will say that it's cute that I'm in plays at my school, and my even people that also like acting sometimes don't get it (None of this following  applies to anyone reading my blog!) I know people that like acting because they get to be onstage in front of people. They want to be the center off attention and that's how they get that, and that's totally fine! But those people will never get the wonder of being someone else. Have you ever wished that you didn't have to deal with one stress or another? I want that all the time. But well I'm myself, I can't do that. When I'm onstage I don't care anymore, because I get the chance to be someone else. That person that I'm professing my undying love for? I hate him. My best friend? We barely even speak to each other offstage. But none of that matters.
     You do have to put some of yourself in of course. You can't just create feelings from nowhere. if your character is sad, that sadness has to come from somewhere inside yourself. You begin to become someone else though in the part where say, you character's mother has just died. Your mom is currently in perfect health, never been better. But you have been really sad at some point in your life. So you take the memory of that sadness and bring it to your character's loosing her mother. But that character still is not totally you. She's someone else. Someone that you now are.

WOW! Congrats if you made it through all that! If you're not an actor, double points!