Blog Archives
Photoshoot: Once Upon A Boudoir
The peerless Dawndra Budd and I teamed up on a Saturday morning over mimosas to create a dreamland-inspired boudoir-style photoshoot.
The soft consciousness between being fully awake and fully asleep, when you’re still cozy in bed, warm and vulnerable, was a touchstone.
From surival, art.
I posted about this on Facebook and it seems like a worthy endeavor to declare here, too.
It’s been on my heart a lot lately, a quiet insistence that I have a story to tell even if I don’t want to explore it. I read this article this morning (long, moving, difficult, grievous) and it wrecked me. But through it all came again the need (rather than a desire) to develop a one woman show around the events of my Dad’s death.
It emerged in a 48th Street exercise led by Gary Austin, a 30 minute improv that found me playing childhood games and indulging in huge imaginative explorations of time and space — all to avoid reality. All to avoid crying. I felt kind of like this:
After the improv, Gary knew there was something under the surface and started asking thoughtful questions until he found the wound I’d been protecting. It was too early to be that vulnerable, but he made me realize that the pain would ground and magnify the playfulness.
We’re artists. We take our lives and turn them into works of art. It’s how we process. It’s how we give back. It’s how we stay alive: We share it.
Will Act for Health Care
In the most recent Seattle Intensive (Actorswork) workshop, we were asked to name a fear we hold about acting. Instantly, I thought of some of the risks within film work, such as:
- Lack of control when your performance is chopped up in the editing room
- Fear of others’ perceptions of you as a person, (sometimes because of how a performance is edited)
- Fear that the film will be badly finished, impacting your career marketability
- Fear that your Grandma will see that one love scene
All valid. I battle all of these. But this time, my greatest fear wasn’t “bad” characters or villains or challenging roles or editors I don’t trust… My biggest fear was “acting as commerce.”
My greatest fear may baffle most actors: acting for money. Specifically, I mean having to take a job I’d otherwise pass on, just for the paycheck.
I recently read about an actor who takes his roles based on whether or not healthcare is provided. He may have been a tad tongue-in-cheek but there’s still truth at the core. This discussion isn’t the merits healthcare, it’s why we act.
Acting for me is completely different from a “job.” When I sign on, I want it to be with a mixture of joy and terror, the inward tug of knowing I’m beginning an adventure. And I want it to pay, don’t misunderstand me! But I don’t want a paying gig first, and a compelling gig second. As Amy Poehler hinted during the Golden Globes …
Heh.
The journey has highs and lows. You’ll be swamped with work one month, and then you’ll realize a certain casting director hasn’t asked for you in a year (gulp – true story). Sometimes you have to take jobs that aren’t exactly winning material – that dry teleprompter-laden training video, for example. Or heck, a national commercial (!) for fast food that you loathe, but it pays your rent for a year.
I just know that I’m an actor because I’m a compassionate, emotional individual who loves to connect deeply. I want that to always be the driving force behind why I take (or don’t take) an acting gig. Most importantly, I need to trust that as long as I am true to myself, the right gigs will continue to find me.
