After four and a half weeks now of interning at the ASC, I've met quite a few people. I've spent some time working and talking with professional actors, directors, costume designers, stage managers, and production assistants, not to mention administrative and education staff. Over all, apart from my own (occasionaly crippling) self-consciousness and uncertainty, it's been an excellent experience. I'm very glad I did it, and am generally of the opinion that--what do grown-ups say?--it's been good for me.
Watching, spending time with, and talking with the actors has definitely been one of the most valuable experiences I'll take away from the summer. It's made me realize several things. Things like, I'm really no different than any of them. They aren't particularly intimidating, nor do they all get everything perfect. There's no one set formula or path to an acting career. It's helped me adopt more of a "why NOT me?" mentality.
And now I'm going to be painfully honest. One result of my Christian upbringing, I think, is that I always had a tendency to think about anyone else I came into contact with outside of church as an "other"--to start off viewing them from the inside looking out, as it were. As if I peered at everyone else from the other side of a glass wall that I now realize I subconsciously placed there myself. I only became aware of this tendency at some point in my last two years of high school. And, as I transitioned into college, I began to realize that it probably isn't in my best interest to go through life that way. Because if I start off acquaintances with this subconscious elitist mentality, it probably means that I'm not truly seeing them, and not being truly present with them. I'm holding back, and therefore probably hindering what could be great relationships with great people, not allowing them to be all they could be. To this day it's still a conscious effort, but ever since I realized what I was doing, I've tried to tear down those invisible walls. Not just tear them down, but force them out of existence.
So, knowing that about me, and also knowing that I'm just enough of an introvert that meeting new people can be difficult anyway, you may marvel (with me) at the fact that I've been able to make successful and lovely acquaintances while I've been here. And today I want to tell you about one of these acquaintances and how it subverted some of the "otherness" I described above.
I made the acquaintance, a couple weeks ago, of one of the younger-ish actors who just finished a year with the touring troop on the "Almost Blasphemy" tour and who is relatively new to the ASC. For the sake of this post, I'll call him Garrett. I saw Garrett in all three of the tour's shows before they closed--A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Winter's Tale, and John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. I enjoyed them all, though definitely Midsummer most. Garrett is very personable and outgoing--the kind of person who could make easy conversation with anyone on the planet. After the tour ended, he was a counselor for the three-week high school Shakespeare camp, and therefore living just a couple floors below my two fourth floor next door neighbors and I in the dorm. On a couple of nights, after lights out for the campers, Garrett joined the three of us on the fourth floor and we sat around talking about theatre, movies, art, etc. As I said, he's very outgoing, and very friendly. Very friendly. The description, according to my next door neighbor the costume designer who has known him for a couple of years, was "attracted to anything female that walks on two legs."
The other day, toward the end of the camp, I happened to be washing dishes in the kitchen on the first floor when he came in, rather sweaty and in workout clothes, and asked if I'd like to join him for a run. After thinking through my plans for the day, I agreed. He said he didn't have a lot of time, and offered to finish washing the dishes while I changed. I climbed the stairs to my room with the passing thought that I actually did need the exercise, and returned in a few minutes.
He drove us to the track and, as I might have guessed, initiated a conversation as we started running (something I try to tolerate--but there really is no way to enjoy talking to anyone when you feel like your lungs are going to shrivel into raisins). I did, however, enjoy learning a little more about him, and answering some of his questions about me and my past. Unfortunately, I'm pretty guarded when it comes to talking about my Christian heritage. I know I need to grow out of that--it's probably a form of cowardice. I have a hard time with my irrational fear of being judged and grouped in with abrasively outspoken and unkind people who happen to claim the same faith. I'm afraid that people will automatically assume that I'm out to judge them. So I've often preferred to cling to the words of Saint Francis of Assisi--"...when necessary, use words."
As the conversation continued on our third or fourth lap around the track, he motioned to my (useless) iPod strapped to my arm (I never even put in my headphones because we'd started talking) and asked what I listen to when I run. I told him a little bit of anything that has a beat--Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Ke$ha, Usher, Chris Brown--
"Chris Brown?" he cut me off there. "Even after all...?"
"Yeah," I admitted. "I have like one song of his." I knew his surprise stemmed from Brown's incidents of domestic violence and general douchebaggery that have found their way into the media's capable hands.
"Once a music artist gains that much fame, their name is their brand, you know?" he explained to me. "I just made the conscious decision not to listen to any of his music in order not to support his brand."
"Ah," I huffed, as we made our way back up the other side of the track. I didn't really know what to say in response.
After a few more laps and running up and down some stairs a few times, we were both panting pretty hard and dripping sweat in the stifling 95-degree sunshine and decided to call it quits. After walking and stretching a little, we got back in the car and drove a little way to the college dining hall so he could fill up his water bottle. While there, we were discussing theatre and he was asking about roles I've played. When I told him I'd played Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet he declared his envy, as well as a desire to play Benedick when I told him I was playing Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing this fall. As I discussed roles I've played and would like to play I confess that I got a little carried away, and I think my ego showed a little.
When, a few minutes later in the conversation, he made a comment about the fine line between arrogance and confidence as an actor, I faltered again and immediately hung my metaphorical head at some of the things I'd said not five minutes before, wondering if his comment was as pointed as I imagined it was. The words that I hope to see painted on the inside of the Green Room at the Black Box Theatre at IWU seemed to smart in my brain: "Do not think of yourselves more highly than you ought."
The conversation with Garrett certainly left me thinking. Here I'm afraid that if I come right out and claim a certain label people will assume I'm on some kind of personal mission to make them feel guilty about their choices, and it turns out I was the one walking away feeling guilty about things. Much of my guilt was most likely manufactured--we actually had a very pleasant conversation, traded phone numbers, and he expressed a wish to see My Name is Rachel Corrie (regardless of the fact that my school is nine and a half hours away). I have to keep in mind that it's also very easy to make me feel guilty. So, I don't pretend to think that he walked away looking down his nose at me. But I wanted to share the experience because, in a backwards sort of way, it served to subvert some of my naive preconceptions.
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