Ups and Downs

I am best at learning lines when I get to run them with another person. I can read them on the paper, write them out…doing vocal warm ups with them would probably be the next best thing, but absolutely nothing beats going over the scene with a scene partner. It gives you someone to play off of, and you feel like you’re not just learning lines, you’re having a conversation.

Which is why I was kind of worried when I found out my scene partner wasn’t able to make it to class on Tuesday. We had both missed the first week, so that night we were supposed to run it together a few times on our own, then put it up on its feet and film it. Instead, I had to do it audition style; going straight to filming it with someone who had the script in front of them and would know every word I didn’t say. Which shouldn’t have been a problem, because I shouldn’t have made any mistakes, but I had a busy week, a challenging day and didn’t get there. We did the scene 3 times, and although it took a while to get my brain off the lines, that I knew I wasn’t nailing, the last take was pretty good character wise. It was a really nice scene between two sisters, that I really should have spent more time on.

As for the rest of my Tuesday, I was reluctant to share this with you guys, for a lot of reasons. I rewrote this post a bunch of times, trying to minimize it or leave it out, but the point of this blog was to share everything along the journey, good or bad, so…here it goes:

Sometimes a day can be equal parts the most amazing day ever, as well as the most embarrassing of my life thus far. Like that nightmare of going to school or work naked, only for real. I was having the time of my life being a reader for an audition, working with incredible actors and loving it. Then my face hit the floor and I woke up. Not figuratively. Literally. Because I fainted in the middle of someone else’s audition and fell to the floor.

I was very lucky to be with the absolute nicest casting director and actor when it happened, but I was so mortified. I apologized profusely, completely forgetting to thank them for their help and concern and definitely more worried about how they would obviously no longer like me and not bring me back than about my own health. Priorities, right? Ultimately, the fainting was brought on by a multitude of factors, and I got blood tests to make sure it was just a fluke, but it shouldn’t happen again. It also made it very clear that it is better to take care of myself, even if I feel like I am fine, than to try to prove something.

Fainting not only put a damper on the day, it also got me incredibly stressed and late for my commercial audition right after. It was the kind of audition where they pair you up, so being the last one to get there did not go unnoticed. We did the short scene a bunch of times, and I didn’t get any notes, so I was either awesome, or wasn’t in the running. It was only after the audition that I went to the class I started this post with.

On Wednesday, I finally got the nerve to ask an actress whose career I admire to go out for coffee with me so I can pick her brain. I clearly made a bigger deal of this in my head than it should have been, because she kindly said yes and now we have plans 🙂 I also had another acting class that evening, this time with a partner, for the scene from Nip/Tuck, which I was really looking forward to. In it, I am supposed to take a pill, so I thought I would make it real and take come vitamin C. Win-win, right? Except it wasn’t chewable and I spoke before swallowing, so I had to bite it and spent the rest of the scene trying not to make a face at how gross it was. Luckily, other than the pill incident, the scene went okay. We had to get more loose and feel the relationship more than the lines, so the improv was perfect. The improvisations we do in character before the scenes are possibly my favorite part because they combine my love of acting with my writer’s love for storytelling.

On Thursday my mom and I went to see The Girl on the Train, which is very different from the book, but still a pretty good movie. Then on Friday, I got to be a reader again, where there was a lot of concern, a bit of teasing, and I had an absolutely wonderful time.

“Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson