Gettin’ Down
You know that thing about Actors being a fraternity? How we’re all in it together and, although it’s very competitive, that it’s great when you’re in the company of your peers? Makes you feel all fuzzy inside, don’t it? Well, it’s a warm feeling alright. It comes from a feeling that we’ve chosen such a specialised field, and because the unemployment rate is so high, we appreciate the suffering of our fellows, and how lucky we are to be working. Yeah, it’s a wonderful thing.
I want to let you in on a less-known, hardly ever talked-about thing that also happens. You know when you were at school, and there was the Cool Gang? Or perhaps you were one of those people who weren’t quite cool enough to be in the In-Crowd. Of course, as an adult, you know that adults don’t behave like that. That’s immature kid stuff. I mean, we may do things differently to the next guy, but we still respect each other as Actors in a wonderful profession, right?
Wrong. This profession attracts some rare, interesting, generous people who are interested not in who’s in or out, but in fullfilling the needs of the audience with the art of the writer. And then there are ‘the others’.
For every time you leave a production feeling buoyant in the knowledge that for a few hours, you’ve served humankind, there will be times when the people you’ve just spent hours with, are so rude, selfish and so very immature, that you’ll come home feeling as though you’ve just been through a torrent of abuse (for it’s my belief that it is abuse).
You’ll have done a good day’s work, and you’ll have been as generous to the work and the other players as is your nature, but the passive-aggression that will come from these players will be unrelenting.
I tell you this as someone who knows. You must not waver. The reason they do it is because of their own insecurity. Acting attracts the insecure. And if you are sure that what you do is good, that you rejoice in the challenge, these insecure, inadequate, immature people will be all around you, but they will NEVER defeat you.
Pity them. They know not what they do, and they know not how to Act.
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