Q23: ‘As an unperfect actor on the stage,’

Today I feel like I’m a working actor. The Binger Institute has a new selection of students working on their pet projects, this term their scripts. A Script in Action workshop, mediated by Gillies Mackinnon and Esmee Lammers, is forcing the fledgling Cineasts into reconsidering their baby’s latent or salient features.

We, the actors get into their characters and show the scene as is and what we can bring to it that perhaps they hadn’t considered. This voyage of potential discovery is usually enlightening for everyone involved. And like this blog, is intensely personal.

I think Kenneth Branagh said in his book, there’s nothing better than picking up a bacon-buttie and heading off to rehearsal. Well now I know what he felt. It was of course raining as i made my way there but.

Yesterday’s session with Gillies had lead to catharsis for an unsuspecting young actress. But hey, catharsis is our business. In fact that catharsis resulted in opening up and deepening the scene for all of us.

Today’s session with Esmee was a different barrel of fish. It turned into a heated discussion with actors, director, mediator and spectators all shooting the poor fish from different angles. Not exactly a nice experience for the original creator of the barrel.

They say healthy criticism is necessary in order to learn. But i know my reaction isn’t always positive in the face of criticism. I don’t take it personally since learning what Sh. had to say on the subject.

‘In so profound Abysm I throw all care
Of others voices, that my adders sense,
To critic and to flatterer stopped are:’
Q112:9-11

It was thought that Adders were deaf in Sh’s Time. The best advice given to actors ever, for those after-show dressings down or enthused gushings. And by extension anyone in the creating arts. And further extension to all of us actors on this the world’s stage.

I am an unperfect actor, especially in life. I contradict myself, I refuse to develop, and I lose too many opportunities to selfish ends. Yet I am trying to be good, to be positive, to grow and nourish, not in any shallow Politically Correct New Man approach but rather as a fair and impartial judge to my own wit and will’s often contradictory ways. Accepting who I am, imperfect and flawed.

The more I know myself, the less I like myself. So i let self be and try instead just to be. The Elizabethans had a different idea about self-hood. There was none. People were subject to life alone. No pensions, or compensation boards, or insurance companies, though there were lots of lawyers.

‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the Lawyers!’

HVI pt 2 Act 4: Sc 2.
quoted by Dick (Jack Cades comedy side-kick in the Rebellion)