So everyday is a life lesson in some form. I was actually having a pretty good day...with only not even a month left of the show now I was really amped up about the show last night. I felt like Tuesday nights performance was solid. Anyway right before our half-hour call we get a "talk" that really made my mood sour the rest of the performance. I know that the message was for everyone..but I feel like you shouldn't say stuff like that RIGHT before we are about to go on. I went into auto-pilot the rest of the performance last night...even throughout the concert.
I thought to myself during the show I'm only being paid about this much money so you know what? I'm not going to give you or the audience my $1,000,000 performance that I've been busting my ass to give all 18 shows that we've done so far. I'm going to give you my church price..which is lower than what I'm making here. I know that this never the attitude to have..but when the mood is killed and you kill it in such a way that makes me not want to perform to the best of my abilities then so be it. Last night I was dead set on performing like a mechanical robot last night, which leads me to my title of this blog.
As some of you might or might not know I am playing a Slave in this show. I use to tell myself that I would never play a slave...but alas I am a actor and I have never had any sort of Outdoor Theatre experience. I took this job and the rehearsal process was really exciting. This place was talked up so well. I will say that I am very grateful for the job an the experience. Playing a slave though has brought some new awareness's in me as a person and a black actor. There have been times where I have noticed when I felt the actor and the slave where the same person. We both serve the master ex. the director and his vision. At times we are just there to be seen or to fill space. Now to balance this out...you have to know when to take this as the actor..the stage is huge and it needs to be filled so I totally understand that from a directors point of view. I'm not going to go into a big discussion over this but it's really very interesting to me how things are played out when doing a show that involves slavery and having actors play slaves...it starts to effect you in a more powerful way. You really have to try your best not to get your feeling mixed up and at the same time you have to walk on a very thin line with it too.
Whenever I say it's hard out here for a slave...you better believe it's hard. I find it hard in this show for my character to pull emotion into my scenes and some of my dialogue. I don't have that much to say withing the show. I have to do a lot of physical/mental movements for myself. Standing in the heat during one scene where I say nothing and do nothing isn't as easy of a task as one might believe...you have to build up an endurance for it.
I hope to never have to revisit playing a slave unless it's a powerful role. I was reading NPR artical where Kevin Free was talking about how he's so glad to see shows now that have black actors in showing other sides or our acting beside playing "powerful" slaves and plays that show different acting styles that black actors have..fyi we don't always want to play stereotypes.
Well g2g PEACE
P.S.
I still have a show to do and tonight I'm coming with the right attitude because I'm doing this show for the audience not for anyone else.
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