Friday, April 23, 2010

The ephemeral art (of acting)

I hope to (someday) be the kind of working actor who goes straight from one project into another, the opening week of one play overlapping with the first reading of another.  Of course, this would require me to somehow reconcile my desire to travel and live in a new place every year or so with my desire to establish myself as an artist in one particular place.  Or figure out how to be a better traveling performer.  Maybe I should learn to lift heavy weights.  Or grow a beard.

Saturday was the closing night of a one-week run of Twelfth Night.  I played Viola, which was a great challenge and pleasure.  I worked for five weeks to memorize lines, discover how my character moved and spoke, and then give my lines new energy and meaning for each performance; and now it's all done.  It's an ephemeral art, and I think that's the hardest thing for me to embrace.  Months of auditions finally end in a casting; weeks of rehearsals end in a (series of) performance(s); and that's it. 

The show may be revived in the summer, but I'm leaving Ireland is less than two weeks.  It pains me to think of someone else taking over role.  Not Viola -- it would take too much energy to be pained by everyone else who had ever played her -- buy my Viola; the place I took in that production.  And yet, I have to move on.  I am moving on, literally.  I could have more work based on this show, but I'm leaving.  As is my wont.

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