On pushing one's limits

I was lying in bed last night contemplating my recent release from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and reflecting upon my accomplishments as an actor. I've been doing that quite often these past few days. I only briefly flirted with that big no no of acting - wondering whether or not I'm any good. It's like, the kiss of death, because I end up going through every single play and every single scene I've ever done, thinking about how I might have done it better. It was a only a brief flirtation, more of a passing glance than a scandalous tryst in the dark corners of my mind, but I didn't get a good night's sleep anyway. I think, however, that was mostly because I dreamt that Adam Vorath shot me in the chest with a machine gun, shortly before his band of space pirates hijacked my colonial transport and flew off into the asteroid field. I'm going to have to get him back for that. Oh yes...get him good...

But I digress. Actually, I got to thinking what helped me the most while I was at the Academy. And while they were undoubtedly the most frustrating times of my Academy career, it would definitely be during those scenes that came out of left field. The most helpful were those scenes where, after the first read, I was going, "How the hell am I supposed to play that?" There weren't that many of them, but they really forced me to sit down, analyze every aspect of the scene and study every portion of the script to come up things that would work for me on stage. Even more than that, the rocky scenes made my tendency to "pre-direct" my scenes much more apparent, which was instrumental in letting my instructors move me out of there.

So where is this leading? To my last play of course, and how I screwed up. Just about everyone I spoke to regarding Hay Fever knows I was bitching about my character. Richard Greatham is in a lot of ways similar to the character I played in my last play, Gerald Thornton from Time and the Conways. I was more than a little annoyed at this, and I generally made sure all my friends knew about it. The funny thing is - I got so caught up thinking about how similar they are that I missed out on the opportunity to make them different. I felt like Richard was well within my realm of experience, that he and I were extremely similar people, and thus there was no need to reach very far to get myself "there." In other words, I coasted, and as a result the character wasn't nearly as interesting as he could have been.

It's a dangerous thing, I think, when I can identify very strongly with a character. It makes me lazy, and it makes me think I can get away with things I wouldn't even contemplate if I had trouble identifying common elements. It's good to realize this, I guess...I just wish I'd done so BEFORE the school year ended.