Let me take a minute, just sit right there...

...I’ll tell you why I started a blog called Reactions. Yeah, I reverse-Bel-Air’d* you.

An overriding theme of my posts so far has been my current unwanted houseguest and life partner – Unemployement. It is often seen as a necessary part of the early stages of an acting career – the cliché has it coupled with waiting tables, and as usual the cliché is drawn from the truth. 

My challenge lately has been to fill my time productively and keep my creative muscles active. There are only so many Shakespearean monologues you can learn for the sake of learning something new before your brain becomes Elizabethan mush. So I’ve challenged myself to write – at least once a week, hopefully more if the mood takes me.

And the things I write will be Reactions to the world around me – to my experiences, my industry, my history and my future. There is an adage in my field that all acting is reacting – mostly because this is true for all life. All are actions are reactions, conscious or otherwise, to external influence. 

The title actually came to me a few months ago when, after becoming particularly incensed by an opinion piece in the newspaper concerning a mainstage Melbourne theatre company, I sat down to write a response. 2 hours later I hadn’t come close to making a sensible point, just 3 pages of vitriol, so I deleted the whole damn thing.

I realised that all I was doing was reacting without thought, just spewing forth the rage that consumed me without articulating why I felt so angry. And I remembered the one rule Paul Nelson has for his excellent collaborative blog Why I Adore...– no negativity. 

In any given conversation with a colleague from the arts the chances are high that the talk becomes more about what’s wrong than what’s right – particularly if one or both of us are unemployed. It’s always easier to focus on the down than aim for the up, but how can that ever create a new perspective?

To change the way things are, to improve the situation both personally and within the greater Australian industry, every conversation and thought and comment and blog post needs to contribute something new to the conversation. The same old conversation gets the same old result, and I want to change the result. 

If anyone comes across this, if anyone reads what I’ve written and has a reaction, add something to the conversation. Let’s find a new result. 

*To learn more of the Reverse Bel-Air, look here.

I got the horse right here

Yesterday afternoon, against all reason, I bought a lottery ticket.

At certain times in my life I have been known to gamble – in casinos, pokies, race-tracks, friendly poker games, ferret races...yeah, so I like the thrill of financial risk. Possibly that’s why I’m enjoying living hand-to-mouth in unemployment without jumping hastily back to hospitality? Anyway.

Regardless of my propensity for the odd flutter, I have never bought a lottery ticket – the odds are just unplayable. Yes, some people win big, but there’s never a reasonable expectation of odds or even the guarantee of a winner!

So why now?

Despite my current lack of employment and uncertain future, I’ve been pretty positive lately. I’m feeling good about life, enjoying most hours of most days and feeling a lot of positive energy coming from wherever.

Yesterday, after speedily achieving an above average amount of my to-do list, I walked into an Optus store with a damaged iPhone 3 and a question about my contract end date. In under 30 minutes of minimal effort on my part, I walked out with a brand new iPhone 4, a better contract, and around $400 in savings on various fees and accessories. It was mostly unintended and all incredibly easy.

I subscribe to no specific religious theory, I’ve never had an overflow of faith, I don’t read horoscopes or follow the paths of the constellations, but I do entertain theories and ideas from all these concepts that in my own mindset could be seen as similar to karma, goodwill, chi-flow, the force – in fact nothing at all like them, but it’s my own system of belief and I don’t answer to you!

The point is that if things start going my way I’m not looking at the mouths of any horses bearing gifts. A friend mentioned offhand that with my luck I should buy a lottery ticket. So I did. And some numbers came up.

Now don’t get overexcited, the total win came in under $25, but it’s still a win! And when I went to collect my luck-gotten gains today the sharp-minded salesgirl suggested I put the winnings towards a ticket in the larger jackpot draw on Thursday. The price of this ticket plus the original subtracted from my winnings left me 85 cents ahead.

A sign? Perhaps. Perhaps just a keen sales ploy. But if there is such a thing as a lucky streak, I’m going to ride this wave as long as I can!


UPDATE: I didn't win anything. Sometimes a sign is just you wishing and hoping. But sometimes it's a sign...

Dancing for my own enjoyment, that ain’t it kid

This can be a very depressing life I’ve signed myself up for.

Oh yes, poor me, I get paid to pretend. To remember some words and speak them on cue, sometimes more than once. Perhaps I’ll have to run, or juggle, or learn to play a harmonica, they’re all things I do for which I could get paid.

When I actually have a job that requires those things. The reason actors get paid well (aside from the emotional connection an audience forms to a pretty face that allows marketing companies to sell shoes) is that the work is never guaranteed, and opportunities can be few and far between. Sometimes the phone doesn’t ring that often, and you can’t live your life staring at a piece of technology trying to will it into giving you human interaction.

Keeping positive in the down time is the name of the game, and there’s only so many different ways you can reassure yourself that your current bout of unemployment has nothing to do with you. My current favourites are that May/June is always a quiet time in the industry, and the strength of the dollar is keeping more big projects from starting up.

True, but a little sad that these are the thoughts the get me through the day.
 

And although it is possible to watch two seasons of Entourage in one day, before long you start to dream of living the Chase boys’ free and easy lifestyle despite their invisible morals and shallow existence and the highly unrealistic depiction of industry life – I’ve never been to LA professionally, but I can’t believe anyone in the world is like those characters.

So what do I do? Say yes to as much as possible, to keep myself active and interesting.

For instance, this time last week I had no plans of any kind and I ended up making money. Some came from a last minute offer to teach, as I have spoken of before, some from working for a friend as a singing telegram. Not the most glamourous work, but I’ve done stranger things in public for less money, mainly for these guys.

Now, the teaching work came from actress M I’ve worked with onstage. It was after graduating from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts that I was first associated with her company, working with director T who also studied at WAAPA some years before.

I heard of his auditions from a mutual friend of ours C, who once worked in the same building as me, but we actually met performing in a youth theatre show together before I moved to Perth to study. I found out about that show from  close work colleague E, and it was directed by A, a man whose work I had previously seen out of professional interest and had held in high regard.

I still believe that without working with man A I wouldn’t have had the self-awareness to get through my drama school auditions. Also, mutual friend C and I now share a house with friends. 5 years of saying yes to friends, none of it to paid work, has led to unexpected opportunities.

And the singing telegrams? They came from actor D who runs an entertainment company. Him I met while performing in Peter Pan, produced by Y – a man with whom I have many mutual friends, including director T. The audition for that I heard about through another housemate J who I met through C and others at that same youth theatre many years ago. Again, saying yes to little or no money has led me to a greater community, close friends and some unexpectedly fun work!

And this week? I have nothing planned! So I’m volunteering for the weekend with friends working on Underground Cinema, which should be fun. I’m playing music with old mates, I’m hopefully going to write some more, I’m going to read things and keep my skills sharp.

Because soon the phone will ring, and I’ll be ready to say yes!

Admit me Chorus to this history

Today I did two things that I’ve never done before, two things that I certainly wasn’t expecting to do when I woke up this morning.

One was unzipping the mouth of a gimp mask worn by a man standing shirtless inside a cage. He was also chained to the cage and had black crosses of duct tape on his nipples. None of this is a lie. 

The other thing (and strangely this was the more unexpected occurrence) was teaching 2 hours of an adult drama class.

I’m only 18 months out of my own acting training, dealing with the day to day life of being completely unemployed and having no clear next step in pursuing my own career (which I assure you will be far reaching, long lasting and high profile) and for a couple of reasons I’ve never seriously considered teaching as a possibility in the short term.

Firstly because my stupid pride steps up and says that teaching = failure, as it’s not the career I want to be following. This is obviously stupid, and quite likely insulting to all my contemporaries who make their daily living from passing on their unique knowledge, but I’ve always found it hard to ignore the voices in my head.

Pride aside, the main reason is I’ve never really believed I have anything to contribute to someone’s development. What could I really have to offer? I’ve only just graduated myself, I’m still learning and making mistakes, surely the students will notice this! I’ve had visions of being chased from rehearsal spaces by angry amateur actors hurling copies of Stanislavski at me, shouting ‘Fraud!’ at my back as I escape down the street.

This is quite a common social fear for me – that I’m just not good enough. But I digress.

My extended unemployment has changed my mind about a few assumptions I’d previously made about myself, and when a mid-afternoon text message from an acting colleague offered me the chance to cover an adults acting class for cash money my wallet beat down my pride and fear pretty damn quickly.

A quick list of my favourite exercises jotted down, a scan through some old acting journals (my teachers were right when they said ‘you’ll be happy to have them some day!’ Damn teachers. They’re always right.), a chat with the owner of the space and an absurdly brief introduction later - suddenly I have 16 student actors in front of me. And they’re not throwing things.

2 hours later and I’ve taught my first acting class.

The most surprising thing for me was that I recognised these people. Amidst the shyness of a group of strangers and the tentative opening up to new exercises and experiences I recognised in them so much of the less experienced me. ‘That’s right’, thought I, ‘There was a time when I was an untrained actor, how did I forget that?’ Suddenly, knowing where I had come from and seeing the not insignificant difference of where I am now, I knew I had something to contribute.

The point of this realisation is that lately I’ve been swimming. Metaphorically. I do love metaphors, and it’s too damn cold for swimming in Melbourne at the moment. I’ve been swimming in my own existence. My life right now seems to be just meandering along without propulsion or true direction, and my biggest struggle has been to correct that. Quite honestly, I haven’t had the faintest idea how.

What I have forgotten lately is the past - specifically, my past. Everything that was dutifully noted in those acting journals has become to some degree a part of the person and actor I am today, but I often forget the reason I learned it or the importance it once held for me. I feel like the best way to make clear steps forward is to remember the steps I’ve made in the past. The best way to keep walking is one foot in front of the other, same as it ever was.

And this is the third unexpected thing I’ve done today – I’ve started a blog. If I can remember as I go what’s important and why, maybe my direction will become clearer. If I can recall my past lessons, maybe the future ones will be easier.

And maybe, if people read it, I’ll find that I really do have something to contribute.