No, I haven’t been writing much. Not here. I’ve been acting. That’s my new hobby, something I started around this time last year.
One reason that I started acting was because I went to a friend’s murder mystery birthday party. I played a shrill heiress with big sparkly earrings (I believe I was cast in this role because I was wearing big sparkly earrings) and I had a great time. It reminded me, that party, that I loved to act, always had, even though at some point in my youth I’d decided I would focus on doing one creative thing, and that would be writing.
The other reason I started acting, let’s be honest, is that I had cancer. Just a smidge of cancer, a dash, as loyal readers know, and yet it was enough cancer to shake me up, to make me think: What are the things that I want to do with this one life? The answer that came to me was: I want to act. Perhaps that was in part because I googled ‘New Jersey acting school’ and it turned out that there is one that holds classes just down the road from my house. With the number of young children I have (2) it is easiest to start a new hobby that exists in close proximity to home, rather than hiking the Appalachian trail.
Of course, in the first class, I was a skeptic, standing in a big circle in a church hall doing mirror exercises. Yuck! In the beginning, when people asked me why I was taking the class I said things about wanting to learn about acting so I could write for actors, as if it was important to connect it to something more serious in my life. As if doing something for enjoyment was insufficient justification.
But quite fast I discovered that I do love acting class. I love it because it has been so many years since I have tried to do anything creative that I wasn’t trying to be the best at, because the only creative thing I do is write. Look, I know I’m not the best at writing, I’m among a million people who are quite good at it, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t always be a small delusional part of my brain that thinks I coulda shoulda woulda…whatever (win a Guggenheim).
With acting, I’m not trying to impress anyone, I’m not aiming for much, and yet I’m still doing it, trying to figure it out and get better at it, and that’s a good, fresh feeling that I haven’t had for a long time. A feeling that I haven’t allowed myself to have for a long time.
Recently B, my 5-year-old, said to me: Mommy, have you ever tried cheese and crackers? I took the cheese and the crackers in my lunchbox and put them together. You should try it, it’s so good!
The kid really thought that he had invented cheese and crackers, and I did not correct him, because what a nice space to exist in the world, where it feels like everything is new.
That’s a space I kind of feel like I’m in when I go to acting class, and do my work, and feel exhilarated to have remembered all of my lines, and the teacher gives me feedback like: ‘You performed that monologue in the manner of Christopher Walken.’ It makes me feel like I have discovered something, even though I know that lots of people have been there before.
The other thing I love about acting class is the other people in acting class, every one of them. People ask me what my acting classmates are like and I say, They’re amazing! because each of them is an adult who is there trying to do something that feels fresh, for their own reasons. They are all so kind and smart and interesting, and I wouldn’t have met them anywhere else.
Back in college I used to look a bit askew at the theatre kids because they were, you know, so open with their feelings, so emotionally intimate, and I guess it made me uncomfortable? Writers aren’t like that, in my experience, not so much, or at least not in person. We’re taut, guarded.
Maybe I just needed to wait twenty years to be a person who could watch someone being vulnerable in the way that an acting class requires; to be a person who could handle making myself that vulnerable. I recommend it.
JHE