Plastics, Benjamin! (or, I Plead Incompetence)
Before we get started, I'd like to send hugs and get-well vibes to my dear friend the Ocelot, who is enduring the aftereffects of an appendectomy. Recover with all due speed, my feline compadre! We who are about to rant salute you.
I've been killing the considerable insolvent time on my hands this joyous holiday season by crocheting a Delirium doll for a friend who claims she's "hot" (I'm a Death girl, myself, but different strokes and so forth, and why the hell am I putting these friggin' links in here, as if the only other person reading this blog has no idea who Delirium and Death are?) and checking out various summer acting intensives throughout town. The good news is, this being New York City, there are several from which to choose. The bad news is, this being New York City, everyone and their calcified lost twin is looking to get into each and every one of them. So, even if I do manage to land a perilous, back-breaking job cleaning oil girders, which is how Willy Russell managed to scrape up his college fees, I may find myself pissing away yet another summer wailing about how I coulda had class, I coulda been a contender. Of course, I could use my oil-girder earnings to bum around Eastern Europe, but then I'd have to find someone to take care of the cats, and then I'd be worrying about them the whole time, and yammer, yammer, get a lobotomy already, you insane specimen posing as a human being, you.
I also spend a fair amount of my considerable insolvent time wondering why I opted out of the whole acting thing sixteen years ago, back when I still believed things like full-ride scholarships to Yale Drama School were as readily available as a bag of Cheese Jax at the local Sheetz. (Um, Only Other Person Reading This Blog - is your appendix wound becoming increasingly inflamed by my manic hyperlinking? If so, please tell me, and I apologize profusely. I will send more Vikes.) I mean, I know why - after getting cast as Jan in Grease,I firmly believed that my future as an actress would, for eternity and beyond, remain strictly limited to jolly fat lady roles in dinner theaters throughout the lower 49. What I can't understand is why it didn't occur to me to, oh, I don't know, lose weight or something? Did I think, "Oh, I've tried to lose weight before, and I gained it all back; therefore, I am constitutionally incapable of losing weight"? Did I think my flab was an immutable personality trait? For the life of me, I can't suss this one out. I've been able to trace the origins, if not rid myself of, almost all of my neuroses, and cobble together a reasonable facsimile of what I was probably thinking at the time these things took root, but I cannot figure out what was going on in my head, or what particular neurosynapse had me so convinced I would be permanently doomed to Funny Fat Chick status if I went into theater. If anyone cares to speculate, bring it on.
Now, I do know why I have trouble thinking of myself as an actor, or actress, or whatever I'm supposed to call myself as an ostensibly feminist, modern woman. I see nothing wrong with "actress," although I admit to using the term "actress-y" to describe fellow female thespians who are getting a wee tad bit too big for they britches. Semantics, misogyny, Karla's a cunt, blah blah. See, as many of us who attended your average small-town high school can attest, I too got the "How about going to community college for a couple of years until you figure out what you want to do?" line when I told my guidance counselor of my plans to major in theater. At the time, I took it personally. My mother was many things, most of them atrocious, but the one good thing she did give me was the possibility that a career in acting or music or writing was something I could realistically pursue. She never dissuaded me; my dad never dissuaded me - hell, even my hidebound Republican grandparents threw their love and support into the ring. I guess I just assumed all adults thought the same way, since most of the adults I knew were, at least on the Career in the Arts issue, unflaggingly supportive. So when these guidance counselors were making noise about Choosing A Different Career Path - these same guidance counselors, mind you, who gushed over my performance as Bloody Mary in South Pacific - I thought they knew something I didn't. I thought they could tell just by looking at me that I had no future in theater (and they may be right, but that old saw about the broken clock applies). I had absolutely no idea at the time that the American public school system was not about education, and certainly not about helping kids develop and grow as unique individuals. It's about training, about parceling kids into neat little bundles and tracking them according to their grades and test scores. (A pedestrian observation, I know, but one it took me literally well over a decade to realize. ) It's about preparing students for the workforce, to produce, to make money. And while these are not bad things in and of themselves, this model leaves very little room for those of us who sashay into the guidance department and announce our airy-fairy career plans. And I would not be in the least surprised to find out that many of these guidance types suffered from Those Stage And Movie People Got There Because They're Special (tm A Chorus Line) Syndrome - and after all, who was I? A screwed-up kid with a B-minus average who, okay, could, like, sing loud and flop around onstage and shit, and we all laughed but really, did I think just any old slob could actually make a living at that? Even the school ingenue figured that out, and she had real talent. (No, I don't know what scale they were using either. I'm sure the Bible was involved somehow, as it was ever thus.) I wasn't special, for god's sake; I wasn't even pretty*, and so I needed to just accept that we can't always do what we want to do with our lives and focus on Something Practical. And wouldn't you know - that's just what I did. Well, sort of. I decided to major in English instead and focus on writing, figuring somewhat correctly that a B.A. in English would have a bit more heft than the same in theater, and at least if I were trying to make a living as a writer, no one would be judging me by my physical appearance.
I don't make any money at acting. I may never make any money at acting, not because I have no talent or I'm "ugly" but because the odds are terrible, even if you have the training, and I don't, which is one of the things I'm hoping to get out of a summer theater intensive. And because I don't make any money at it, and may never make any money at it, I find it very, very difficult to see it as "real" work. Then, too, I enjoy it - not always, but I do, and I simply can't trust the notion that work can be enjoyable, and work is work whether you're getting paid for it or not. (Unless, of course, you're cranking out kids - and I certainly don't mean to dis those who are having and raising children, because that is one hell of a difficult task, but it pisses me off that that's the only sort of unpaid work that's considered acceptable, and anything else is being an irresponsible bum.) All right, then. So I waitress. So I get a job in a bookstore. So I submit myself for auditions, so I save up for training, so I lose weight, et cetera ad nauseam. Such is my burden, my curse, that I can't shoehorn myself into a lifetime of climbing the corporate ladder. And yet I want to be safe. I need to be safe. And so the next time I hear someone playing variations on the theme of "Plastics, Benjamin!" right in my ear, like a Gypsy violinist, I don't know that I'll be able to argue with that. How the hell can I argue with that?
(By the way, if you're interested in a summer acting intensive, or a weekly acting class, I highly recommend HB Studio, which is where I've been studying for the past five years. It's fairly inexpensive and the staff and students are lovely, down to earth people who [mostly] don't pull any star trips. I'll post some more summer intensive links in the near future.)
*Highly subjective, highly fraught, always up for debate.
I've been killing the considerable insolvent time on my hands this joyous holiday season by crocheting a Delirium doll for a friend who claims she's "hot" (I'm a Death girl, myself, but different strokes and so forth, and why the hell am I putting these friggin' links in here, as if the only other person reading this blog has no idea who Delirium and Death are?) and checking out various summer acting intensives throughout town. The good news is, this being New York City, there are several from which to choose. The bad news is, this being New York City, everyone and their calcified lost twin is looking to get into each and every one of them. So, even if I do manage to land a perilous, back-breaking job cleaning oil girders, which is how Willy Russell managed to scrape up his college fees, I may find myself pissing away yet another summer wailing about how I coulda had class, I coulda been a contender. Of course, I could use my oil-girder earnings to bum around Eastern Europe, but then I'd have to find someone to take care of the cats, and then I'd be worrying about them the whole time, and yammer, yammer, get a lobotomy already, you insane specimen posing as a human being, you.
I also spend a fair amount of my considerable insolvent time wondering why I opted out of the whole acting thing sixteen years ago, back when I still believed things like full-ride scholarships to Yale Drama School were as readily available as a bag of Cheese Jax at the local Sheetz. (Um, Only Other Person Reading This Blog - is your appendix wound becoming increasingly inflamed by my manic hyperlinking? If so, please tell me, and I apologize profusely. I will send more Vikes.) I mean, I know why - after getting cast as Jan in Grease,I firmly believed that my future as an actress would, for eternity and beyond, remain strictly limited to jolly fat lady roles in dinner theaters throughout the lower 49. What I can't understand is why it didn't occur to me to, oh, I don't know, lose weight or something? Did I think, "Oh, I've tried to lose weight before, and I gained it all back; therefore, I am constitutionally incapable of losing weight"? Did I think my flab was an immutable personality trait? For the life of me, I can't suss this one out. I've been able to trace the origins, if not rid myself of, almost all of my neuroses, and cobble together a reasonable facsimile of what I was probably thinking at the time these things took root, but I cannot figure out what was going on in my head, or what particular neurosynapse had me so convinced I would be permanently doomed to Funny Fat Chick status if I went into theater. If anyone cares to speculate, bring it on.
Now, I do know why I have trouble thinking of myself as an actor, or actress, or whatever I'm supposed to call myself as an ostensibly feminist, modern woman. I see nothing wrong with "actress," although I admit to using the term "actress-y" to describe fellow female thespians who are getting a wee tad bit too big for they britches. Semantics, misogyny, Karla's a cunt, blah blah. See, as many of us who attended your average small-town high school can attest, I too got the "How about going to community college for a couple of years until you figure out what you want to do?" line when I told my guidance counselor of my plans to major in theater. At the time, I took it personally. My mother was many things, most of them atrocious, but the one good thing she did give me was the possibility that a career in acting or music or writing was something I could realistically pursue. She never dissuaded me; my dad never dissuaded me - hell, even my hidebound Republican grandparents threw their love and support into the ring. I guess I just assumed all adults thought the same way, since most of the adults I knew were, at least on the Career in the Arts issue, unflaggingly supportive. So when these guidance counselors were making noise about Choosing A Different Career Path - these same guidance counselors, mind you, who gushed over my performance as Bloody Mary in South Pacific - I thought they knew something I didn't. I thought they could tell just by looking at me that I had no future in theater (and they may be right, but that old saw about the broken clock applies). I had absolutely no idea at the time that the American public school system was not about education, and certainly not about helping kids develop and grow as unique individuals. It's about training, about parceling kids into neat little bundles and tracking them according to their grades and test scores. (A pedestrian observation, I know, but one it took me literally well over a decade to realize. ) It's about preparing students for the workforce, to produce, to make money. And while these are not bad things in and of themselves, this model leaves very little room for those of us who sashay into the guidance department and announce our airy-fairy career plans. And I would not be in the least surprised to find out that many of these guidance types suffered from Those Stage And Movie People Got There Because They're Special (tm A Chorus Line) Syndrome - and after all, who was I? A screwed-up kid with a B-minus average who, okay, could, like, sing loud and flop around onstage and shit, and we all laughed but really, did I think just any old slob could actually make a living at that? Even the school ingenue figured that out, and she had real talent. (No, I don't know what scale they were using either. I'm sure the Bible was involved somehow, as it was ever thus.) I wasn't special, for god's sake; I wasn't even pretty*, and so I needed to just accept that we can't always do what we want to do with our lives and focus on Something Practical. And wouldn't you know - that's just what I did. Well, sort of. I decided to major in English instead and focus on writing, figuring somewhat correctly that a B.A. in English would have a bit more heft than the same in theater, and at least if I were trying to make a living as a writer, no one would be judging me by my physical appearance.
I don't make any money at acting. I may never make any money at acting, not because I have no talent or I'm "ugly" but because the odds are terrible, even if you have the training, and I don't, which is one of the things I'm hoping to get out of a summer theater intensive. And because I don't make any money at it, and may never make any money at it, I find it very, very difficult to see it as "real" work. Then, too, I enjoy it - not always, but I do, and I simply can't trust the notion that work can be enjoyable, and work is work whether you're getting paid for it or not. (Unless, of course, you're cranking out kids - and I certainly don't mean to dis those who are having and raising children, because that is one hell of a difficult task, but it pisses me off that that's the only sort of unpaid work that's considered acceptable, and anything else is being an irresponsible bum.) All right, then. So I waitress. So I get a job in a bookstore. So I submit myself for auditions, so I save up for training, so I lose weight, et cetera ad nauseam. Such is my burden, my curse, that I can't shoehorn myself into a lifetime of climbing the corporate ladder. And yet I want to be safe. I need to be safe. And so the next time I hear someone playing variations on the theme of "Plastics, Benjamin!" right in my ear, like a Gypsy violinist, I don't know that I'll be able to argue with that. How the hell can I argue with that?
(By the way, if you're interested in a summer acting intensive, or a weekly acting class, I highly recommend HB Studio, which is where I've been studying for the past five years. It's fairly inexpensive and the staff and students are lovely, down to earth people who [mostly] don't pull any star trips. I'll post some more summer intensive links in the near future.)
*Highly subjective, highly fraught, always up for debate.