Last week I was given a new script to read - with a part earmarked for me to play. The other actors involved are some of my favorite actors EVER - people I would kill to work with again - and all 3 of them recommended me highly to the director, for the casting of the last part:
"Oh, give this to Sheila - she'd be perfect for it..."
"Sheila has GOT to do this part..."
"I read the part, and I kept thinking of Sheila..."
All 3 of the actors said this to the director, independently of one another. So anyway, the script is sent to me. I am told that I was recommended for it.
I read the script, and the part that is "mine" is literally the most miserable bitter c*** I have ever encountered. I do not use that word lightly, and here it applies. She is a nasty bitter person, unmarried and bitter about it, making nasty c***-ish remarks to her married friends, she is a nasty bitter un-published poet, she is an absolute and utter c***.
If she came over to my house, I would throw her out within 5 minutes.
I had to laugh.
I called up a couple of the people who recommended me, laughing: "Soooo, this is how you see me!!"
Pretty amusing. I know it's not that I am like that, but that I have it IN me to be like that, and I could play the part because of that. That's all you really need.
But still - pretty funny.
Actually, if I had heard they recommended me, and the part turned out to be a lovey-dovey flakey girl, or something, I might think: "Damn, these people don't know me at all..."
So...what part would you react to with the instantaneous response "this is me!"?
Posted by: david foster at February 21, 2004 12:57 PMHm. The part that I relate to more than any other, for whatever reason, the part that I am determined I will do some day, is "Miss Alma" in Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke. It's not so much that she IS me (God, I hope not - she's a tragic woman) - but many of her struggles are my own. Many of her issues are things I not only relate to, but are things that I have experienced in my own life.
She's a heightened me. She's a version of me - a Sheila whose soul is stretched out on the rack.
Miss Alma's struggle: The split between spirit and flesh - the struggle between living a life of the mind, and living in your body ... Miss Alma cannot reconcile the two.
(Nobody in Tennessee's plays can integrate the two, or reconcile spirit with flesh - it is either all flesh, like Stanley Kowalski, or all spirit, like Miss Alma...) People who try to integrate (like Miss Alma, like Blanche) play HUGE prices in Tennessee's plays. Usually, they go mad.
Miss Alma, after living a life of spirituality, finally decides that she cannot live without Dr. John - she needs to give up her prudishness and accept sex into her life. By the time she makes that decision, Dr. John is already married to another. And so - Miss Alma makes the only choice that she COULD make in a Tennessee Williams world - she becomes a whore.
She is either all spirit or all flesh. She cannot do both.
I cannot read Miss Alma's monologue at the end of the play, when she goes to see Dr. John, without weeping myself.
So no - it is not so much about finding a part exactly like myself. I became an actress because I liked being OTHER people, and I never wanted to give up the "let's play make believe" aspect of childhood.
But some parts you just have a connection to. I have that with Miss Alma. I also have that with Rosalind, in As You Like It. The feisty wise little cross-dresser running around in the woods, with basically a Ph.D in love.
I would love to play Rosalind too.
Posted by: red at February 21, 2004 01:08 PMPersonally, whenever I hear the words "nasty, bitter c***", I always think of you, Sheila.
Posted by: Emily at February 21, 2004 03:55 PMI remember auditioning for "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at SJSU. I wanted badly to play Flute, thought I could have a lot of fun with it. At the end of the auditions, the director asked us to say which part we really wanted, but when he turned to me, he just smiled and said "not you, I know what I'm doing with you."
When the cast list was posted, my jaw hit the floor - I was Bottom - a role I figured I had no chance of getting. This came as a surprise to just one person - me. Turns out everybody else regarded this as a foregone conclusion.
I try not to think too hard about what this says about me (which, I suppose, says a lot about me).
Regarding your "bitter c" role, though, it's probably more a matter of people believing you can pull it off, and playing nasty takes a lot more talent than playing nice.
Break a leg!
Nah, Colin, I think they hit the nail on the head- ONLY KIDDING SHEIL!!!!! Please take this role, as I MUST see it! hee hee
Posted by: Beth at February 22, 2004 06:03 PM