Thursday, October 09, 2003
Another Openin’, Another Show. Another Openin’, Another Show…
YAY!
It’s that time again. Time to go put a gun in my mouth and bring everyone to tears…hopefully. Oh, does that sound weird to you? Well, to most people it would. But to me…every time we do a show, I know going into it that I need to attempt suicide at the end of every performance and bring myself to hysterical tears. It takes a lot out of me, if you can imagine.
When we first started rehearsing, I would put the gun in my mouth and scream my way through the entire scene. Since then, I have been working extremely hard on taking each moment as it comes. Some nights, all I do is scream and yell, and some nights, I become a blubbering mess on stage. But on all nights, I sort of wish that I was playing a different character. A character that gets to stand by and watch the events transpire instead of having to be the one that forces them to…well…transpire. It’s a lot of pressure to put a gun in your mouth on stage. If it comes off looking fake or hokey, the whole thing is for shit and people leave thinking that the play was good…except for the guy at the end that was fake shooting himself with a gun.
You understand.
What I do now to prepare is put the whole thing out of my mind. According to my character, Neechee, there is no need for a gun-to-mouth experience. Neechee, although a bit filled with lunacy, is still a focused and together guy. But when Jim, my love interest, shits on me one too many times, that’s it. I lose it.
So, I spend the whole play pining and pining for his acceptance…his love. He uses me and abuses me and by the end, if I believe in everything that has occurred between us during the show, I am ready to either blow his head off…or blow off my own. It’s a beautiful thing really. And lucky for me, the audiences last weekend fully believed me. Let’s hope for the same during this 4-day run.
The only real downfall to playing a character such as Neechee is that at the end of the show, all I want to do is crawl inside a box and cry my eyes out. I have to get myself so worked up in order to go psycho at the end and just because the lights have gone down and the curtain call is coming, it doesn’t mean that I can just turn off the sadness and anger that is coursing through my veins. What usually happens is that I finish the last scene, go to my spot for the bows, cry a bit more, chug a beer, and slap a shit-eating grin on my face. Once the lights have gone down completely, I go into a corner, change into my normal clothes, cry the rest of the tears out, if need be, and force myself to go shmooze with the people I know in the audience.
It’s a very bizarre experience and hard for people who aren’t actors to understand what it’s like. Most of the times, non-actors tell me how lucky I am to have an outlet for my underlying emotions. “If I were an actor that had to cry on stage, I would love it, cuz I would be able to get out all of the emotions that plague me during the day.” But it’s not like that. It’s more like…bringing up all of the stuff that hurts you and then once you are finally releasing all of the pent up emotion, you have to turn it off immediately and move on. It’s not at all a healing process. But if it works and the audience cries with me, then it is surely a fulfilling experience.
So, as I prepare to take the stage again tonight, these are the thoughts that run crazy-like through my head. I want to give an honest performance. I want people to listen to me and to follow my character. And most importantly, I want people to identify with Neechee and truly feel it when he is happy or when he is sad. Thus affecting the audience member in a powerful and moving way.
I am so blessed to be able to play a part that has such range. It gives me a chance to really showcase my talent and to teach people something about homosexuality that they may not have previously thought about in the past.
Thank you God for this opportunity.
YAY!
It’s that time again. Time to go put a gun in my mouth and bring everyone to tears…hopefully. Oh, does that sound weird to you? Well, to most people it would. But to me…every time we do a show, I know going into it that I need to attempt suicide at the end of every performance and bring myself to hysterical tears. It takes a lot out of me, if you can imagine.
When we first started rehearsing, I would put the gun in my mouth and scream my way through the entire scene. Since then, I have been working extremely hard on taking each moment as it comes. Some nights, all I do is scream and yell, and some nights, I become a blubbering mess on stage. But on all nights, I sort of wish that I was playing a different character. A character that gets to stand by and watch the events transpire instead of having to be the one that forces them to…well…transpire. It’s a lot of pressure to put a gun in your mouth on stage. If it comes off looking fake or hokey, the whole thing is for shit and people leave thinking that the play was good…except for the guy at the end that was fake shooting himself with a gun.
You understand.
What I do now to prepare is put the whole thing out of my mind. According to my character, Neechee, there is no need for a gun-to-mouth experience. Neechee, although a bit filled with lunacy, is still a focused and together guy. But when Jim, my love interest, shits on me one too many times, that’s it. I lose it.
So, I spend the whole play pining and pining for his acceptance…his love. He uses me and abuses me and by the end, if I believe in everything that has occurred between us during the show, I am ready to either blow his head off…or blow off my own. It’s a beautiful thing really. And lucky for me, the audiences last weekend fully believed me. Let’s hope for the same during this 4-day run.
The only real downfall to playing a character such as Neechee is that at the end of the show, all I want to do is crawl inside a box and cry my eyes out. I have to get myself so worked up in order to go psycho at the end and just because the lights have gone down and the curtain call is coming, it doesn’t mean that I can just turn off the sadness and anger that is coursing through my veins. What usually happens is that I finish the last scene, go to my spot for the bows, cry a bit more, chug a beer, and slap a shit-eating grin on my face. Once the lights have gone down completely, I go into a corner, change into my normal clothes, cry the rest of the tears out, if need be, and force myself to go shmooze with the people I know in the audience.
It’s a very bizarre experience and hard for people who aren’t actors to understand what it’s like. Most of the times, non-actors tell me how lucky I am to have an outlet for my underlying emotions. “If I were an actor that had to cry on stage, I would love it, cuz I would be able to get out all of the emotions that plague me during the day.” But it’s not like that. It’s more like…bringing up all of the stuff that hurts you and then once you are finally releasing all of the pent up emotion, you have to turn it off immediately and move on. It’s not at all a healing process. But if it works and the audience cries with me, then it is surely a fulfilling experience.
So, as I prepare to take the stage again tonight, these are the thoughts that run crazy-like through my head. I want to give an honest performance. I want people to listen to me and to follow my character. And most importantly, I want people to identify with Neechee and truly feel it when he is happy or when he is sad. Thus affecting the audience member in a powerful and moving way.
I am so blessed to be able to play a part that has such range. It gives me a chance to really showcase my talent and to teach people something about homosexuality that they may not have previously thought about in the past.
Thank you God for this opportunity.
