I Never Knew Anything At All

If you are able, please check out the video that I posted on my Facebook account. It's an old friend of mine performing the virile half of "All the Wasted Time" from Parade. Funniest thing I have seen on the Internet since I don't know how long. I can't stop watching it.

Gosh I'd like to start acting again. Gosh, yes, I would. Gosh yes indeed. No time for it now, but gosh.

One thing that disappoints me about my previous acting gigs is a kind of strict author-interpretation I had about every play I was in. I wanted to play the part the way it was written, no more, no less. I look at my friend's performance in that video and I think, oh yeah, being an actor is also being creative.

I was never that creative with my roles. I read the lines in context, figured out how the author wanted the character to say them, and I'd say them that way. When I was traveling in the repertory theater group, I would watch two other interpretations of the same characters I was playing, and it kind of amazed me, the kind of "choices" they made and the way they inserted jokes into text that was dry. They would think, "Okay, what if when I'm saying this line I'm putting out a fire that my cigarette started on her purse, and she thinks I'm stealing from her, so it's funnier when I say the next line, 'I wasn't looking for anything!'"

That kind of grandstanding and "gagging" the play can be annoying, but sometimes it's so charming that you don't care. I'd never be a grandstander, but I would like to try to be more create with my next role, whatever and whenever it may be.