Check Your Personality

Thinking a lot about 'type' and 'hit'.....partly because I have some new headshots and I stare at myself and think 'who is this person? who do you cast her as?', and partly because I'm struggling when I get cast as my type and also when I get cast against it, and it's kind of endlessly puzzling to me.

This is one of those boring business type things that I hate, but really, if I put a little bit of time into the boring business stuff and get better at it, conceivably I have a better chance of being able to act and make theatre all the time, and so I'm willing to put up with it.

There's the person/actor that you are, that people immediately peg you as and that you are easily. And things being what they are, for me that usually breaks down as 'ugly'. I get parts that aren't for pretty girls. There's some wonderful stuff in there and I've had some really cool opportunities and there are, actually, some parts within that hit that I would really like to play professionally...Maria in Twelfth Night, maybe (which I've done but never for cash really and I GOTSTA GET PAID). Or some of the women in 'Our Country's Good', which I'd love love to do. Or Sonya in 'Uncle Vanya', which is a huge huge dream role. 

And I know I can do that stuff, and when I see that stuff in the breakdown (key words: plain, lonely, quirky, clumsy, supporting) I'm like, 'awesome!'. But then there's another part of me that wants to be challenged and wants to be seen in a different way, partly because it's frustrating to always think of yourself as a hideous troll, and partly because, you know, you dream of the great parts, you don't always dream of being the maid. 

The weird thing is sometimes I get one of those parts and I freak right out and spend weeks saying how I'm not pretty enough to do it and I'm miscast and I talk myself right out of that. Under special skills on my resume, I have 'making myself feel bad'. There's this duality of not believing I can do it and FIERCELY believing that I can do it, both at the same time. Of KNOWING that I'm that funny ugly maid and also knowing I'm not. 

I'm writing a one-person show about self and the myriad of selves we are, and I know for a Tim Hortons commercial you just need to be one thing, but, like, sometimes I'm a mom, and sometimes I'm a sidekick, and we're all so many different things, and even the 'me' that isn't, that I dream about, there's a reality in that somewhere. There's at least a theatrical reality in that, in the same way that if we're all witches or in Italy or on a spaceship I can at least be a version of myself that might not really exist, can't I?

ISN'T IT AMAZING THAT THERE IS A SELF THAT DOES THIS THINKING ABOUT ME? Man, sometimes I think about the brain and I just have to go eat something. 

I really think that knowing what roles you can play and how to present yourself in order to get in the door and start working is a smart thing, but then there's a point that you want more. Beyond that, I don't  like that I think of myself as only one thing. It's limiting me. I dont' want to think that I can never play certain roles because if I have to think that way I don't know how much longer I'll be able to keep going.

It's an amazing thing, this in-between of reality and fantasy. You need a fantasy, but you accept reality? You strive to be seen as more than you are while staying who you are, or discovering who you are? Identity is defined by what people peg you as, but you keep dreaming? You create the fantasy of the play with (or in spite of) the reality of the actors. Very weird. Very rabbit hole.