If you're never scared or embarrassed or hurt, it means you never take any chances*

Some of you may remember about six weeks ago that I’d posted about participating in an acting class through the community college. As a quick refresher, I’d just gone through the exercise where we had to act like a fool for a minute as an attempt to break down our vulnerabilities. To say that it wasn’t easy for me is an understatement.

Well, the class is now over and I’m here to report that it was actually much harder than I ever expected. Watching so many movies, I’ve often thought that most of the roles don’t look that difficult – I mean, we’ve all experienced happiness, anger, sadness, right? What was challenging was attempting to experience the story for the very first time as my character, so that the emotions would naturally come out. To extract them on a whim was damn harder that it looked.

I understand the purpose of the fool exercise, and fortunately, we never did it again. I think that it didn’t work in my case because I wasn’t afraid to fail as a fool – I simply didn’t want to be one. However, I made more of an effort with the scenes because I felt the stakes were much higher.

The other difficulty with the program is that we were assigned one main scene with a partner and it never really led to anything, like a showcase or performance. And my partner didn’t show up for two of the five classes when we actually did scenes, so that kind of frustrating since I paid good money to be able to practice. Another woman was also shafted by her partner, so the instructor had us pair up.

Interestingly, both of my roles were an adulteress that was being confronted by the guy’s wife, so it was a challenge to relate to them. And one of them was even more difficult because I was supposed to get emotional when describing how the affair started with the guy. The instructor was really good (masters degree from NYU) and told me that I had to go back to the giddiness of first being in love and what that felt like, combined with the guilt it being someone else’s husband. I had to do it about six times, each time with more direction, before I got it right.

It was a big deal for me to reach in and expose myself like that because I'm normally a more private person, and those types of emotions are only shown to certain individuals. At the end of the course (after we’d spent the last class dissecting Hamlet and trying to determine if the mom was really “in” on the assassination of her husband), the instructor said that we should all congratulate ourselves because it’s really hard to get up there, do a scene and be criticized for it repeatedly. For example, my partner and I spent 90 minutes going through only a page and a half of dialogue one time.

What I was really unprepared for was the realization that I, for lack of a better word, kind of suck at acting. And it’s not so much that I was surprised that I was bad, but that I could step back and tell my over-achieving self that I’m really mediocre at something – and be okay with it. Apparently, the enrollment always dwindles with each session because people feel too uncomfortable and make it about “them,” instead of the role or the work.

I’m glad that I took the class, as it did help me break down some of my barriers that I have with strangers because I was, by far, the most reserved one in the class (hence, no foolery). Admittedly, I probably could get away with trying out for small roles in community theatre, as long as I had a lot of direction. Maybe that will be my next personal goal.

So, what do you think?

Was Hamlet’s mom in on the plot?

I think she was.

*Julia Sorel