My Progress As An Actor

 

 Last year we did a whole number of performances which helped me in many ways to develop my skill and confidence as an actor.

 Starting off we had ‘The Witches’, this was a very different play to anything I had done before. It was a comedy slash fiction which we had never tackled before and as an actor I saw an opportunity to develop my skills and challenge myself. To do so I auditioned and attained the role of ‘The Chef’. This role in the play was very comedic and had to be timed perfectly in order to actually be funny, so that was always going to be a challenge. I took at chance and audition for the role with Mark Bergman, we got the roles and together we worked on devising the scene to time it perfectly and make it funny. Our movements had to match our lines which was quite difficult, but we made it work. Kelly seemed to love our take on the scene. That was a great feeling and when we performed it in front of an audience it went very well, and we got some great laughs. In the end I thought that this role developed my skills in learning more about comedic acting.

 

Our next project was ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’. Originally, I wished to play the titular role of ‘Willy Wonka’, in this I was unsuccessful. This was due to the fact that at this point I always seemed to let my nerves interfere in the way of my auditions. Nevertheless, the play itself is full of great characters and truly helped me to learn how to portray a totally different character than what I was used to. My character in question was ‘Mr Salt’, a middle-aged father and business owner. Of course, I am none of these things, so this project was fun to do and a challenge for me as this play was all about big character acting. The goal was not to be subtle, not down to earth. So, you had to exaggerate everything and be a little over the top. This was a challenge for me, but I took the time to look into the nature of the play and make sure the character fit into the world the play was set in. I found it be fun and really enjoyable to be playing this over-the-top character, this rich man who in reality is bossed about by his daughter. Working closely with my fellow actors playing my wife and daughter was excellent. In our little group we would all bounce off each other and make the play even funnier. Even when we weren’t talking, we were always reacting to what was around us and talking about it too each other. This was another challenge of this performance we had to imagine that around us was all the different chocolates and machines, an entirely different world. We managed to do so and this taught me to put myself into my characters shoes and not focus on the fact we were on stage and everything was cut out props.

The next performance we did was for the ‘National Theatre Connections’, a play called ‘Remote’. Now this play was extremely different, there wasn’t a single main character, and all the cast would be like narrators telling the story. As well as a narrator I was part of a gang of youths ‘Blisters Gang’, after ‘Blister’ the main bully. Now this was the most difficult challenge of the year as I had nothing to go on and no character to go off. I had to start from scratch, a completely blank canvas. I found this to be so testing as I am used to looking at a script and being able to infer ideas and knowing information about the character. As well as in the case of the more notable plays able to research the origins of the character in a book or in previous performances. However, this time I had nothing. It was my decision to make my character apart of ‘Blisters Gang’ as I thought that allowed me some steppingstones into building this character. When more people had figured out what they wanted to be, the rest of the cast that wanted to be part of the gang began talking about how it would come to be that we knew ‘Blister’. this was the moment that my character really came to life. This is how I overcame this obstacle; I made up a story in my head about how I met ‘Blister’, how I became apart of his gang and our background. Through this is how my character and how I would act in this play came together. When it came to the performance, who knows if what I had planned actually came across to the audience. But I knew, in my head why I was there and how that character fit into that world. 

Our final performance of the year was that of Willy Russell’s ‘Blood Brothers’. Looking back ‘Blood Brothers’

was my make-or-break moment of the year. At this stage of the year, I hadn't been successful in the majority of my auditions, nor in any of the main roles. Yes, I had learnt a lot and now had more experience in many different areas of acting but I knew I could do better. Reflecting on it at the beginning of the year I wasn’t trying hard enough or pushing myself at all. In those moments I thought to myself if you don't get a main role in ‘Blood Brothers’ I was failing myself. I knew I could do attain the role and perform it well, so I worked harder than ever to learn about the character of ‘Mickey’ and to smash any and all the auditions that came my way. The problem for me previously was that I wasn't showing anyone my auditions before I went in that room with Kelly or Kane and every time, I did so I would just crumble. I was determined that this time was to be different, I made sure I was properly prepared and ready. I gave it my all, I did all I could, and I did it. I ended up getting the part, which was phenomenal, I was ecstatic. When it became time to actually work on ‘Blood Brothers’ there was a lot of elements I had to take in. For example, the scenes where we had to play children, the life they lived back then in poverty and how ‘Mickey’ would have felt and the relationships between him and his family at that age. Then to change that three times during the plays duration as we see three different ages of ‘Mickey’ and the other characters throughout the different stages of their lives. A lot of ‘Blood Brothers’ for me was thinking about ‘Mickeys’ inner thoughts and what was he thinking and going through in each scene, as every scene was so different. My character could run the gamut of emotions from happy and loving to miserable the next. I had to constantly think what has happened in between the scenes the audiences see to make ‘Mickey’ like this. This was by far my most challenging role of the year and my most enjoyable. It truly showed me how far I have come this year, from struggling with the role of the chef to being able to make the audience cry upon ‘Mickeys’ death.