Maybe this could be said of any profession, but I feel it quite profoundly as an actress: there are constant questions of Identity and Balance.
A week ago, I performed for the very last time a role that has been part of my life in some way for a year and a half (from the time I got the script, through rehearsals and into two separate national tours). I miss it already. I was bodily tired -- could definitely have used a small break from my little character's incredibly athletic nature -- but I was not mentally or emotionally through with her. Not in the least. I hope I don't sound crazy when I say this feels a bit like saying good-bye to a friend who is moving very far away.
For all that time, I was the woman playing this character. "Oh, you're an actress! What are you in right now?" "Well, --!" Easy-peasy. I am not entirely bereft of theatre work now, mind you. I have a play coming up, auditions coming up, teaching opportunities. But the answer to the question is a bit convoluted now. I was this one specific thing -- an actor doing one specific job -- and now I am not.
Perhaps the strangest part is feeling like I can't talk about it anymore. While I was doing it, people wanted to know about it. I discussed my job literally with people all over America, kids and adults alike. It seems like people are only allowed to casually converse about the present ("What do you do?" not "What DID you do?"), which can be difficult for free-lance artists because the Big Picture of our job is such a patchwork thing. If you ask me what I do and I answer, "Well, I am currently a between-gigs actress, training to teach, but I just got off a national tour and in the past I have been The Little Prince, Lady Macbeth, Puck, Cordelia, Matt Damon, a Brechtian whore--" you're probably going to gulp your drink and find a kind excuse to duck away. (For some reason, I have you approaching me in a bar. I hope that's o.k. You may choose the decor.) Because that seems pathetic, right? Me giving you my resume? But that's what I want to say! Why? Because all these things feel like a part of me. EXCEPT when I am in a show. Then, I find that I am completely content to just answer "I am currently <blah>." The characters that we get to play? They tell us a bit about ourselves, either right there in the casting, or as we delve into them during rehearsals. Me telling you that I am playing a cat or a toddler or a stoat feels like this fantastic & ridiculous truth I can own for a time.
I guess it just always feels strange to be done with that truth. Many "firings," many "hirings." The Balance comes in your fragile actor brain holding all of this -- the people you have been, the people you will yet be, the person you are at heart -- and always trying to SEE it.
This is your challenge too, non-actor. What you've been, what you'll be, what you always are. All of this together. We are worlds.
Interesting thoughts about how we are, indeed, present-obsessed. I also prefer when I have things coming up "I'm doing ________, then _______, then ______ in March." When those things end and there's not something else to replace them, I always feel an emotional fallout of "Now what?" and I want to be able to say "I did _________." But to whom, right?
ReplyDeleteThat said, you're right at the end that everyone goes through these shifts in personal identity. Changing jobs, getting married, getting divorced... these things alter our percepted "us" drastically that we almost don't know what to do as these new people. (Shit. Replace "we's" and "us's" with "I" and "me.")
Identity is slippery and shifty and the more I try to nail the bugger down, the less I have a grasp on him.