I'm a big kid now!

I am currently rehearsing an adult role (what??) in an adult play (what??). Despite being an adult,  and being mostly surrounded by adults in my daily life (now that tour is over, at least), this isn’t necessarily a comfortable experience for me. It’s certainly not an unwanted experience--quite the contrary!--but it doesn’t necessarily fit like a glove. It fits more like someone else’s glove. Someone a lot bigger than me. And with a couple extra fingers.

When I got cast I thought (after “Hooray!!!”), “I hope they don’t notice how young I look...and how not-adult I act....” As if these things had not been apparent at the audition. As if they are not apparent upon meeting me. Obviously, I was looked at and listened to and chosen for (despite?) all of that, yes?

So rehearsals began, and I proceeded to try on the idea of Adult. Adult Woman would talk like this, right? Adult Woman, she speaks like this, yes? She smiles politely (not goofily) and knows how to put on make-up (not just chapstick) and walks perfectly in heels, right?

Thank goodness I still have the power to learn. For here is what I have learned in adult rehearsal:

They really do want me.

I have fought with this idea before. I have looked at a character and thought, “Wow, I am nothing like her/him,” so then I have proceeded to try to put them on. This, I’m telling you, I’m telling you I’m telling you, this is actually not the way to “act.” You cannot be a thing that you are not. I can never be a shovel. I can never be creme brulee. I can only be something that is already within me.

This woman I am playing right now--an adult, a dancer, a woman antsy in her own life, capable of great selfishness & delusion & desire--I can only be her because she is not actually foreign to me. I was hired to portray this lady partly because I can. And finding my way to her is actually just about finding HER in ME. You know how I know this? Because I was holding back from any actual dancing until someone who knows his stuff gave me dance moves...great, fun ones...and I then gave myself license to wiggle and do stupid Tia-dances inbetween and was met with absolute delight. No “Oh GOD, honey, stick to the choreo!” No “ummm...the character would never do that.” My silliness, my letting-go, was just what was needed. She’s being filled in, now. THIS is how you fill your character in. You bring *you.*

A few days ago, I was able to experience the same thing during the day (turned on its head) with “baby theatre” as I did at night for adults. We workshopped our latest concept--a piece for 18-month-olds and under!--and any magic that occurred came about in the moments when my fellow performer and I got out of Adult Brain and gave ourselves license to just make stuff. To follow our youthful impulses to PLAY. This impulse? Not so different from the one needed in adult theatre. Maybe no different at all.

Everything is a going-back-to.

Everything is a stripping-down.

I am best at my job when I just am. And that's when I make the prettiest things: