Looking back on 2006, it was a very good year. I became a member of the Actor's union and I worked pretty steadily throughout the year. It wasn't always a full production, but I was working. I even produced my first show. 2007 has not been so kind. At this point it has been over a year since my last full, "rehearsal period costumes stage lights" production and I'm missing it. I have worked, but that works has been "snippets": quick and dirty sorts of things. They were fun and interesting and I'm not complaining about having work, but they weren't anything that I could really sink my teeth into as an actor.
It's July, and now I'm looking forward into the rest of 2007 and into the early part of 2008. And from where I stand, it doesn't look as though there will be a full stage production any time in my near future. (I thought I would be doing two movies this summer but those didn't pan out, either. However, that's a different topic for a different post.) So I am jobless. It's true, no one can predict the future and I never know what may happen, but most of the theatres that I can work for have already cast their shows for the season or the season does not include shows in which I could be cast. I had a few auditions this month, and I was holding out hope for one of them, but no dice. I am an out-of-work actor.
So what does an out-of-work Adia do when she realizes her predicament? Well, first she cries a little and mopes around dramatically. She bemoans her state and wails "I want to quit!" Then she hangs out with people who are doing what they love and have boundless energy and she gets recharged for a little while. Then she gets tired and resigned, and isn't quite sure what to do or where to go from here. Does she stay and tough it out, hoping things will turn around if she's persistent? Does she hightail it out of town and move to a market where no one knows her and she has to start all over, hustling to get in people's faces and on their cast lists? Or does she move and just take a break from acting entirely and hope that the break clarifies where it is that she needs to go next, back to acting or in an entirely new direction?
It's been said over and over and over again, ad nauseam, that this profession is brutal. It is. Most people drop out by the time they hit 30 because it's just too much. The emotional toll is high, and not just on the performer but on their friends and family, too: relationships and quality time get sacrificed to the theatre or the film or the television show. The financial toll is ridiculous: new headshots every few years (every year in L.A.), clothing for auditions, travel for auditions, mailers, postcards, business cards, the demo reel, classes. The rate of return on this investment would cause any MBA with a brain to run screaming in the other direction. And let's not forget the constant mind games the actor has to play in order to stay sane - "remember who you are", "keep yourself humble", "be patient", "don't ride the emotional roller coaster" - because the barrage of messages to the opposite effect is never-ending - "who do you think you are", "what makes you so special", "you really suck and it's just that no one's being honest with you", "why don't you just give up playing around and get a 'real' job".
I'm not sure what keeps us going in the face of these ridiculous obstacles. Maybe it's outright, pig-headed stubbornness. Like I said before, anyone sane would run screaming in the other direction. And yet we're still here. Some of us have made compromises and have taken that 9-5 job in order to keep our heads above water, but we're still trying to make the dream - the dream of making a living solely as an actor/theatre artist - come true.
Why do we do this, other than that we're crazy?
There must be something to it, I suppose, the playing make-believe and getting you, the audience, to believe that we're someone we are not. There must be something to taking the symbols that form letters and words and sentences and paragraphs and turning them into a living, breathing, fallible, fascinating human being. There must be something to getting you to think about your life and your ideas in a different way. There must be something to creating in you, the audience, empathy for a person you wouldn't look twice at if you met them on the street. There must be something to taking you by the hand and leading you on an adventure, knowing that you're right there with us and not hanging back or smirking skeptically but that you're right there with us because we're doing our job right. There must be
something to it, or we wouldn't keep doing it.
Labels: fatigue, the biz
