Acting

There is a picture of me, a screenshot actually, from a video, and I’m staring off into the distance. I’m saying something too – I can’t remember the words but I know they were intense because the scene I was acting at the time required intensity.

The screenshot is from a film which was made of the rehearsals from the recent play I performed in – Sense and Sensibility. In the scene, I am playing John Willoughby, the villain of the story, in the midst of lying to Elinor and her mother.

It’s the first time I have looked a photo of me and thought, oh wow, I am actually an actor.

I have been performing on stage since I was 8 years old. It was just a thing my mum made me do every Sunday. I went, I performed, sometimes there was an audience and lights and microphones.

But that photo… I look like I am doing something.

Maybe something shifted in this play because I got to play a more intense part, not just the normal, light-hearted comedy role I usually go for.

I had to think about Willoughby and his intentions – about how, even though he is thoughtless and shallow, he did actually fall for Marianne, Elinor’s younger sister. He did have feelings for her, despite his best intentions of just having a bit of a flirt with a countryside girl.

Later in the play, when he turns up drunk and pathetic, stumbling in from the rain, demanding to see Marianne, who is dying from a fever, I got to perform my favourite scene where he has a straight up shouting match with Elinor.

It’s so bizarre because it is so far from my comfort zone of ‘haha silly jokes’, but I loved playing this scene.

I revelled in playing this broken, foolish man, full of regret.

On the last night, as I stood opposite Emma, who played Elinor, and, in the great build up of emotion towards the end of the scene they shouted, ‘SEEING YOU WILL ENDANGER HER RECOVERY’ barely an inch away from my face.

I remember choosing to stumble backward, whispering, ‘Recovery?’ before turning away to blink the tears out of my eyes, letting the audience watch as Willoughby realises the depths of his love for the woman he will never see again… the burst of grief at this realisation, but also a painful tangle of relief that she is okay, that she is recovering. To me, it was the only moment of true authenticity that Willoughby showed in the entire story. I thought about that scene a lot.

And performing it? Oof. It felt good. It felt like a drug. My heart was pounding when that scene ended and the audience applauded. They didn’t even need to applaud, they wanted to applaud.

I think I might be a little in love with acting.*

(*Don’t tell acting though, it would be embarrassing!)

See you next time.