Some Things On My Mind At The Moment

1. Looming exams and lack of preparation for said
2. Increasing expansion of waistline and lack of activity to counteract said.
3. Exploding wardrobe
4. Disappearing bank balance due to exploding wardrobe
5. What to do during the summer holidays
6. Moving out - yay or nay?
7. The fact that the ability to predict the future would greatly resolve much of this anxiety
8. The fact that predicting the future is impossinle, thusly leaving me to my own devices --> increased change of fucking up and making Wrong Choices.

During high school I think I struggled with decisions less. Maybe I knew what I wanted more. Actually I think I was just less aware of my options. These days I see options spread around me in every aspect of my life, from what to wear in the morning to what cleanser to use to what to do on my holidays to what to do with my life. It might seem like a quantum leap from fashion to life-path but I think it's the same attitude both equally stressful. It's a lack of ability to distinguish combined with a plethora of choice. It's the inability to prioritise combined with the impatience of youth. It's the desire to experience combined with the desire to get it right the first time round.

I seem to labour under the delusion that I have limited time. I mean, I do. We all do. We are mortal. But what I mean is, my life, my choices, my chances, my options, my development physically, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, professionally, sartorially - it doesn't stop at 23 or 25 or 30. But then I don't want to get to those ages and feel I've missed out on doing something important.

I think this choice anxiety is couple with the knowledge - or perhaps the misguided belief, who can say - that to make it as an actor - as a female actor - you have to get in there young. And I don't want to me that person who sits around for how many years talking about a dream without actually going out to do something about it.

I guess the scariest part is that it's usually not until you've made it that you can see that the choice was the wrong one. I think I am congenitally afraid of failure. But not doing something because you might fail is but a short step away from not doing anything at all. I believe the Chinese say we must not be afraid of growing slowly, only of standing still. I agree with that in sentiment but I think in practicality I probably often choose to stand still for fear of getting chopped down altogether. It's that old attitude that I used to have such disdain for - that trying nothing and therefore going nowhere feels less damaging than trying to move and moving slowly; because at least if you're not trying you can futilely cling to the belief that you could be going somewhere, you're just choosing not to - thereby allowing yourself to believe you're still in control.

This attitude really only holds up until everyone else around you gets their act together enough to start moving, leaving little old you feeling drastically and embarassingly left behind.

Books

I love books. I always have done. I am not cool enough to love lots of obscure bands and have them on vinyl - for this I blame my classical violinist father - but the sheer ecstasy of shelf full of brandspankingnew books, oldleatherbound books, mediumbatteredpaperback books - now that's something I can get worked up over (and for that, I suppose I should blame my writer mother.) So I have always done lots of reading. When I was younger I could start a book after a Saturday afternoon trip to Dymocks and have it finished in time to talk about it at school on Monday (not that anyone wanted to hear.) But - and I'm sure I'm not alone here - I found this a harder feat to accomplish as I got older. For one thing, the books I wanted to read stopped being The Babysitter's Club (don't ever let anyone say I am a literary snob) and started being more along the lines of Dickens or Tom Wolfe - hardly a quick read over Sunday lunch. Also - and this is the more annoying part - life just kind of took over. Jobs and assessments and rehearsals suddenly meant I could no longer lie in bed all day on Sunday to get lost in my little printed world - especially if it wasn't on a reading list for a course. I think it was around the middle of year 12 that I woke up one day and realised I hadn't read a book of my choosing in about two years. That was tragic. I have to say one of the best things about taking the gap year was choosing my own reading material. Then I started uni and was forced to consume Australian literature in quantities I would never do of my own volition...and it's back to wracking my brains for the last book I read that was actually a matter of choice.
But now holidays loom - actually need better word than loom; loom implies, by onomatapaeic association, doom - and I am determined not to waste them staring idly into space for the entire time. Somewhere between rehearsals and theatre outings and shopping, oh god, so much shopping - I'd like to read lots of books. So I'm making a list. I won't get through the list this holidays, or next, but I'm going to carry this list with me forever and every time for the rest of my life I get bored I will look at the list and think, now there's a book I still haven't read, boredom be gone!
So if you know a book I haven't read and you think I should, leave me a comment and let me know. As I always say, suggestions welcome, if not necessarily taken.

Old Flames Never Die, They Just...

...get to that stage like where you've blown out the candle but the wick still has that little glowing bit on it that you have to lick your fingers and pinch to get it to go away. It's totally useless, it produces no heat, it can't even spontaneously reignite or anything, but they're always there, and I, poor sucker that I am, haven't quite figured out how to pinch these babies out of my life.

Some Plays I Am Doing

Well, really just the one, in this blog.

So since like the begining of March, Ellen and I have been directing a show called Gone Missing with the year 12s at Newtown High School of the Performing Arts. This has been a ridiculously nostalgia filled venture, us being year 12s at Newtown High School of the Performing Arts only two years ago ourselves.

So we found this script randomly while browsing the fairly limited drama section at Kinokuiya and I personally really like it. It's a verbatim piece constructed from interviews the actors did with random people in the street about stuff they had lost. For someone who has managed to lose her script, her diary, her keys and probably at least ten pens in the last four days, this seemed fitting and very moving. Also it was just nice to be kind of back in the saddle again and taking creative control of something after a year of sitting around on my fat behind doing sweet fuck all.

I like to think we have made some kind of dint in the creative development of these kids, that we've taught them something they didn't know before, that we gave them an opportunity the teachers might not have, that they'll look back on this experience and think, wow, I totally expanded as an actor during that process. I'm not sure it's worked out like that. There have been...blockages. And unexpected obstacles. And moments where I have been so on the brink of going completely beserk and throwing drama blocks across the room because people don't seem capable of following the simple directive TO BE QUIET.

Having said that though, I would probably do it again in a snap. I'm a sucker for punishment. I mean don't get me wrong, I will be Having Words to Appropriate Authorities about the Issues We Have Experienced. But there's something about being behind the steering wheel of actually creating a piece of theatre that makes you appreciate the final product so much more. Also I am probably a control freak by nature so any outlet for me to get to tell people what to do is always going to go down well.

Seriously though, I think that even without doing any acting for this show I have made myself a better actor.

Explaining this pithily in writing isn't going very well. I think I am better at rambling obsessively over miniscule and meaningless moments (check out that alliteration) than I am at expressing the things in life that are more important to me. Well, I suppose that's to be expected in the public arena, isn't it?

This has moved quite far away from its intended subject matter.

OK so basically, the show is on tomorrow and Wednesday night. It does seem like an awful lot of effort for just two nights but I guess I'm a believer in the product being the process. Hopefully what they will walk away with is a lasting memory of the effort it takes to put together a decent show. Which it will be. No, this blog is not at all a way of releasing my nervous energy pertaining to the fact that in 24 hours time we will be 11 minutes into the show and in our final run today I had to stop them three times because they couldn't seem to stand on their spike marks. Shut up.