Don't Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out

Acting is such an interesting thing to me, and even more interesting to people who aren't actors, it is a concept that a lot of people don't fully understand. When i meet people for the first time and they ask me what i do, and i respond with "I'm an actor." there is a couple of ways they go about responding. The first and my personal favourite, " Nice, what have I seen you in?" oh geeze. Well tell me everything you've seen on t.v. or in a theatre and ill let you know if i was in it. Another one of my personal favourites,"Oh nice but what do you want to do for a career." By this point i usually just turn around and try to find a pillow to scream in. A common response, and one the ticks me off is, "so like, you study lines and stuff?"…good lord. The thing that many people don't understand about acting is that it is hard, extremely fun (especially when you nail a scene), but hard.

My teacher, Marc-Anthony Massiah, told me and the rest of my classmates at YSAA, that Acting is like opening a door only to find another door, and through that door is another door, and another, and another, and so on, and so on. Until finally you open this one door and everything you've been learning "clicks", and there you are, in a room with maybe one chair or a lamp. You can stay in there for a while but soon enough you need to leave through, yes you guessed it, another door, and so the cycle continues. The next time you find that room, it may have a table, or even another chair, but like before you're going to have to leave.

As actors we are constantly tested, constantly on trial, everything we do is watched and processed, either received or rejected. So why do we do it? It is simply that we are starving artists, not only because we don't have money for food but also actors are always hungry for a fresh role or a different mind set. We love to sink our teeth into a good scene, as soon as we get a script we disect it, mould and create something i can only call life. So i guess what i'm trying to say is, no actors don't just memorize lines…we open doors too.

Dylan Padgett