An Actor’s Resolution

I feel like I’m living in the eye of a tornado. 12-hour days running from work to rehearsals to work and rehearsals. By nine o’clock I’m a marshmallow. My life in the theater is thriving. I’m rehearsing my two plays and working on two scenes. Auditions on the other hand have been sparse. I was called to play a “sex addict” in an independent film that sounded like an even cheaper version of “American Pie”. The sides read like soft porn. I didn’t go.

The Strasberg Institute will close for the holidays so I’ll be “Sugarless” for a month. I’ll really miss doing my show. But I’m going out with a bang with an almost full house tonight!

The holidays are always a bit depressing. Nothing to distract me from the dark realization that I have no money to go along with my holiday cheer. I know I should relax and refuel for the upcoming year but my engines already full.

I am going home to Boston for a few days. Along with seeing family and friends, I’ll take a meeting with the high profile magazine “Boston Common”. They’ve promised me a feature story. So that’s good.

There should be a twelve-step group for Actors during the holidays. Maybe after we vent our problems we can sit around and do cold readings. There is such a thing as “acting withdrawal”…it entails leaving our fantasy lives to live in the harsh cold reality of life. No “characters” to prepare for, no acting teachers to validate our talent and no rushing around town to take meetings that make us feel busy and productive, even if we often are just burning mileage on our well- worn cars.

Alas, I will offer some good holiday cheer and hope! Pilot season is around the corner. Resolutions will have been made reassuring us that this is the year we’ll “make it”. So be strong. Hang-on. And if all else fails, go to the library and pick-up a copy of Stanislavski: An Actor Prepares” and you’ll be ready for this year for sure!

Written by Rachel Bailit