Off and Running! Chapter 6

Now that I had a taste of acting, I wanted more. I actually had one legitimate credit on my resume. I switched my acting classes from the first school to HB Studio, which was a more respectable and professional acting school with professional actors teaching. This was a real commitment on my part because for some reason the VA wouldn't reimburse my tuition at HB, so it came out of my own pocket. At HB, I was introduced to the method. Here they talked about playing an action, inner objects, who am I, what do I want and where am I. A lot of it didn't make much difference at the time but I did as many scenes as I could handle.

One particular scene from Edward Albee's "Everything in the Garden" comes to mind. In the scene my character finds money all over his house and finds out his wife is a prostitute. Well, coming from my background, I saw this scene as a great tragedy. When my scene partner and I were doing the scene in front of the class for the first time, they were laughing hysterically and it was really throwing me. What are they laughing at? I just found out my wife is a hooker. It made me go into a rage during the scene which was wrong for the character. And the laughter stopped which is what I wanted but wrong for the scene. Albee writes dramatic scenes with a strong underlying black humor which I did,'t realize at the time. It further reinforced in me that humor comes out of honesty. I didn't see it as funny because from my background, if you found out your wife was a hooker was no laughing matter.

Up to this point I had no acting technique and going on basic instinct.. i felt I was good some of the time but when I floundered, I had the tendency to push. I had a lot of energy in my acting but had a tendency to overuse it.