The proper feminine form of actor is actor. It is “one who acts,” not “male who acts.” My 2005 Merriam-Webster unabridged actually lists actress as offensive.
I did it in high school, including Shakespeare. I sucked, badly and completely. I see no reason to think I would do any better now. So no.
It was fun, though.
Regards,
Shodan
This is the problem I have. I’m not naturally extroverted; I don’t mix well with actors who are. I try to be professional even when I’m not being paid, to do whatever is best for the production, rather than what’s best for my own ego, and I don’t gossip about other actors or backstab them.
That’s one reason why I get parts, I’m sure. But it’s also a reason why I don’t take them often. I hate the politics of it.
The politics of little theater and college theater are especially awful. You can usually cast half the play before you go to an audition (“romantic lead— that’ll be Curtis, romantic female lead- Mary Beth [please God don’t subject us to her rendition of What I Did For Love in the audition again, especially if it’s not even a musical), zany uncle will be Tom, etc.”).
What always pissed me off with college theater was when the director (usually a theater dept. faculty member) cast his friends who had no association with the college in roles. This is NOT community theater!
Acted in high school and university, including a general BA in Theatre. I got out of it for a while afterwards (approx. 7-8 years), but was brought back into the fold by our very own Cervaise. I’m pretty sure I’m not too bad at it. I’ve won some awards (nothing famous, mind), and people tend to laugh when I’m doing a comic role, which is the point.
Doing Shakespeare right now and one of my castmates told me, last night in fact, that I had stage presence. I was flattered but didn’t believe her. If I did, I wouldn’t be doing this in my spare time, working a desk job during the day.
Not many pictures of me out there, but here’s one wherein I played the lead a couple of years ago. I loved that play…!
And I’ll throw my two cents’ worth with the others who noted that it’s much more than memorising lines and faking an emotion.
DECLAIM, DAMN YOU, DECLAIM!!!
(Sorry. Couldn’t resist. And, uh, how dost thou? 
)
ETA: Dammit, no, WhyNot! Bad girl! sigh. Now I’m remembering why I was such a whore in college. Stupid hot actors.
Oh, I wish! That would awesome and I know I could do it.
ETA: Okay, could have done it. Too old now.
Actually, it was a performance of “Lol Cats Through the Ages.” I’m doing a portrait of Invisible Hot Dog.
And I dost well - Thanks for the “aw, shucks” moment!
The last play I was in was almost enough to turn me off of ever acting again. It was The Crucible and, true to form, was the judge (Danforth). I hated damned near everything about it and it’s the only time in more than 20 plays I’ve been in that I’ve actually had a “prima donna hissy fit” during rehearsal and actually shouted out (and I still can’t believe I actually said these words) “I CAN’T WORK LIKE THIS!”
The director was an anal OCD straight drama queen who spoke in an English accent that curiously his brother and mother (who I met opening night) lacked. He ob-freaking-sessed over everything- literally, which board [not literally but in theater talk] we stood on, exactly what second we crossed and how we crossed, even things such as whether we led with one leg or the other. Personally I’ve always felt that as long as you remember your lines and do things approximately the same every time (i.e. don’t deviate from the script obviously or do anything that’s going to throw off the other actors who have to react to you) then that’s not only good enough but helps keep it seeming less like a play. If I’m supposed to touch a co-star and one night I put my hand on a co-star’s arm when talking to him and the next night I put my arm across his back, the variety actually keeps it a bit fresh and so long as I don’t grab his ass one night and high five him the next it’s within a standard deviation. Not with this guy- he wanted a frigging exact same movement-for-movement performance every night, no more deviation than a film or a ballet, and was so OCD that we would rehearse the same scene every night for 7 nights and never get all the way through it (and that part where the girls “see” the devil in the courtroom isn’t really that important anyway, no need getting to rehearse that when the issue of which step Rebecca Nurse stands on when denying her guilt is still up in the air).
Then I HATED the costumes. They were anachronistic in the extreme. In the first scene (the courtroom scene) I wore a powdered wig with ribboned ponytail (NO! NO! NO! HE’S A FRIGGING PURITAN! AND THE WIGS THAT WEREWORN WOULDN’T HAVE LOOKED LIKE GEORGE WASHINGTON’S!) and then my robe was bright red (NO! NO! NO! Red was something a Puritan may wear to a joyous occasion, but it was not dignified enough for a court…especially one where Satan might be called as a witness). My facial hair- just utterly wrong for the role- and the dark cape I wore in the last scene (the prison) made me look like Al Swearengen’s long lost father, the Sith Lord Darth Homo (an actual picture if you have MySpace).
Then ‘John Proctor’ from the play, a drama major who graduated with honors (which helped at the gas station he night managed), was co-director. As an acting student he had specialized in stage combat. You don’t think of THE CRUCIBLE as a particularly violent or action based play, but that’s because you never saw this production. There’s a full fledged fight sequence in the courtroom, John and Abigail (a 15 year old who was phenomenal- the one fantastic performance in the play) in their confrontation scene during the trials end up re-creating the “eat the cake bitch!” scene from *What’s Love Got To Do With It" (“You gonna help Proctor? That what you say? Oh shit no… yeah, witch judge ask her to sing she’ll sing all day!”) and Mary Warren got hurled down a staircase (presumably when she met Rhett and told him she was pregnant- not really sure- I wasn’t in the scene and just heard the clunking each night). Tituba couldn’t quite get the concept of a Jamaican accent (not that she should even have tried) so she settled for Irish half the time, Reverend Hale was a local minister who, though married and a father, came across like Richard Simmons in knee socks (“Okay let’s shake those demons out! One two three and then some kicks/go away you six six six- Wheeeee!”) and Thomas Putnam (the rich landowner) for no apparent reason was forced to wear a medieval costume. It was dreadful.
What I hated though was that the rest of the cast stood for it. They seemed to have no idea this was awful, and they would not dare speak up to the director for fear he’d yell at them. I wasn’t getting paid, I wasn’t getting a grade, and I didn’t give a damn and we got into it almost nightly the last couple of weeks until finally he agreed to give me no notes, positive or negative, in exchange for which I promised to remain in the show, wear the damned costume I hated, and not go way off book and encourage audience singing or say “No… let’s hang them right here right now— do you need a rope? I happen to have one…” during the courtroom scene.
Anyway, the egoes and the obnoxiousness and then the lack of applause (for Herr Direktor decided THE CRUCIBLE was too serious a play for a curtain call {that’s the frigging PAY for community theater!} just turned me so off the acting experience I haven’t done it in two years. I would like to do my own CRUCIBLE though as an homage to that one- in order to capture the essence of his constant Arthur Miller/The 50s/“Let’s understand the 50s mindset” dumbass exercises I’ll cast John Proctor as JFK, Jacie Onassis as Elizabeth, Marilyn Monroe as Abigail, Jay Edgar Hoover as Danforth, and LBJ as Putnam, with perhaps Ernest T. Bass along as Reverend Parris (“She shouldn’t a called me no devil’s creachter!”) and Andy Griffith as Reverend Hale ("mmmmmmmmm…mm…mmm! Now you done insulted the purity of my very Chris’jun soul, and I don’t even wanna tell you out loud what the ‘Very Chris’jun Soul Purity Offendin’ penalty is!) with Josephine Baker as Tituba in her famous Satana Banana Dance. It couldn’t be worse.
Giggle. Giggle. Gigglegigglegigglesnort.
I’ll never forget the horrible moment during rehearsals for Jesus Christ Superstar when I actually had the balls to ask, “Um…I can’t figure out why I’m exiting here and then coming on, in the same character, 2.4 seconds later. I mean…what’s my motivation?” I was a frickin’ chorus girl, fer chrissakes! :smack:
You should always lead with the upstage leg.