Acting the langer

So I suppose I should mention I met Sambuca last night and it was all good, and how his manhood plays such a pivotal role in the five-star production that’s just finished a successful run at the Dublin Fringe Festival (if you missed it and have the slightest clue of what I’m talking about then it should be on in Cork soon). And how in my haste for Cassie and me to meet His Buca-ness, it was neglected to inform him that said Cassie was a FODer (leading to hilarious Fraiser-style misunderstandings). But instead I’ll leave it with the simple statement of fact that it was thee most enjoyable night I’ve had in ages and Sambuca is a great guy with a lot of talent, some of which I’ve now actually seen. Y’see, you can go on here and say everyone’s great and then you could meet them and say to yourself “what a skidmark” but I can honestly put my hand on my heart (wherever that is) and say all you FODfolk rock and you are my refuge from the demands of real life. Which is probably a scary thing to say but I’ll leave it at that. And I will come to Cork. Some day. After all now that I’ve hung out with some of Cork theatre’s anti-glitterati, I must have some gram of street cred. I could change my name to JayeLangeR in order to further ingratiate myself into Corkonian culture.

I’ve meant to write this entry for a while where I talk/bitterly rant about what made me leave college. The whole “this isn’t what I’m meant to do” thing. The following passage is taken from an abandoned entry I wrote while still in college in February, a month before I left. It was a frantic little thing, so impassioned I got a bit hot n’ bothered and left it on a Zip disk to be discovered a few weeks ago.

Joe in Freaker-Throwing shock!!!

I am throwing a freaker. For those of you perplexed by this phrase, suffice is to say it means I’m becoming suddenly very apprehensive, nervous and anxious. I am in a Journalism course and I’m suddenly realising something. It’s a bit like…..like I’m coming out. I think I’ve always known it but everyone around me had such a high expectations so I didn’t dare say it. I don’t want to be a journalist. I don’t want to hunt down a story, I can’t stand the idea of working to deadlines, scraping a measly living on writing. I’m not the worst writer in the world but I have other talents. I’m in the computer room right beside the class I’m supposed to be in. This is as far as I got in today. And I’m looking at a photograph of someone looking at the camera through a mirror. Maybe I could do photography. I really like seeing how pictures turned out and I used to just buy film and go off cycling, taking pictures of all sorts of things along the way. Maybe it was my true calling, my vocation. Maybe. I don’t know. But I don’t want this.

I’m not scared of the big bad world, I want to be part of it. I’m not afraid of work either. But I am afraid of pissing my life away on pointless courses like this that just crush me. I’m sick of this. I’m sick of this.

Sometimes I think I should keep going. Something’s bound to happen. Some people have said to me that I’m good at radio, good at acting. Acting is something I liked when I was younger. There was a local drama group who’d put on a play once or twice a year and I loved going. It was so strange to see people you’d see on the street…..up there. And I always wanted to be a member, to be part of it. There was a girl a year older than me in it and I was jealous. She didn’t care if people laughed, she just got up there and did it. I always said I’d join them one day.

I’ll continue. One day I saw in the parish bulletin that they were looking for new members. I was in Transition Year at the time, so it was just another new experience to try. I had done a little speech and drama when I was younger but my mother was of the impression the man running it was only interested in getting as many competition entrance fees off her as possible rather than nurturing any talent, since he did have a habit of focusing an entire class on one or two people. So maybe I was a victim of circumstance. Maybe it was what I was meant to do, only I never got the chance. I am loud, full of shit and prone to ornate hand movements. Maybe I was meant to be an actor.

Oh Jesus. Just look what I just typed there. The gay bit. The bit where I finally come out and tell you all. I think I always knew I wanted to act. Only it seems like such a huge, huge statement coming a tad late in life. But I say it because I am only 21 and I could be anything for another five years or so. To say you want to be an actor is like throwing away fucking everything. It’s committing yourself to a life of chasing, pretending and wishing. So I’m only saying it here for now, because here I’ve come out with a lot of resolutions out of which nothing becomes. But “an actor” was my stock answer to the “what do you want to be when you grow-up?” question until people sniggered a bit too loudly and I came up with a new answer. “A grown-up”.

Having given up on being a grown-up for now, I turn back to the acting question. Particularly after watching Sambuca et al in the play last night. Should I try it? Being low on the confidence, I’m not too sure. I look at almost everything in life, jobs, courses, degrees and responsibilities and I think to myself “God, I could never do that”. Now maybe I could, but because I can never conceive myself doing it, I just decide I can’t. But I’m never that way with acting.

In the one play I did with the local drama group before it splitting up after nearly twenty years on the go, I played Uncle Peter in “The Plough and the Stars”. I was meant to have a bit part, but when the original old man pulled out of the old man’s part, my impression of him doing the part became me as the part. I, at 15 years of age, played an old man acting with people old enough to be my parents. And yet it never bothered me. I loved the way no-one raised an eyebrow when I overdid something, something very liberating about it. I enjoyed myself so much, I was able to do it while doing well at school and it never seemed too much trouble to learn lines and make it there on time. I wonder.

But before all that, I must go to Australia. And now I have €400 for that purpose saved.

*Takes a bow*

j