Bravery.
I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to realise it, but it recently dawned on me that the acting profession requires a lot of bravery. People reading this who aren’t actors/performers are probably thinking how stupid that sounds right now, but I’m going to argue my case!
Almost every day, actors show bravery. We take a look around all of the casting websites we can find, and submit our applications to a handful of jobs, mainly to be rejected before we even get to an audition. I find submitting myself for roles a horrible task. You read the casting breakdown and what the job entails, and it all sounds fantastic until you scroll down to the bit where they describe what sort of person they are looking for. And you hold in your anger when you discover they’re looking for a size zero blonde with blue eyes and a huge rack.
I think it takes a very secure person to be an actor, not that I’ve ever described myself as that before! You have to know exactly your casting type and be brave in your submissions. I always see the best in other people, but when it comes to myself, I’m not quite as confident. I didn’t want to be pigeonholed in my career, but whenever I see a casting for a ‘beautiful woman’, I immediately skip straight past it, knowing that I wouldn’t get a second look. Of course, everyone wants to think they’re pretty, but in this industry, you just have to be realistic. I know that I’ll be safe with ‘character roles’ rather than wasting my time chasing the ‘beautiful skinny lead female’ roles. Besides, yes, it would be nice to get the chance to play those roles, but character roles are much better in my opinion, you don’t have to swoon while daydreaming about the love of your life who’s off doing something heroic, you get to be the bad guy, or the comic buffoon, the ones that people talk about afterwards. That’ll do me!
If you’re lucky, and you’ve been brave enough to submit yourself for a job, and then you get called for an audition, the bravery level shoots up again. Your chance of getting this job, most of the time depends on about two minutes of your life performing in front of people who have seen the same thing repeatedly probably for several hours already. You have to find something within yourself that will be different to what everyone else has already shown, and be prepared to show it off without fear. And that’s if they’re interested. The people on these panels know what they’re looking for, and if you walk through the door and you’re not what they want, they might not even look at you. You will be performing to the tops of their heads while they scribble notes about what they do want.
But then there are also group auditions. This is where the competition gets really fierce. These auditions usually start with group activities/games, followed by sitting down at one end of the room while watching everyone else perform monologues. In a bizarre way, I really enjoy these auditions. You get to eye the competition up, hopefully come away with new monologues that you steal from people, and you get to see how much people really want this job. Sometimes you can even see the determination on people’s faces as they think there’s someone better than them there, and they try to act that little bit better! This is the audition where people also try to out-funny each other, thinking that if they can make the most people laugh, they’ve cracked it. People are putting every ounce of their being into these auditions, and they try to look as if they don’t care. Brave.
Providing you get through these terrifying stages, you are then faced with the final challenge. The acting job itself. Day one of rehearsals always scares the pants off me. I know I should feel confident having got the job, but I always doubt myself and think that they’ve made a mistake and that I’ll be found out and sacked. You have to make brave choices in rehearsals, and there’s always the chance that the director won’t like what you’re doing and change it, which can be upsetting sometimes, especially if you think you’re doing well. Most of the time you get through it well, everyone is in the same boat, and you all pull together to create something spectacular.
And then you have to put it to an audience. This is quite possibly the bravest part of all. The audience are people who have paid money to come and watch you in what you’ve done. My work has mainly been in theatre so I’ll use this as my basis. The audience arrive, most of them are very excited to be seeing live theatre, and they have high hopes. People enjoy watching things, but they also enjoy slagging things off afterwards if they don’t like it. You have to put your heart and soul into every single performance. Each person deserves the best that you have to give, they’ve all paid the same money to come and see you, so you have a duty to be the best that you can be. It’s absolutely terrifying. You always want people to think the best of you, you don’t want to be that person that everyone thinks was below average to the rest of the cast, you have to expose yourself (not in that way!) every single night, and prepare for the worst. If word gets out that your performance is bad, no-one else will come to see you, and you’ll be performing to a handful of people in a large theatre, still having to give your best because they’ve paid their money, just like the people in the full house did. Terrifying.
I’m about to embark on another brave journey this week. I’m looking for an agent. I’ve spent the last five years finding my own work, but last year I barely made enough money to feed myself for a month. Last week I sat down and ordered myself a book called ‘Contacts’, which is pretty much a bible when it comes to performing. As the title suggests, it’s full of people to contact to help you on your merry way. So my next challenge, when my book arrives, is to sit down, trawl through all of the agents in there, look them up online to see if they will be suitable for me, and to write to them asking for representation, and await the outcome. Again, I’m putting myself out there, bravely. I’ll no doubt get mainly rejection emails/letters back, but I won’t give up. I have hope that one day I won’t have to keep plodding down to the job centre to be sniffed at because my chosen career isn’t good enough. I’ll walk down the high street with my head held high because those that sniff at me will be ones singing my praises when they’ve seen me being fabulous in something.
This industry might be mostly failure and rejection, but there is also hope. And it’s a courageous thing to keep going when you keep getting knocked back. You’ve just got to have determination and be brave.
Nxxx
Twitter: @nataliecastka Facebook: Natalie Castka Actor
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