Friday 30 March 2012

Lazy


Now, I’m supposed to be working on a script for next week. Not only should I be learning lines and working out my character but I’m also supposed to be learning another language for it. Y’know, just a language I know very little about but am supposed to be extremely comfortable with by next week. No biggie. But the problem is that I don’t really like the script. I’d like the job but the script is dull and predictable. It tells a story that has been told a million times before and contains characters that bring nothing new to this all too familiar story. I want to like it and what the playwright doing is commendable but I’ve read it through twice now and I’m already fed up with it.

I know that I need to put the work in and, to be honest, I’ve got very little else stopping me at the moment.  It’s gloriously sunny outside but if I try and work out there then I look like an epileptic meerkat as I desperately try to see what’s on my laptop screen. I could wander up into town but I appear to have developed a blister the size of a small, painful child on the bottom of my foot so I’m currently walking at a very slow, hobbled pace. So, I’m essentially trapped indoors. It’s just me and the terrible script.

So, here’s the thing. I’ve been told that I’ll be asked to speak in this language at the audition next week although they realise that I’m not a speaker of it at present. They haven’t given me anything to prepare so I’m not 100% sure what to expect. I can only imagine that I’m going to have to enter into some uber-style sight-reading task where I’m expected to make the script sound like I haven’t just learnt the power of speech. So, I thought I’d look up a few basic phrases just so I’m familiar with how the language sounds. That lasted all of three minutes before I got distracted by a bird on our patio. I then thought maybe it would be better to see if I could translate the lines I’ve got so that I’m one step ahead. I found a translation site, put in my lines, only to find that they translate it into the written form (it’s a language that doesn’t use the only alphabet I've ever bothered to learn) and so my screen was full of a load of squiggles that I don’t understand.

So I’ve given up.  Like the lazy, no-good actress that I am, I’ve thrown the script on the floor. My only work on it, the highlighted lines which I did two days ago, are staring at me like an angry, disappointed director. Maybe they’re looking for an actress who lacks commitment but is a whizz with a pink highlighter? Maybe they want someone who can’t be bothered to do as she’s told and instead likes to go for the dangerous method of winging it? Maybe? Fine. I’ll try again.  

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