Thinking Before I Act: II

Continued from Part I . . .

So why, I wonder, am I acting if it brings me more discomfort than pleasure? Shouldn’t I think before I act, before I make the decision to act?

Which brings me back to why I started acting in the first place. I moved back to the UK after my last stint of living abroad, in 2008. I needed an income, but not desperately, and started selling rare books online. It was pleasant staying at home listening to the radio, drifting between Radios 3, 4 and 7-which-became-4-Extra. When I had to think there would be classical music in the background; when I didn’t have to think there would be comedy or drama. I have always liked the pictures on radio – the opportunity that actors have to create characters with their voice.

I have a good voice, clear and pleasant, I told myself; I can mould it into various accents and comedy characters, so why shouldn't I earn a little extra income on the airwaves as a radio actor? I would surely enjoy it and it would supplement my income. Of course I couldn’t walk into the BBC or any production company that produced radio drama and expect to be given a part. First I would have to prove – to the world at large and to myself – that I could act. So off to drama school (part-time, short-term) I went, and there I discovered both that I had some talent and that I enjoyed performing.

From there I got carried away by the flow. You go to drama school, full- or part-time, then you start auditioning and look for an agent and you keep auditioning and you keep looking and you take whatever you’re offered and you suffer setback after setback and go on auditioning and seeking an agent and getting rejected again and again year after year until you either find an agent and regular work or you give up the whole idea of appearing on stage or screen. You don’t think. You just do.

Which is what I did. I had promised myself that I would spend a year acting, and if at the end of that year I had neither been paid nor found an agent, I would give up the idea. The year passed (last July, to be precise) and I had been paid and I had had interest from agents but no commitment. At that point I didn’t actively make a decision to keep acting, but just kept putting myself up for audition. I even found an agent almost by default and so I continued to call myself an actor, even in the dry months at the end of last year when no-one wanted me and contact with my agent was erratic (so erratic that he and I have since parted company).

Now the break enforced by promoting Californian Lives and, in July, Tadzio Speaks is my making me reconsider my commitment to acting. I have one more appearance – as Steven Marks in Clouds of Grey – in April, but I will not be auditioning or seeking an agent until May at the earliest. And it may be that I decide that it was fun while it lasted, but I won't carry on.

What it all comes down to, of course, is dedication. I could be an actor – stage, screen or radio – if I were determined enough, if the focus of my day from morning until early evening were finding work, making contacts, attending class, in short doing everything possible to get a part. But that kind of dedication requires a lack of interest in other activities, and my problem, from the perspective of acting, is that I enjoy the bookselling and I like the fact I am producing monologues that I have written and I have the idea for a full-scale play that I want to write when the current productions are out of the way. All these activities prevent me from making acting my priority.

Which means that if I am to continue acting, I will have to decide whether I am willing to put the total effort into it – on the one hand finding work, on the other hand the frustration and discomfort that goes with any production – that will bring about the reward it offers.

That’s one question I have yet to answer, but before I do, there is another question I need to ask. What exactly is this reward and is it worth the effort I put into finding it?

To be continued . . .