As an actress, I love being in the spotlight. It just feels right to me. I am at ease and comfortable performing in front of dozens, if not hundreds of people. It’s a second nature to me. Even though I am comfortable in this environment, some people are not so inclined. Take my ex boyfriend, Dean, as an example. When we dated, he had always come to my shows and supported me, but swore up and down that acting was something that he simply couldn’t do. I was fine with this, because I understood how he felt. Acting isn’t for everybody, and I would never want to force someone to do something that they find uncomfortable.
Well, something must have changed for him. I broke up with him many months ago, and ever since then, he’s been suddenly interested in theatre. It was so sudden after our break up, that I found it suspicious. Now, he is taking an acting class at the college we both attend. I still find his motives questionable, especially after he once hinted that he was interested in theatre to “meet new people,” and joked about dating some of my friends. I tried not to let this bother me, but to some extent, it does. The local theatre scene is my sanctuary. Theatre is my place to relax, and be myself through being someone else. Let’s face it, actors are highly possessive people! This is our spot, our place, our refuge from the rest of the world; our place to be with others of “our kind.” Now I felt my sanctuary was about to be invaded.
Every year since I’ve taken the acting class at my college, I’ve gone back semester after semester to join the class for the first few weeks in order to brush up on my Improv skills. I adore improv games, and the teacher always begins her class with improv exercises. This semester was going to be no different, except this time, I had an added incentive to go; to watch Dean perform. He had always been so quiet, so withdrawn into himself, that I found it hard to believe that he had actually enrolled in a theatre class, and an acting one at that. I knew that he would be horrified to see me in his class. He probably thought that he was safe from seeing me there, since I had already taken it years ago. Little did he know that news travels fast on campus, and that I had many friends in the class.
Although Dean sat in the very back of the class, and constantly made sure that if I was on stage left, he was on stage right, and vice versa, he did a very good job of playing it cool, and never looking in my direction. Amanda, our acting teacher knows me well from years of taking theatre classes and performing in her shows, so she asked me to introduce and lead the improv games. I was only too happy to oblige. There is nothing more fun than a good game of Freeze to get you going in the afternoon!
This particular game is played by two people who are instructed to act out a certain scene, and are supposed to make as large of body movements as possible. When the next actor in line to play, sees a movement that he likes, he (or the teacher, if he’s taking too long) will yell “freeze!” and will take the place of one of the two actors, standing in the same position that the other actor had been standing. Using this body movement, it is up to him to start the a totally different scene. If an actor simply cannot come up with a scene, or is struggling, the teacher will yell, “Bonk!” in a game show sort of way, in order to end the scene and keep things moving. It’s not a hard game, but can be intimidating the first time.
When it came to Dean’s turn, even I was surprised. I even felt a bit bad for him. It was painful. He didn’t know what to do, and just stood there, thinking. When he did try to start a scene, he embarrassed himself, and ended up stopping and thinking out loud about what he would try next. I must not have been the only one embarrassed for him, because before the teacher had a chance to yell “bonk!” to stop the scene, six students yelled it for her. The rest of the games weren’t as bad, but I think Dean felt enough like a fool during the first game to last for the rest of the class.
I had come to the class hoping to see him make a fool out of himself, and I wasn’t disappointed, but deep down to the heart of me, I felt sort of bad for him. Sure, he hadn’t treated me very kindly after the break up, and still refused to speak to me when we ran into each other, but he was a human being, and didn’t deserve any extra humiliation from me. Besides, he was doing a fine job of humiliating himself on his own.
