Crazy Things that Actors Do

Last Saturday was closing night of my play, The Cat's Meow. Its been a fun run, for the most part. We had a great cast, and lovely costumes, and normally at the end of the run of a show I indulge in a little time feeling listless and bittersweet before hunting down the next cast to bond with. This time, however, I do not have that luxury, because my next show opens in two weeks, and I have to get off book.

This is one of the crazy things that actors do. They overlap productions. You can manage to start rehearsals for one production, while still in performance for the next one. You can manage this because most plays rehearse during the week, and perform on the weekends. So it is completely possible, but it is also, I have discovered, completely insane. And in honor of my own insanity, I have decided to take a little time away from memorizing, and explore some of the other crazy things that actors do.


They commute twice as far for a show as they would for a paying job.

I have a cut off for theaters I will even audition for: Renton is as far South as I will travel, and Edmonds is as far North. Both of these destinations are about half an hour from my home in Seattle, at least in good traffic. I have done two shows in Tacoma, but both had limited rehearsal and performance commitments, and even so, that is not an experience I care to repeat. There are actors, however, who will travel from much, much farther. Actors who live in Seattle and do shows in Olympia, for instance. Or actors who live in Olympia and do shows in Renton, I have known actors who will drive from Everett to Tacoma, or take a ferry out to Bambridge, or in from Vashon Island.

And forget about the commuting time commitment once you land a job, I know actors who will fly to other cities, on their own dime, just to attend an audition.


They will compromise their personal appearance

A frequent question on audition forms is: are you willing to cut/color your hair? I always say yes to cut, no to color. I have never, in my almost thirty years, colored my hair, and it it would take more than being cast in a show to make me start now, that's what wigs are for. But I will cut it, I will also spend an hour and a half every night curling or straightening my hair, securing the look with massive amounts of hairspray and bobby pins, only to wash it all out when I get home, and repeat the process the next night. Also, every time I do a show, my skin freaks out, because it is unused to being subjected to massive amounts of makeup. Small price to pay for a little applause. And oddly enough this is one area where men actually have it worse. While their prep time to get is costume is usually a fraction of the womens, when men change their look for a part, they have to wear it around in the real world, not just on stage. I know actors that have grown mutton chops, or spent months apologizing to their bar patrons for a porn star mustache.  They also shave, I know an actor who shaved a mustache he'd had for nearly forty years for the sake of supporting role.


They will adhere to superstitions they don't believe in

Everyone knows not to say Macbeth in a theater. Doesn't matter if you believe in the curse, you just don't do it. If you slip up for any reason, you must immediately go outside the theater, turn in a circle three times and spit. There are variations on the antidote, some say you have to run around the theater three times, and I've never had the logic of the antidote explained to me, but I have done it. Actors are, as a group, very superstitious. They love their rituals. The whole experience of being in a play is full of little rituals and traditions, and most actors have individual ones they layer on top of the group ones. Lucky underwear is a common one. Actors, unlike musicians, will never drink before a performance, they will get completely shitfaced afterwords, opening and closing night parties are legendary, sometimes they will begin drinking backstage once their big scene is over, but never before a show, not even a glass of wine with dinner. They give cards and presents to the entire cast on either opening or closing night, but never on both, and never on any intermediate performance. They have warm up routines. When I was in the Vagina Monologues, we did Kegels as part of our group warm up. At Redwood Theater, every performance, regardless of the director, or who's involved, starts with a back stage cheer of "Doooon't Suck!"


They will stay in contact with people they hate

Theater, like so many things in life, is all about who you know. And, as I have already detailed, actors will do almost anything to get on stage. There are a couple people I've sworn I'll never work with again, but we are still friends on Facebook, and if they dangled the right part of front of me, I'd probably bite.  And I'm not alone, in an industry they relies so heavily on networking, personal issues often take a back seat. A person's value is measured by how likely they are to be able to get you a job, anything else is gravy.


I'm sure their are quite a few actor quirks missing form my list, but I've tried to keep it limited to the farthest reaching insanities, also, I have lines to learn.