Holy s**t. Why did I just do that?
That was my first thought when I volunteered to perform (if you can even call what I did that). To be honest, being an actor has always been a small, desperate little dream of mine. When I was younger I often brushed off this dream as a common aspiration. But when this desire didn’t go away, even as I got older, I got a little worried, and a little concerned. Why did I feel this way? Why do I still feel this way?
The act of volunteering, which probably seemed trite to everyone else, was a huge victory for me. I was proud I did it, not because of a desire to show off (well, maybe a little, in a fishing for compliments sort of way) but because I’ve always been afraid to humiliate myself. However, what I’ve realized this past year transitioning from a scared, not-so-little freshman to a sophomore is that humiliation is a personal creation. Only you have the power to humiliate yourself, because humiliation is an emotion; only you can feel your own emotions (empathy aside), and therefore only you have the power to humiliate yourself.
So, did I feel humiliated? Yes I did, at times. And those feelings, interestingly, translated into physical missteps—sometimes literally, sometimes in my speech. Having done this exercise, I can’t even imagine what the actors feel, drama school be damned, when they act before an audience full of strangers. I trust everyone on our trip implicitly, yet I still found myself afraid of rejection. It must be very hard to see cruel reviews.
Also, it helped me realize I had no idea what Edmund was really saying. It helped so much to have a little direction from Gemma, but I’m now inclined to think the British way of approaching Shakespearean acting is right (of course it is). I often forget, in my hurry to get my reading done, that the text itself is all that remains of Shakespeare. It’s his legacy, and from now on I hope I won’t be so lazy about understanding it.