There Are No Small Parts!

Oh yes there are. I have played some small parts in my life. Spearcarrier? Yep, in a four hour full script production of Hamlet. The pain of waiting was excruciating - onstage and off. Other shows I had like one, two, maybe three lines and about a minute of total stage time within a two-hour show. In one Jacobean drama I had a bigger role but in the fourth act (or was it the fifth or sixth?) when everyone is getting killed in a bloody display, I remember laying there, "dead," looking up, waiting for everyone else to get killed and waiting for the long speech at the end to be over. Terrible. The things you have to do to keep your mind body and spirit into it makes you disciplined or wears you out. Flat out.

Over time I played in bigger roles so to speak. And in productions that were fitting to my beliefs and desires. I enjoyed that. Relished it.

Nowadays though, when someone approaches me about acting I tell them I can play a small part - you know the kind where you don't really have to work to learn lines and all that. Laziness I guess. I've kept myself "in shape" though over the last three years with workshops and classes and personal efforts. The keys for the actor, relaxation, concentration, ability to be alive with the senses, all that is there with stamina. Work on my body, rhythm and sound has been consistent through Actor's Gymnasium. My ability to improvise and work in rehearsal is as good as ever.

I'm not advertising myself or yearning to act. But certain things become a way of life for actors, especially those like myself who enjoy the challenge and the most artful aspects of it. We seek a certain precision and therefore routines are developed to achieve or reach for that. I see this attitude come about in others I work with both "old" and "young" and there is a profound difference in the quality of their acting vs others who do not possess it. Call it spunk, or zest, or inspiration or more likely love - that creative joy, ardor, for which there is no substitution. Amongst those kind of people there really aren't the small parts that are suffocating. There is only that continuous effort to put the whole thing together. Among those people, you are working on a play, not just a part.

But I'll never forget all those hours backstage waiting. Goodnight! That took some work to wait like that!