No one's forcing you to be an actor, you know

Monday 11 February 2013
Actors.
Oi vey.
Obviously, having been an agent an now being an actor myself I have lots of complaints about them. Get into their natural habitat: green room/pub/casting waiting room and you can find them gathered together complaining about their agents/working conditions/not getting any work and yet they largely won't sack their agent/join the union/realise that there are far too many of us and not enough jobs. Maybe I don't get enough work because I know it's a saturated industry, do not look to change agent and complain to the producer if there are problems on set. Or maybe I'm overweight for my look/too short for my age/have the wrong hair colour for someone with a substantial chin. OR maybe something else. You can go crazy wondering, but one thing you can be sure of is that no one is forcing you to be an actor, or, if they are, you must find a responsible adult and tell them and get out of that abusive situation.
I know that people in other contexts complain about their work, but there is quite something about choosing to be a freelancer, knowing the odds are well and truly stacked against you, moaning about it but not joining Equity. Join Equity, for crying out loud, it's the only chance we have. And make your own work, don't expect work to be brought to you on a plate. Acting, as with life, is about clawing whatever you can from the rock face of resistance: messy, hard and most of the time pointless.
And then there are fabulous humans who are actors.
Last year I was employed on a total of eight  wonderful acting jobs, the combo of hard work (somewhere between 8% - 15% even if you work really, really hard) and the remainder, luck (comprising 26% - 57% talent, doled out at birth and worked on through... hard work) delivering for once. Mystifyingly I know people who really believe that if you put in enough work to something then you get what you want.
Ahahahahahahahaha.
I worked with an actor a couple of months after Kate died. We kind of sort of met up for talks about going on dates and on one of these occasions he revealed one of the secrets of the universe to me: that my sister had wanted to die. He knew this because he knew that those who die want to do so, which is why they die. Get it? I told him at the time that she was engaged, having wanted to get married for years, had just had her new step daughter come to live with her, having been desperate for more than a decade to have her own children, and that she asked with trepidation, after being shot - in the car on the way to the hospital - if she was going to die. She didn't seem to want to die, I said and he told me I was wrong.
He had a serious case of a very strong illusion of control. He was a taekwondo champion after all and had, as far as he was concerned, achieved all of that through sheer will. We get want we want if we want it enough: that was his mantra.
It will surprise you to know that our talks about dates didn't work out despite his being a taekwondo champion.
But I'm digressing. On one of these great jobs in 2012, just before Christmas, I got talking to an actor when we had both done our bit. We talked about politics, and Politics, and agreed and agreed. We became friends on facebook, as you do, and then he was out here for family reasons in Cape Town and then he messaged me and says he is coming to the show, with a bunch of people, to see the show. He's even bringing his Mum.
He is true to his word and brings a great collection of people. We end up with so many folk in the bar/restaurant that Martin and Jacques sit with one collection of audience while I sit with Tim and his friends. And his mum. His friends are great, I'll keep bumping into one of them over the next few weeks at various shows, and his mother is such an engaging person. It's great! Everyone has such an interesting story to tell and this after show fun passes too quickly: Tim and his mum can't be out too late, they have a plane to catch tomorrow. Their last evening in Cape Town has been spent at the show and here afterwards in the restaurant.
I love actors, you see. I know I was complaining about them earlier, but, as I said, that's not all actors. I also meet great actors who are great people. They don't moan about doing something no one's forcing them to do as if it is dragging coal out of the underground darkness with their bare hands. Actors are fabulous: we work together, we meet, we talk, we quickly engage and we find compatible others. There is a very swift intimacy with actors with whom you get on. And then they turn up half way across the world and bring seven or so audients with them, including their mother, and their mother is also fabulous and we talk and listen and exist in the same space over some fine beers.
We know we are subject to the ebb and flow of things, things we know about and many other things which are beyond our understanding and mostly we don't fight it, we try to swim with it. And that is why, despite having been an agent, some of my best friends are actors.