Tell a Braver Story

So instead of answering the question properly, I’m going slightly to the left.

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was my first, at six. I loved the rude mechanicals and especially Peter Quince, because he wrote “Pyramus and Thisbe,” and directed it, and bossed everyone around. I made my younger(!) siblings act scenes from it for Mother’s Day. I was a very bossy director.

“The Tempest” was my childhood favourite for some years, amongst the ones I was exposed to. The mix of drama and comedy appealed to me, as did the magical island and its creatures. We had the Lois Burdette books with illustrations by children, and this inspired me to create a whole series of cartoon illustrations for The Tempest.

In my teens, I was equally mad on “Henry V” and “Richard III,” and I think I nearly wore the dvds of the Kenneth Branagh and Laurence Olivier movies through. Shakespeare in childhood is formative, but Shakespeare loved in the teen years is just… I really was mad on them. Obsessed. I would go back-and-forth on which I loved more. I think I watched the audio commentary on Richard III at least five times in the space of two or three years. I could recite so much from them. I also fell in love with “Twelfth Night” at that time, and it was so dear to me, but I was never feral over it as I was with those two King films.

I did a fair amount of Shakespeare in college, but the stand out was “Hamlet,” of course. I had read it before, but it struck me far more at that point. Even though I was in a production of “The Tempest” around that time,and stage managed “Macbeth,” just studying Hamlet, reading the raw text, seeing clips from the greats, performing “O What a Rogue and Peasant Slave Am I” in class - I was fascinated, so fascinated. I will also note that Hamlet remains my favourite to teach in the classroom.

I fell in love properly with “Romeo and Juliet” when I was allowed to tag along to the rehearsal room with @gailyinthedark, who was the lead. I was going to be moving out of province just before production week, which precluded me from actually being in the show, but the cool director (who is now @gailyinthedark’s husband) very kindly let me come for the fun and camaraderie, and I stood in for whomever couldn’t make it to rehearsal that week. I had a good long run of rehearsals where I was Friar Lawrence, and to the state still feels as though I got to play him in a show. I also learned so much about both acting and directing from that experience – I was so grateful.

And then, all the shows I did with my kids! It may be recently bias, but I think last year’s show, “Twelfth Night,” was the absolute best and threw me into a new appreciation of that brilliant script. I’ve never had such a hard time letting go of a show after it was finished. I still have the poster and Malvolio’s letter (an intricate puzzle purse I made) on my wall, and I don’t think I have memorabilia from any of my other shows up.

You may have seen me post about something called The Blackberry Bushes. That's my WIP. Though that title has become less relevant to the actual stories as the stories and characters have evolved over the last twenty or so years, it's stuck around. So what are these stories actually about?

In a fictional world reminiscent of Europe around the turn of the twentieth century, we follow the lives and adventures of seven young protagonists:

Rachel Doncath, nervous wreck who's never had a solid sense of home or friends thanks to growing up in a military family

Rietta Valencourt, teenage queen of a major nation, kept in isolation by her adamantly protective mother until she reaches her majority

Delclis Phemister, socially awkward botany nerd who would prefer to ignore the fact that he technically has a claim to his country's throne through the father he never met

Elystan Liddick, Delclis's half-brother, annoying little jerk, and the current heir to the throne--if he can survive to grow up

Amarantha Melbray, daughter of Elystan's nurse, dedicated aspiring artist, too serious for her own good, and deeply resentful of the boy who has monopolized her mother her entire life

Josiah Callon, elder son and heir of an ambitious and image-conscious king, raised to embody perfection and is obnoxiously good at it--until he isn't

Tamett Låsrygg (Lockridge), paid companion to the crown prince (Josiah) of a nation that long ago conquered his, might not be able to keep up the facade of dutiful compliance much longer

As much as I love researching this mostly historically-based world, the characters are the centerpiece of the stories--their growth, their relationships. These are stories about isolation and longing for connection, about family dynamics--good, bad, and complicated, about the tension between responsibility/expectations and personal inclinations, about how people are often more than our assumptions make them out to be. I try to present characters' flaws honestly (and some of them are very flawed) while also making them understandable and human.

The tone I'm going for is something that hopefully feels a lot like classic children's stories you might have read growing up.

If this is something you're interested in, here's where you can find what I've posted. None of the intended novels are anywhere near complete, but there are sample chapters and a lot of short stories.

it's time for spring. we'll try again next fall.

Carb starts your engine, protein keeps it going.

Cookie

Fruit (canned or fresh)

Chips

Piece of bread

Popcorn

Crackers

Easy protein add on:

Nuts

Spoonful of nut butter

Cheese

Roasted chickpea snacks

Glass of milk (dairy or non dairy)

Tips for Writing Actors / Movie Stars!! 

˙⋆✮ Their whole job is being believable while pretending. That sounds obvious, but it changes everything. An actor character has spent years learning how to control their face, voice, posture, timing, and emotional access. They know what angle looks best. They know when a silence reads as mystery instead of discomfort. They know how to cry on command or at least how to look like they might. So when they lie in real life, it can be terrifyingly convincing, but when they are truly vulnerable, it might actually look clumsier than their performances.

˙⋆✮ Their public image is usually built from roles they played, not who they are. A popstar’s brand often comes through music and image. An actor’s brand comes through characters the audience thinks they understand. If they played the sweet romantic lead, strangers expect them to be charming. If they played a villain, people joke about being scared of them. If they played a genius, interviewers assume they’re intellectual. If they played someone tragic, fans project softness onto them.

˙⋆✮ Auditions are humiliating in a very specific way. They walk into a room where people barely look up. They perform grief, love, rage, seduction, terror, sometimes in bad lighting, sometimes after waiting for three hours, sometimes opposite someone reading lines like they’re ordering soup. Then they leave and hear nothing. Or they hear they were “great, but not quite right,” which can mean anything from their hair color to their height to the producer’s nephew wanting the part. Writing auditions well means understanding how much rejection actors have to metabolize while still staying emotionally available enough to try again tomorrow.

˙⋆✮ The set is mostly waiting. People imagine film sets as intense and cinematic, but a lot of acting is sitting in costume at 5 a.m. while someone adjusts a light. Waiting in trailers. Waiting for makeup. Waiting for weather. Waiting while crew reset the shot. Doing the same emotional scene twelve times from different angles. Crying beautifully, then stopping while someone fixes a microphone, then having to return to the exact same heartbreak on command. The glamour is what the public sees. The job is repetition, boredom, precision, and emotional whiplash.

˙⋆✮ Actors have strange relationships with their bodies. Their body is not only theirs. It is wardrobe, camera, marketability, continuity, choreography, beauty standards, stunt safety, intimacy coordination, gossip, fan edits, criticism. They may be told to lose weight, gain muscle, keep the same haircut for months, cover tattoos, change their accent, fix their skin, look younger, look older, look natural but not actually natural...

˙⋆✮ Chemistry on screen DOES NOT mean intimacy in real life. Two actors can look like soulmates on camera and barely know each other. Or they can hate each other and produce the best romantic tension of their careers because professionalism is weird. Or they can be actual friends and have the internet turn every glance into evidence. This is a great source of conflict: the public believes in a relationship that does not exist, while the real relationship is either colder, messier, deeper, or much more boring than everyone wants it to be.

˙⋆✮ now about PRESS TOUR!! The actor has to answer the same questions in different outfits for weeks. “What drew you to this role?” “Was it hard filming that scene?” “Are you dating your co-star?” “What was your favorite memory on set?” They have to be funny, sincere, grateful, humble, charming, interesting, but not too honest. A press tour is basically a second performance, except they are playing “acceptable version of myself.”

˙⋆✮ An actor can be very good at emotion and very bad at honesty. They may understand how sadness looks, how desire sounds, how anger should land in a scene. But that does not mean they know how to handle their own sadness, desire, or anger when there is no script. Sometimes acting gives a person language for emotion. Sometimes it gives them endless ways to avoid it. They can perform vulnerability while never actually being vulnerable. They can confess beautifully in character and freeze when someone asks, “what do you really mean?”

˙⋆✮ Their relationship with fans is filtered through characters. Fans may say “you saved me” when what they mean is the role saved them. They may ask for quotes from a scene the actor barely remembers filming. They may blur the actor with the character and then punish them for not being that person. This can be sweet, overwhelming, or deeply uncomfortable. Imagine being hugged by a stranger who is crying because of someone you pretended to be three years ago.

˙⋆✮ Bad reviews can hit deeper than public scandals. A scandal attacks image. A bad review can attack craft. “They were wooden.” “Miscast.” “Out of their depth.” “Only famous because they’re beautiful.” “No range.” For an actor, that can touch the secret fear underneath everything: maybe I am not actually good. Maybe I have been packaged well. Maybe the camera loves me but the work does not. A great actor character should have at least one criticism they pretend not to care about and remember word for word.