Photo: Kim Hardy
Right now I’m on a rest day in the middle of a two week feature film shoot. It’s my first lead role in an independent feature and I’m here because (in addition to the luck and privilege that I’ve had all my life) I made my own work. In the summer I’m going to Edinburgh fringe festival with a work that I made myself. All of my best and stretching roles have been in productions that I have engineered. Ever since the fabulous coach Amelie Mettenheimer recommended to me that I do my own one-woman show I have progressed and progressed, making gradually more complex and ambitious work. It’s been hard starting out as an actor, but it would have been even harder had I tried the conventional route - sitting by the phone and waiting for things to happen.
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I got into acting by reading an incredible book called The Artists Way by Julia Cameron. The Artists Way is a course for “recovering creatives” and part of the course is a once a week activity called an Artist Date. An Artist Date can be any activity as long as it is fun and carried out on your own. No friends, no family. And nothing that is work.
Surprisingly, recovering creatives (which covers about 99% of the population I reckon) find this very difficult. There are so many things that we are supposed to be doing, and when we have a break, we just want to collapse. This week I’ve been shooting my first lead role in a feature film (the independent sci-fi Nightlens, written and directed by the brilliant David Woods). Today I have a surprise day off. My mind feels much freer after a week pursuing my dreams. I felt better able to just make decisions and I’ve happily trotted along to do my Artist Date as the only single adult at Shreks Adventure on the Southbank. Creative recovery indeed. When I was a child, my friend Michelle Tolman had a care bear that was made by her mother.
This post would be more impactful with a picture. I considered getting in touch with Michelle - “Hi Michelle. I hope the last 25 years have been good. I keep thinking about your care bear. Do you have a picture?” - but I thought it might be weird. Michelle Tolman’s care bear didn’t look like the ones in the shops. I was slightly repulsed by it. It was *wrong*. One day I asked Michelle if she minded her care bear being *wrong*. She said that she didn’t see her care bear as wrong at all. She thought it was unique and beautiful. No one else had a care bear like hers. I think we all grow up with an idea of what a human being is. We compare ourselves to it and think we are wrong. Imagine if instead we all thought we were unique and beautiful, like Michelle Tolman’s care bear. Today I’m at Warhammer World in Nottingham. I love it here. If it was closer I would come more often.
What I love about Warhammer is that they use all types of mythology and build them together. Case in point today: laser space skeletons in an Egyptian theme. I want to create my own space saga, mainly so that I can build my own version of Warhammer World. I’ve bought a notebook to start it off. To support my journey to Edinburgh my lovely friend Tracey Sinclair bought me a "plane ticket" notebook. First class of course! This will give me a chance to jot down notes on the journey. Today is my birthday and I had brunch with my good friend Tracey Sinclair (buy her great books at darkdates.org) who is also the person who encouraged me to write a blog about Edinburgh.
I had poor progress to report and she set me a challenge. To blog three times a week for the experience. I like a challenge. "Life as an actor can be discouraging and the task of 'putting yourself out there' overwhelming. Zoe is a great model for staying positive and practical in overcoming apparent obstacles (such as perceiving oneself as a late starter). The book encourages a shift of mindset that would foster success in any business. I enjoyed the connections to The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, which would be good to read alongside." Geraldine Brennan, Actor I was very lucky that I met the amazing Matthew Smith from Urbane Publications just at the time that I decided to write a book about my acting experiences.
I already had a book on networking ready to go (Networking Know-How, which Matthew also published) and based on seeing my writing in that Matthew agreed to publish a book about learning to act, which eventually became An Actor's Life for me, which hit the shelves in March 2017. It's been fabulous to receive feedback from people who have read the book and felt inspired to bring more acting into their life as a result. I've heard from public sector workers, journalists, designers and many more people who pursued a different career while still harbouring a love for acting in their hearts. I performed my first one woman show, based on the fantastic Dark Dates books by Tracey Sinclair, at the Tristan Bates Theatre in Covent Garden in January 2015.
The director, the wonderful Peta Lily, suggested that we keep the timing short, as it was not just my first one-woman show, but my first show of any kind for nearly 20 years. Feedback was that I could make it longer and take it to Edinburgh. I hesitated, having struggled to sell the sixty tickets for a single performance in a city where I knew a lot of people. Tracey had moved to Brighton and suggested that I took the show there for Brighton Fringe. It was great to be performing again, even to audience sizes ranging from four to seven. When I started out as an actor, three and a half years ago the first show that I produced was a one woman show.
My friends told me I should take it to Edinburgh. There was a cachet to performing at Edinburgh. It was a land of magic where actors were snapped up after their performances by TV producers desperate for new, unseen talent. I could dream the dream, but I was also aware of the cold hard reality having just produced my first show. The costs involved and how they always seem to add up to just more than the revenue from tickets, even if you sell out. The challenge of selling all the seats in a 60 person theatre for one night in a town where all my friends lived, let alone a week run in a place where I knew no-one. I performed at the slightly more accessible fringes in Camden and Brighton. I started improv classes and found that *everyone* had or was taking a show to Edinburgh. One actor had indeed been “snapped up” for a film role when she went. My Edinburgh dream slept on. Until now.... |