Vent

I gotta vent.

You'll have to bear with me - this is going to be a stream of consciousness thing and it may or may not make sense. But I've got to get it out.

Tonight, I felt physically threatened by a fellow actor for the first time.

Not the first time on stage... I mean off.

Only once before have I ever felt scared on stage...

It was during a play at the end of first year at drama school. I had to do a violent rape scene with another actor and despite the fact that we had assistance from the movement tutor and a classmate who was experienced in fight choreography to choreograph it down to the last shove, this guy changed the choreography every night and threw me around the stage to the point where I almost cracked a rib. By the end of the week I was black and blue and looked like an advertisement for domestic violence. Thankfully, we only had five performances. But I was terrified.

Since then, I've worked with the occasional actor (male and female) who has been a bit precious and wanky and self-centered. Its the nature of our industry. There are those people about. You deal with it. You brush it off. You don't let it affect you, or the show.

But tonight...

It was a bit of an up and down show. Cues were jumped, lines were missed, but there were some great moments amongst all the crap.

But the actor that has been causing the angst throughout the rehearsal process with his selfish, self-centred behaviour really iced the cake tonight. Its been building up all week and in retrospect I probably should have held my tongue, but it slipped out.

I should probably mention at this point that until a week ago, he was still on script. The stage manager was still feeding him his lines and when she wasn't there, I spent all the time I wasn't on stage following the script and feeding him his lines. And considering we've had the script since November I think that's pretty unprofessional.

Anyway, he came off stage tonight blowing his own trumpet about how perfect his performance was and how brilliantly he'd done and how he was word perfect.

Thing was, he wasn't word perfect tonight. Thing was, he jumped a whole page of dialogue, improvised the final scene and cut me off on the bulk of my lines and caused one of the other actors to lose half their dialogue.

Thing was, he's never been word perfect. Or even consistent.

And I called him on that. I told him he wasn't "word perfect" like he thought he was and that he'd cut off most of my lines. And the other two actors chimed in with the same comment.

He got angry.

He destroyed the set. He kicked the table until it broke, littering fish carcass all across the stage (which we were trying to clear so the second play which is on immediately after ours could get their set ready).

And he moved towards me with his hand up like he was ready to strike me.

Thankfully the director walked in at that point and stopped him. I shudder to think what he would have done if she hadn't.

Its been building for a while. He's never, ever, been able to get the lines right or the cues right, but he feels justified in telling the rest of us that we're not as important to the play as he is. That we aren't as central to the piece as he is. That we're nowhere near as experienced or as professional as him and that we should worship him for all the knowledge he is imparting to us.

We're fed up.

Its an ensemble piece, not a one-man show. At the moment it feels like its the three of us on one side and him on the other. And that sucks. We've tried. We've tried including him, we've tried getting him to work with us. But he's not having a bar of it. Its all about him.

Maybe he's a "method" actor. But that doesn't excuse his lack of professionalism.

He disappeared immediately afterwards without speaking to any of us. Hopefully he'll turn up tomorrow. Maybe he won't. We just don't know. And that scares me. That someone can be that unpredictable.

I don't like it.

I don't like being scared. I don't want to go to the theatre tomorrow wondering if I'm going to be safe. Wondering if tomorrow night is the night when he really loses it and whacks me across the stage.

Tonight I was shaking so much I came out of the dressing room and smoked three cigarettes in ten minutes.

I don't smoke. I don't like smoking. In fact, I haven't smoked a cigarette in almost six months.

That's what I hate the most.



Thank you for letting me vent. I feel better now. I hope all will be ok tomorrow.