I am an acTOR

I just graduated, just moved, and now I am here. In New York City. The place for theatre. For shows and lights and fame AND heartbreak AND DREAMS AND CHARACTER SHOES!

And who really gives a fuck?

I've been here for 17 days now and I'm going strong. I have a date set for headshots with a real photographer. So what if I found her by attending a Chicago performance of West Side Story, noted that one dancer in particular looked like she was going to faint/vom at the end of Act 1, wondered if  when that happened the rest of the cast would stop the show or if everyone would just keep going and leave her to die...(probably the latter, Broadway bound bitch)...then stalked her sorry soul via Google when I got home and discovered that she does indeed photograph headshots when she's not flailing her uncooked spaghetti legs behind Maria? So fucking what?

I also bought a Groupon for 10 aerial silks classes so casting directors think I'm "fun, flexible, daring and different!"

And. AND. On my first day, I went to The Drama Bookshop and took a picture of a monologue because I was too cheap to actually buy the play EVEN THOUGH there were signs threatening that doing exactly that would get you kicked out. Bad Ass Mother Fucker.

As you can see, I am really starting off with a bang. Les Mis/Gavroche style.

But as I navigate my way through life/Times Square, I have realized something. Something big. Huge, in fact. Kind of like when the Superbowl lost power after Beyonce's half-time show performance this year. I realized that recent theatre graduates/aspiring actors are the crabgrass of Broadway.

They all walk around with this attitude. Like they are operating on higher level of mental capacity than everyone else because they actually get the Chekov jokes in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. No. No. No, you're not.

This idea of mine truly came to fruition while I was watching a film today. I was on my way home from the library when I passed some boy trying to get rid of an extra ticket for Heart of Glass, a 1976 film by Werner Herzog. (I had never heard of the film, but the boy said that Herzog put the actors in a trance while filming. No, really. He literally hypnotized them.) I figured I had two options here: I could go home and clean my kitchen or be artsy and publicly, but casually...always casually, mention my devotion to the arts to someone later. I chose to be artsy because I had just checked out five plays at the New York Library for the Performing Arts and then proceeded to browse them on the green in front of Juilliard. I was basically only one step away from doing a one woman beat poetry performance about Shakespeare's influence on the subway system. After spending $4.50 on a Root Beer, I made my way into the theatre. Let's be logical here, if this film sucks, mama is gonna need a fucking drink. I chose a seat between two other loners at the theater on a Saturday night and tried to sip my Root Beer without making that awkward low-toned, squeaky noise when the straw rubs all up on edges of the tiny plastic dagger laden straw hole in the lid. The lights began to dim and the movie started immediately. There were no previews so I knew this was legit. After 20 minutes of desperately trying to will myself to enjoy the robot zombie actors delivering their lines in the slowest, most monotone way possible, I snapped out of it. What the fuck was wrong with me? This shit is terrible. Who in their right mind would sit through 94 minutes of this crap. Yet here I was, sipping my root beer and staring at 10 minute long nature sequences. That is when I realized that most actors suck as humans and what was even more frightening was that, at that moment, I was one of them.  In light of this terrifying experience and my doomed future should I continue on this red carpet path, I have come up with some rules for actors to consider when they are sucking at life or just ordering a Skinny Chai Tea Latte (no foam, no water, no whip, three pumps of vanilla, extra hot) at Starbucks entitled "No One Cares..."

No One Cares...

No one cares that

1. you just can't find a strong female monologue because male playwrights hate women and all playwrights are male because feminism doesn't exist.
2. everyone is sleeping with everyone in the cast because actors are open with their bodies because of years of movement class NOT because of an inherent need for approval.
3. "If Anne hath a will, Anne Hathaway." is the best joke you've ever heard.
4. you accompanied your mentally unstable, foreign director on a 3 hour international spice and sauce shopping trip to TJ Maxx and then got cast in the mother fucking chorus. Again. Even after you got drunk while cleaning his house last Saturday.
5. you're on a juice cleanse so you'll fit into your unitard.
6. as an actor, you get so annoyed when people ask you who your heroes are. No one asks accountants who their fucking heroes are.
7. Stanislavki is your hero.
8. all your sexcapades just assume you want to role play. 
9. you supplement your day make-up with Ben Nye because you're more familiar with stage make-up techniques.
10. your agent made you go on an audition that included a segment where you had to "describe your perfect day through vocal tones." And the casting director judgmentally said, "Well, that was interesting." when you were done. What did you expect, asshole?

Now, go forth, actors! Be real people and remember: actions speak louder than Asians in public places. You're fucking welcome.