Bro, you got any cool acting stories???
I dropped out of an experimental performance called "The Container" after just one show. The Container is a stage play about refugees making their way across the border and the harsh conditions they endure within these trucks to get there. Where these refugees all came from, why they're trying to escape, how many manage to stay on board til the very end, if they actually make it to America, it's all that good stuff.
The piece was experimental in that, we literally performed within one of those very containers. The actors and the audience alike were ALL inside of this cramped, unbearably hot cargo container you see on mass cargo trucks all the time. The audience AND the actors all had to sign wavers so we understood the risks and the conditions, and all that.
I got cast after the director saw me in "How I Learned To Drive." He said I'd be a perfect fit for one of the refugees who eventually breaks down and gets the hell out. When he explained the play and how it would be performed, I explained to him that I was a deeply claustrophobic person, and I wasn't sure I could handle such conditions. But he was a great director, knew how to get the best out of me, and made rehearsals really manageable. But in each of our tech runs, we were always just TOLD where the audience would be. We'd never experienced first hand until our first show how CRAMPED we would all be together.
(To all the Transformers vore fans out there? It would be like being trapped within the belly of a robot, only much, MUCH warmer, and none of the pleasant noises. XD)
Well, sufficed to say, we learned first hand how bad it was gonna get on the first show. When my character freaked the fuck out at the conditions (which were in the script) and finally, he had what looked like a panic attack and started thrashing the cargo door over and over, shrieking, "GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HEEERE!!!!!!!!!" so hard that his voice was shot. The audience was absolutely horrified and mesmerized and my character kept smashing and smashing until "the driver" pulls over and eventually lets him out to his own devices in the middle of the road.
The container was just in the community center parking lot. We had that whole place reserved for the intermission, drinks and snacks, etc.
So when my character gets out, that's the end of him for the rest of the play. We don't know what happens to him, just that he can't handle being trapped inside and flips out so hard he gets abandoned. The crew outside were like, "Shit, you really SOLD that, dude! That sounded so terrifying and real and-why are you still hyperven-oh...oooohhh...oh..."
Yeah, turns out, when it was as crowded as it was, I legitimately couldn't physically and psychologically stand it a second longer and had an actual, honest to god panic attack "on stage," and no one realized it was real until I was still kinda losing my shit outside of the container too. X'D
Sooooo yeah, sufficed to say, I dropped out then and there, and my understudy took over for every other show. But the director DID still work with me after the fact. He said he took a chance because he loved my work, but now he knew I had limits and thanked me for entertaining his experiment.
""Unfortunately,"" that sort of show is literally IMPOSSIBLE in a post-COVID world...yes...how sad and all that...
Also, Matt Damon wasn't in any of our shots we did, but one of the extras literally played "corpse with a water bottle still in his hand" so he could sip from his water anytime the cameras weren't trucking on us and no one was looking. I'm starting to understand why none of my shots appeared in that damn movie. XD
