#theatricum

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The Theatricum Company is rehearsing for today's Birthday Celebration of The Bard. It starts at 1:30 pm! Come one, come all. #bardintheusa #theatricum

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Two great shows for July 5 & July 6 - twofers at the box office. Happy Fourth! #bardintheusa #theatricum

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"All's Well" opens Saturday at 8 pm at Theatricum! Romance, war, fantasy, intrigue - it has it all! #allswell #allshakespeare #theatricum #maxlawrence #earnestinephillips

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"All's Well That Ends Well" opens Saturday June 20th at Theatricum. It's the third if 5 shows in our rep season to open in the past two weeks! #theatricum #allswell #allshakespeare (at 1419 Topanga Canyon Blvd Topanga 90290)

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Our friendly #Theatricum box office staff is looking forward to the weekend! #Allswell opens Saturday after #Midsummer and #Lear repeats on Sunday. #busytimes

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The cast of Theatricum discusses LEAR at Saturday night's Prologue Talk. #theatricum #allshakespeare #alanblumenthal #meloramarshall #lear (at The Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum)

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Romance comes to #Theatricum in #Shakespeare's #AllsWell opening June 21. #allshakespeare #willgeer #gottaseeit (at 1419 Topanga Canyon Blvd Topanga 90290)

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Shakespeare and Me

I am on my way to becoming a classically-trained actress. I’ve been acting since I was 10, and studying Shakespeare for just as long. I have played Bianca in Taming of the Shrew, Speed in Two Gentlemen of Verona, Hero in As You Like It, and Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, all in the high school repertory company at the Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga, California, very close to where I live. (They’re brilliant. If you live in the area, give them a go. Their Taming of the Shrew is the Los Angeles Times Critics' Pick, and there’s nothing like sitting in that outdoor theater watching Shakespeare's writing appear before your eyes.)

I’ve also done classes there, and despite the emphasis placed on ridiculous academic rigor at my elementary-through-high school, Viewpoint, my college roommate has convinced herself that I went to a performing arts school.

In some ways, she is absolutely right. I consistently did two theater productions per semester. I took acting classes. I sang in choir. I came an hour early to school in the mornings to sing jazz. I took classes in ballet, jazz, tap, and modern dance. I was part of both the theater company and the dance company. I once spent 14 hours at school in one day. My senior year consisted mostly of following the head of the arts department (we call her Doc) around from rehearsal to rehearsal, and I loved it.

But, I’m not a theater major in college. This confuses a lot of people, but let me put it this way – as a friend of mine once said, “I’m an acting major because when I grow up I want to be a waitress!”

That's a bit of an extreme critique of the theater major, but the point stands. In other career tracks, training and qualification to do a job will generally win out. If you don’t have experience, you can’t get a job (and if you don’t have a job, you can’t get experience, but that’s a discussion for another time). In “The Industry,” your performance, or even the color of your hair, matters more than the number of classes you’ve taken.

Even though I’m not officially studying acting at college, I’ve been approved to study abroad for a semester in London, England. I leave on September third to study Shakespeare and acting at the London Dramatic Academy. (This is actually part of the reason I started this blog now. I want to get in the habit of posting every week so I can continue to do so in England.) From nine to five, five days a week, I get to do nothing but Shakespeare.

I’m excited. Really excited.

But I’ve grown up in Los Angeles. I’ve lived here all my life. Which left me a bit less than prepared to realize that no, not everyone has seen a film contract. Not everyone has held an Oscar (that was me bragging right there, just for clarification). And no, not everyone realizes the intricacy and the layers of the media industry. Yeah. I was the other side of that coin.

I don’t want to project too cynical an attitude, but I am not naïve. I look it. I really do. People make that mistake all the time. I am aware that being an actress is more than even talent or skill. It is a job. It is a business, and it is, unfortunately, underestimated in those respects.

I’m reading a biography of Shakespeare at the moment called Shakespeare of London by Marchette Chute. (No, it’s not assigned. I’m just that much of a dork.) Now, I’ve been warned about biographies of Shakespeare. I’ve heard so many different versions of Shakespeare’s life by now that I’ve reached a point where I pick out the points I like from each story to keep in my own personal version. I like this author especially because she expresses the necessity to do just that. She acknowledges that there are many popular beliefs about Shakespeare that can’t be proven, and suggests that, since we can’t tell for sure, we might as well believe that he was born on the 23rd of April, on St. George’s day, and the same day he died, because it makes for a very good story, and it could have happened.

She also includes the business that Shakespeare was involved in besides writing plays, including his acquisition of a coat of arms, his financial involvement in building and maintaining the Globe Theater, and his own acting career.

What strikes me, and is apparently my inspiration for this month (give or take), is that Shakespeare, as the only playwright to remain an actor throughout his writing career, was working two full-time jobs. His day was taken up entirely with his acting career, and on top of all that, he was a prolific writer.

I’m realizing now that what I’ve signed up for is similar. True, I’m able to do many things more quickly than Shakespeare, but I already have trouble finding time to do as much as I’m doing now, and I’m not working as an actress at the moment. I feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything that I need to do and, most especially, everything I want to do. Sometimes it drives me crazy. It’s one of my neuroses, I suppose.

Because how ridiculous is that, when Shakespeare stayed up by candlelight to write Romeo and Juliet, knowing that he had to get up before dawn the next morning?