tipping point

i understand the block.
i really do.
and i understand the fact that you don't want to limit a character's life to the scope of your own experience. but as an actor, as the instrument, you have to open up your humanity and expand it out to encompass the character.
the problem is, i've shoveled the key bits of myself that hester smit and i happen to share into carefully managed compartments. they have had their hayday in the past, allowed to parade about more vulnerably on the surface, and then are promptly ushered back again to resume a resemblance of control. and then they are reduced to informing the smaller moments in life: making cameos in disguise throughout random conversations, tiny upsets, and the occasional heated moment of frustration or anger. nothing serious. i'm generally a well integrated human being.

but that's not helpful here.

her story has to be meaningful to me. very meaningful. and not just in a general way. not just in that comfortable i'm seating in my armchair reading about hester smit's life sort of way. i need to live it. i need to feel it in my body all the way through me and out the other side.

and in order to feel her story, first i have to feel my own again. not that i'm going to tear open old wounds or start prodding at the bruises we all carry. but just find the places in me that know what it's like having not enough, that knows what it's like wearing second-hand clothes i'm ashamed of, know what it's like being made fun of as a kid, misunderstood, alienated in a family, emotionally abused and manipulated by my father. and wanting more. always always wanting more.

then, once i can get there. i give these things to her. give them to her circumstances. envision myself in her places, spaces and lives. make it real for me. but now i'm getting ahead of myself. again.

slow down, nathania. one thing at a time.

start with growing up poor.
it's the south.
alabama summers.
playing outside in the dirt. hands are dirty. elastic waistband on my trousers. class pictures. never looking as pretty or neat as the other girls. my hair always shaggy. cut by a parent. i remember when he cut the bangs in germany. off center. and they always cut it too short. i looked like a boy. not the cute bob haircuts and lacy dresses of the other girls. and i was too tall. i knew it then. in kindergarten when i was almost the height of the teacher in the class pictures. a good head and shoulders taller than the other kids. the smell of the library. the little shop set up in the library during christmas time. the excitement of having money to spend always followed by the disappointment of not having enough to buy the one thing i wanted to get. i'm remembering a plastic red watch. i don't know who i wanted it for, myself perhaps, and even though i knew it was cheap and that it wasn't worth what they were charging for it, i wanted it. i wanted to be grown-up and wear a watch. i wanted to wear a watch. but i didn't have enough. and i never got things new. ever. ever. ever. well, a few times, but those few times are remembered because i didn't take them for granted: i got a new set of sheets (princess of power, from maria herweigh, for christmas the year i went to germany with my dad) or a new dress (also from maria, who also always had the best toys, for a birthday that was in the 33 adam's street house 4 or 5 years old--it was blue with lace or ribbons on the bodice, i was so proud of that dress) these moments stand out crystal clear in my memory. because they were rare. because we were always scraping by. and money was always the tipping point for every explosion, argument, suicide threat. it was always money...




this is a start.