My first taste of working in a play was in kindergarten, where I played a wise man in a Christmas pageant. I was very shy and really didn't like being in front of people. As I got older, I learned to love the stage. The applause was like taking a drug. It made me feel incredibly high. If I got a standing ovation, I was over the moon. I have already written about my God-given talent for acting, so I wanted to write about the stage.
I was trained to be an actor without a microphone. I could project my voice to the last row of a theatre without seeming like I was shouting. It was a lot easier in a more intimate setting like having the audience surround you and a theater with only a hundred seats, but the basic skills were the same. When I started acting with a microphone, I found it to be a lot more difficult. I had been using my voice in a broader way, and now it could be more subtle. That was hard to get used to.
One thing I was good at was developing a character. You are given a script and some lines, but the rest of the development is up to you. Who is the person you are portraying? What are his likes and dislikes? Where did he grow up? Who were his parents? Where did he go to school, if he went? What part of the world did he grow up? Is he married? If so, to whom? There are a lot of questions about a character that are not written in a script. The job of the actor is to make the character believable to the audience. Maybe that character is someone that the audience can identify with. The main thing you have to do in character development is to find something in that person that the actor can identify with. A memory or emotion from your past that can give depth to the character.
One thing I was not so good at was memorizing lines on the script. If the character has been fleshed out, the words can come a little easier. I found the best way for me to memorize lines was to repeat them over and over again until they came more natural for my character. If I flubbed a line on stage, I learned to cover it. I used to tell students not to freeze up, because then the audience would know you made a mistake. Stay focused on the character and say something the character would say in the moment, until you found your way back to the script. The key here is that the audience probably does not have a copy of the script in front of them, so the lines could briefly be your own.
Now we come to nerves. I admit that I have terrible stage fright. I always have. The anticipation of going on stage is incredibly scary for me. It is all about my shyness. Some people say that you are only as good as your last role. What if the audience doesn't like me? What if I forget my lines? What if I hear crickets in the audience? What if I have to throw up (which I have done) before going on stage? There are couple of things I have done before going on stage. The first is to get the nervousness out of my body by doing exercises. It could be yoga or jumping around or muscle relaxation. Whatever is needed at the time to get my energy in the right place. The second thing I do is meditation. I would find an empty room offstage and make it as dark as possible. I would think about my first line that I needed to present. I would clear my head of negative thoughts and say a prayer. "Lord, give me the strength to do a good job. Give me courage to go out on the stage. Give me clarity of thought and mind. Thank you for giving me this talent that I am about to use, and may someone receive a blessing from my work. Amen". After saying that prayer, I know that I will do my best. When I get out on stage, and say my first line, all of the nerves go away. I turn nervousness into energy.
Here are a couple tricks of the trade. If you have a mirror onstage, put hair spray on the glass. The spotlights won't reflect in the glass and blind the actors or the audience. Another is to put a fine layer of water in an ashtray. If someone is putting out a cigarette onstage, the water will keep it from having residual smoke rising from the ashtray and be distracting to the audience.
Stage work can be very hard. You are in front of an audience without a net. No second takes. Not all actors can be good on the stage. Just like not all stage actors can be good in other mediums like film or TV. It just takes practice. I had a lot of practice.
