Bad actress!

I worked on a scene last night with my scene partner. We presented it to our peers as a table read, and I...SUCKED. Yes, I sucked. And I have to remind myself that it's simply because I didn't craft it specifically enough, and so I got all self-conscious and in my head. So that's okay. It's a craft, not magic. But because when it is crafted right, it appears and feels like magic, we get confused about the truth of it. I'm a major perfectionist too, and it's hard for me to ever fall on my face. But it is impossible to be perfect in any art form, but it's really ridiculous to expect perfection ALL the time too.

Even as I'm writing this, I worry that whoever is reading it is now judging me as being not a good actress. It's that gremlin in my head saying: "If you were a good actress, you would NOT have nights like those." And I project those gremlins onto those around me, assuming they are thinking what my gremlin is saying.

Someone said recently "it's not perfect your craft, it's practise your craft." I love that. I need to print it out and paste it on my forehead.

So I got home last night feeling miserable. When a scene goes well, when it is well crafted, it's an incredible roller coaster ride, and you get an incredible high from it. But when it doesn't happen that way, there's this yucky icky feeling. But I am very proud of myself because I DID NOT eat Ben and Jerry's to cope with that feeling. Yay!

The best way to cope is to just keep telling myself that this is just part of the process, to just focus on preparing for the next rehearsal, and to go to bed early before I run out to the grocery store.