The Journey Begins

Its my fifth blog and I haven't even started to talk about the training i have received! I mean thats what this whole series of blogs is ultimately about! Talk about beating around the bush!!! Though this said I feel that the other blogs which I have previously written will have helped paint the bigger picture. Its best tell the full story at times like these rather than just hit on odd extracts from selected points of the journey. However I must say this approach of only hitting on small extracts of a story rather than reading it in full got me through my GCSE english papers just fine. I scored good grades and never read one of the books from start to end in all my time in senior school. What a result!

Anyway as you may recall from an earlier blog I was always pretty good at drama in school and I loved being involved the lessons, which wasn't the case for most other subjects I studied. I wasn't thick at school, infact I was rather smart. I just didn't enjoy school very much. I was confident however that some of this ability and enthusiasm I showed in lesson would come back to me quite quickly in my latest drama pursuits. It never seems to take me long to remember how to do things again, its just like riding a bike... That saying for me has always had two meanings. Firstly once you have learned to ride a bike, its a skill you never really lose. But just like riding a bike, hit a bump, you can crash and sometimes you hit the ground quite hard. I really feared doing just this, and still have this worry in the back of my head at all times.

I really wanted to test the water and discover if this was indeed the path I wanted to take in life, after all this idea of crashing that I just talked of wasn't something I really wanted to experience. As a result I didn't want to throw myself in at the deep end, rather start at the bottom and build from this. I opted to take a short course in the evenings which offered acting lessons for beginners. I knew going in at the most basic level wouldn't necessarily test me as much as other courses could have, however it would re-establish some of the foundations that were laid down back at school. I didn't want to risk complacency of any form, and brushing up on old skills is never a bad thing to do really is it?

I think the biggest challenge I would face would be working with new people. When I was at school I was frequently working with the same people, week in and week out. We all know how friendship circles work at school, you always aim to work with your mates. Or at very least if you can't work with your friends you do whatever it takes NOT to be grouped with the class nerd. There's always one in every class! In mine there was this guy called Tom. He could have passed a quantum physics degree aged seven, but socially he was retarded as they get. He is the kind of guy who will be a virgin aged 40, and gets more pleasure out of his Star Trek monthly magazine than he ever will out of internet porn, that is of course if he has discovered the real meaning of the internet yet. (For those who do not believe me I suggest you speak to Trekkie Monster on Avenue Q, he will verify that the internet is for porn!)

Once signed up to the classes I would have passed that point of no return. On the debit card payment screen it must have taken me a good two or three minutes of staring at the submit button before actually pressing it. I did have those voices in my head telling me that this was all a crazy idea. There are still days now where I doubt my judgement to pursue acting, but sense always prevails and thats why i'm still chasing the dream.

So there we have it, I had signed up to my first taster of becoming an actor. I had climbed the first rung of the ladder. I have somehow strung out a whole blog which in short could have simply said "I decided to sign up for drama classes", which frankly is the long and short of everything I have written. Instead I made you read all of this. Lifes a bitch aint it?

The weeks ahead in these drama classes were somewhat entertaining... but you know what? You can wait for another blog until I tell you all about these!

I'm sorry this isn't the most exciting blog, but it is quite an important link to blogs that are forthcoming. So keep those comments coming in, I do like to read them all :)

G xxx