February 2004

Alex Suha • Taking Center Stage

Today, I wake up at 7 a.m. And at 8, and again around 8:13. Only then do I bolt out of my Quad dorm room to catch the Cambus for my 8:30 class, “Basic Acting.” After two long semesters away from the pleasures of acting that I’d discovered in high school, I’m just happy to be in a theatre again, smelling the old wood and phantom sweat.

Later, after I meet my instructor, I’m not quite as content. Her first comment is that my audition a few days earlier was a waste of time, since I hadn’t completed the prerequisite “Acting I” and “Acting II” classes. “But what did you think?” I ask.
“ Do you want me to be brutally honest?” she says. “Because it wasn’t great. If you’re going to do a speech from Hamlet and you choose to make it funny, I need to know why. That sort of work is appropriate in a stand-up comedy setting, but if you’re talking about real acting. . . ."

I guess she’d read my bio, which notes that I’ve done improvisation training with Chicago’s Second City comedy theatre. But, I admit, I was disappointed. I chose to “speak the speech” from Hamlet, and I deliberately did everything that Shakespeare says not to—“saw the air” and “split the ears.” I guess my character of “bad actor” wasn’t clear enough.

"Alex, you need to understand the Stanislavski method, to understand ‘action,’” she adds.

I think I’m going to get sick of hearing that name, but I swing by the IMU and pick up a copy of Stanislavski’s An Actor Prepares.

Real acting. Not great. I keep replaying those comments in my mind during the bus ride and the walk to Mann Elementary, where I’m a volunteer reading tutor. But, inside the school, I’m tall again. The kindergarten kids run around the gym, admiring my height and my silly demeanor. “There he is,” a blonde one squeals. “Go ahead, go ahead,” another one squeaks.

I bend down and ask, “Go ahead, what?”

"Kiss you!” gigglegigglegiggle.

"Whoa, uh, no, no kissing!”

Fortunately, they change the subject. “Is that today’s book? Read it to us!”

So, I open An Actor Prepares and turn to where I’d left off. Story time just kicks in, and I sit with Zoe on my lap, Isabel to my right, and Devon in front of me, her face in her hands, elbows on crossed legs.

"The brightness was so intense that it seemed to form a curtain of light between me and the auditorium. I felt protected from the public, and for a moment I breathed freely,’” I intone.

The kids follow every word and gesture. Some laugh, some frown, some offer up their gappy smiles. In this three-foot-square area, I’m main stage again. Stan’s become a puppet show, and they love it.

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