I have to take my shirt off in front of a bunch of strangers in two weeks for several nights in a row.
Just so we're abundantly clear, this is not a stripping situation. Nor am I back in Vegas, lookin' like topless Gertrude McFuzz with sequin-y feathers on my ass. I already have a side hustle at Booklink Books, so I'm not too worried about having a hundred extra $1 bills in my wallet. Nay, it is an acting situation.
I'm in this play called Seminar at New Century Theatre, for which I am painfully excited. Fittingly, it's about four young writers taking a fiction seminar with a crazy dude (originally played by Alan Rickman). Also fittingly, I am the slut. (I am always the slut. I am ALWAYS the slut.) And AS the slut, it is evidently my responsibility to shake dem titties.
Here's the thing. It is unclear as yet whether it's straight up boobs or if there's a bra involved. The former might traumatize some of our older audience members, so I'm hoping for a bra. REAL hopin' for a bra. Sometimes I feel like an African woman in a damn National Geographic magazine. I'm not quite ready to share that much with the world...but so help me, I will do it for the Actors' Equity Association.
Either way, when I told my gentleman friend about it, he was like, "....WHY?"
"ACTING," I declared defiantly. "A real artist makes sacrifices for her trade."
He looked at me like, stop being a pretentious bitch. (He knew better than to say it, though.)
So I'm down to make the sacrifice. I was especially down 15 or 20 pounds ago, when I was chosen for the part. However, I fell all over myself this one time and ended up in a neck brace, and have not been allowed to go to the gym ever since.
All I can say is, I hope my father doesn't come.
JUNE 23, 2015
I'm in the midst of my run. I love this show, but I am having an AWFULLY hard time getting behind my character's philosophy of "be a stone cold bitch."
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| from Seminar by Theresa Rebeck New Century Theatre, 2015. Photo credit: Carolyn Brown |
That said, after five performances, I have received exactly two pieces of feedback on the topless scene (bra is involved. Everyone be relieved.):
"I mean, you looked better than the older guy who took his shirt off." —Guy I Used to Date
"You must be so secure with your body!" —Very Large Gentleman Who I Have Never Seen Before
Well, at least there's that.
SEPTEMBER 9, 2015
It has been three months since I whipped my shirt off and shook my titties at poor Myka Plunkett.
My mother was stressed. My godmother took illegal cell phone pictures of me and put them on the Internet. My girls in the front row cheered for me. And an old man who I was SURE was Donald Trump's dad took his glasses off, cleaned them, and put them back on. Then gasped.
Let me be clear. According to my BMI, I am overweight. According to myself, I am a big bitch. According to anyone who looks at me, audience members and friends alike, it's science: the majority of my poundage clearly lies in my chest.
Body image, body image, blah blah, I've examined it fully before, 8,000 other people have already picked over all of it, I have nothing new to contribute at this time about it. But it's there, and all of this is to say: I won't wear a bikini in public. For the sake of my peace of mind, those days are over.
But I will take my damn shirt off for a sold-out house.
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| from Seminar by Theresa Rebeck, New Century Theatre, 2015 Photo credit: Carolyn Brown |
I think I heard someone say once that actors are whores. Was it a movie? I don't know (brownie points for anyone who can tell me where this is from, because it's bugging me). What I do know is that if this is prostitution, give me more.
I will do what audiences want me to do because it is empowering. It means that I get to take all of my insecurities and throw them the fuck away for two hours every night. It means I am in control of myself. Let's be real: I wouldn't have done it, taken my shirt off, if I didn't think I had the chutzpah somewhere inside me to do it. But I'm proud of myself for this small thing (or these two large things...if you will...). It was nerve-wracking and I did it, because if I hadn't, I wouldn't have done my job. Not in terms of, I wouldn't be doing the thing that I was getting paid to do, had been hired to do—but in terms of, I would have put a limitation where there didn't need to be one, simply because I was scared. My pretentious ass wasn't wrong: an artist makes sacrifices for her trade. An artist makes sacrifices for herself.
I don't know if this applies to everyone or if it's just a thing that I need, but I don't much care. I will do the thing. I will be brave. I will do my best to make the art what it needs to be, because it does things I alone could never do for myself.
I'm saying this because I'm making this promise to myself. I'm bad at a lot of things, and I am dumb about a lot of things. I dropped out of my philosophy class in college because I couldn't do anything except be overwhelmed. But I think that now I know this one thing for sure: we, who are fundamentally insecure and afraid, deserve to make these promises to ourselves, and we deserve to follow through. Because contribution to the "universal All" aside, to society or to the zeitgeist or whatever, what is even in this life for us as individuals? Why the fuck are we here?
To show our tits. We are here to show our tits. Metaphorically.
I also took my pants off for that show. There were a lot of leopard print undergarments involved. Not sorry about it. Never will be.
Shake on Kyle! Shake on!
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