Peter Finds His Niche in Acting and New York

We are passed the stages of learning how to relax, how to fight away our shyness, how to conquer our inhibitions, and how to find our emotions (to some degree). Now we are acting. We have scripts that we have to memorize. At the beginning, I would whine about a paragraph that I had to memorize. But after getting scripts with five pages of a lot of dialogue, I laugh at the idea of one paragraph. A paragraph, I can now memorize in ten minutes. I am slowly finding my niche in acting. At first, I was afraid of being typecast. Back in Toronto, people told me that I might get typecast, and it got me a bit worried. But to their surprise, and to my surprise, I am learning about the kind of characters I am good at playing. As my acting teacher said, I have a thing for playing unstable characters. My meisner teacher also told me that I could play many different characters; I just don’t know it yet. I have gone through a period of frustration for some time. I was confused. We were getting bombarded at school with all of this information that contradicts itself. When playing scenes in meisner, I would be told to be in the moment and play off of the other actors. But when in Acting for film, I would be told to play the beats, and the physical actions, to breathe in when doing an emotional shift, to change focal points, etc. I would not know which one is the priority. Should I concentrate on the technical aspect of it first, or just being in the moment? But today, I had, what my Shakespeare teacher calls, an epiphany. I have figured out that, you develop the character. Once you find your character, then you do the technical parts, which should come with ease. In simple words, YOU DO NOT WORRY ABOUT THE TECHNICAL ASPECTS OF ACTING FOR FILM, YOUR CHARACTER DOES. Get my drift?

I was back in Toronto at the beginning of March, and I think that the short time I have lived in New York has changed me in someway. Out of curiosity, I took a subway ride in Toronto to compare it to the ones in New York. First impression, they are damn clean in Toronto and they ride smoothly. But the downside…. they’re boring as shit. People were boring; it was funny because they seemed afraid of one another. I have also brought back my bargaining skills that I have learned in New York, to Toronto. I had to purchase a new digital camera because my old one broke. It was originally for 350 and I bargained it down to 250. I accomplished this bargain at a Best Buy. I was very proud of myself;)

I am, however, developing a love and hate relationship with New York. Everything that you love, you will also hate. There is a thin line between the two. Whenever this one girl tells me she hates me, I am complimented. It just means that she loves me. I have been to few plays, I have watched few meisner performances, and all of these are based on bad relationships and bad love. I walk down the street, and I overhear groups of girls that talk about their relationship problems. If you are in a relationship in New York for three months, consider it a success. Relationships are very unhealthy in New York. One of the reasons being is that people do not come to New York to find love. They come here to DO. Whether, it is to do acting, or singing, or writing, or filmmaking. People do not have time for love and for values. As one friend told me, he feels that he is losing himself, his culture, and values, here in this city. Life is in such a hurry here. It is as if people are running out of time or some shit. I, on the other hand, have been lost before I came here. So I am finding myself here as opposed to my friend.

Do you know what New York is? If you want to know, take a blender, put every culture of the world in it and shake it up. What comes out? New York city. It may look like shit to some, may taste amazing to others, or badly to few. Whatever the taste may be…. you have got to try it. New York, that is.

I need a break. I have one day off for Easter, and so, I am going to Las Vegas for four days with a friend. My mom would call and tell me that I should come to Toronto and be with the family and go to church. But instead, I am going to sin city to gamble, be around strippers with fake blonde hair and big fake tits, and to check out the glitz and glamour. I am turning away from God, and falling to the temptations of the devil. I will tell you whether I lost all my life savings or whether I spent the nights at the penthouse suite;) and when I come back, I have to begin looking for a new apartment, because I have already informed my landlord that April will be my last month.

Until next time, keep your fingers crossed for me, and make me win in black jack.

Oh, and one more thing to finish this off on a good note. I took a trip down to Philadelphia for a day, and I took a tour on a horse carriage of the old city area. The tour guide looked at my friend and asked, “Where are you from?” and she replied “Italy”, to which he replied, “oh that’s nice”. Then he looked at me and asked, “and where are you form?” to which I replied “Canada”. He asked, “where about in Canada?” and I said, “Toronto” to which he replied “Oh! Well then…bonjour”.

PeterB

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