Heart of Glass by Wendy Lawless

Author:Wendy Lawless
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books

chapter eight

WILD, WILD WEST

The National Theatre Conservatory (NTC) was a three-year graduate acting program affiliated with the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, a multimillion-dollar arts complex with three theaters. Coincidentally, my stepmother had been asked to be the managing director of the theater company—she’d left the same position at the Children’s Theatre in Minneapolis when the artistic director, John Donahue, had been arrested for having sex with underage boys. My father was staying in Minneapolis but would visit often, and it was nice knowing some family was around.

Our school was in the old jail building around the corner from the theater. It was under the stewardship of Allen Fletcher, who, along with William Ball, had founded the American Conservatory Theater (ACT) in San Francisco.

The NTC’s first class was composed of students from ACT whom Allen had invited to come with him to the new program. Some went straight into the second-year class, and I was in the first, along with nineteen others. We were going to have scene study and acting class in addition to training in voice, movement, the Alexander technique, ­phonetics, speech, dance, and singing. Many of the faculty Allen had brought along from ACT; others would be hired from around the country. Guest instructors, such as the well-known Shakespeare teacher David Hammond, would be coming in to teach specific skills.

The plan was to spend two years studying and then, in the third year, be paid a stipend and act in the resident company. We were all awarded scholarships of various amounts—mine allowed me to stretch the last of the money my grandfather had left me and cover the three years.

Acting school was, for me, a way to commit to the profession, to finally fill that lonely place inside me with something that captivated and drove me. I wanted to land, to no longer drift aimlessly from place to place. After a lifetime without guidance or structure, I hoped it would be good for me. As always, I was looking for a home.

I was here to learn who I was, and what kind of an actor I wanted to be. I was terrified. Since many of the people in my class had known each other at ACT, I called upon my new-girl-in-town bravado—Wendy Lawless, breezy world traveler and bon vivant—honed over years of constant moves with my mother and sister. Putting on a plucky, insouciant front, I tried hard to put my insecurities aside and concentrate on trying to learn. I didn’t have to be the best—it wasn’t about that. Still, many days I felt like jumping off a tall building. I’d take a running leap off, eyes wide-open, hurtle through space, and land in a net held by my classmates and teachers. After a while, I started to find conquering my initial fears and doubts exhilarating.

The main idea behind our first year of school was to strip us all down, erase everything we thought we knew about acting, and—when we were broken of all our old tricks—to start rebuilding us, hopefully into better performers.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.