Corsets and kissing...

So, imagine the scene. You land a new, good job, and you're enjoying it. It's great. The role's a big undertaking, but you're having fun getting your teeth into it, and just hoping you're making a good enough hash of it. You're just getting to know your colleagues, most of whom are completely new to you, but so far you're hitting it off. Then, three weeks in, you're with a close colleague doing something that you haven't done before (perhaps a new side of the role that hasn't come up yet, like the end of month figures, or the stationery order) and your boss says to your colleague "and now, you kiss her".

That's what yesterday was like for me. It was the first kissing rehearsal. Now, I shouldn't really complain - after all, in what other job to you get to go into work and kiss lovely boys (and be able to justify it to your partner!?)? But I always find it so awkward, no matter what I do. It's so unnatural. To kiss someone for the first time in a room full of other relative strangers all watching you, while holding a book and reading lines from it. Plus, you know it's coming, so when you wake up in the morning having had dirty salad from a kebab shop the night before and can still taste the raw onions on your breath your heart sinks. No one wants to kiss a kebab, for real or not...

Although I should count myself lucky, I suppose. Apart from the obvious perks of getting to kiss boys (have I mentioned that I get to kiss boys?) this show is quite staid. There's not a lot of snogging, just one, sentiment filled, romantic, lingering pash between Maggie and Will at the end. One of my friends from school, Tom, was recently in the Secret Diary of a Call Girl - if you read the Daily Mail you'll no doubt have been filled with hatred and vitriol for him a couple of weeks ago. (Although if you read the Daily Mail you probably spend most of your time filled with hatred and vitriol...). But, yes, Tom was the one with the bizarre farmyard fantasies that he made the lovely Miss Piper enact for him. Now, if I feel uncomfortable about locking lips with a boy I hardly know, imagine what it's like to go on set, strip off and have to simulate sex with the nubile young thing who pranced around when we were at school singing "Because we want to, Because we want to!"; not to mention how embarrassing it must be for Tom!

I jest. Tom never sang any Billie. He's more your Smiths kind of boy. But the point stands - I should feel relieved that I only have to kiss the actor playing Will. I'm not sure how I'd cope with anything more than that - my self-consciousness is fairly pronounced as it is... I confessed this to the boy in question in the bar over a couple of hundred pints after rehearsals. I admitted that no matter how comfortable I feel with an actor, no matter how well we get on (and we do), or how many times I tell myself that it's not me, it's a character, really it's just physical blocking, it's only as bad as having to hold someone's hand and just STOP BEING SO BLOODY ENGLISH ABOUT IT!, I still dread that first kissing rehearsal.

Yesterday, I tried desperately hard to play it cool (oxymoron?). Thankfully, in the context of the story, he goes for her, so I could just let him take the initiative and get on with it. But no matter how composed I tried to appear I gave the game away when, after he kissed me for the first time, I opened my mouth to say the next line and choked on it in my throat. I had to close my mouth, swallow hard and try again. All the while going a lovely shade of beetroot right to the roots of my wig. But later, in the pub, to my huge relief, he said he hadn't noticed at all (yeah right), but moreover that he agreed, was surprised I hadn't seen him blushing. And I realised that it's one of those situations, like the swimming pool changing room, where everyone is so worried about themselves that they pay little or no attention to what anyone else is doing.

And really, when it all boils down to it, how can I really moan about a job that allows me to tight lace into a gorgeous corset, ("you could eat your dinner of those" was one of the first comments I got yesterday... "YOU couldn't" I said) lace up some high heeled boots and kiss someone that's not your husband, with no repurcussions...

I love my job.

xx

Mirror mirror on the wall

What, exactly, happens when we look in a mirror? And I don't mean 'how does that magic glass show me my face' I mean why, when faced with my own reflection does every iota of kindness and care that dwells in my heart bury itself in my deepest recesses, resolutely refusing to make itself useful?

Generally, I would describe myself as an optimist. I'm of the 'cheer up, it may never happen' club (feel free to hate me). I cross bridges when I come to them, and chalk embarrassing incidents up to experience (after dwelling on them longer than is strictly healthy and indulging in a bit of emotional self-flagellation, you understand). I always look for the good in a situation, and try my very hardest to look for the best in people.

So, why doesn't this translate to me? When I take stock, or do something wrong, or even just look at myself in the mirror, why does all of that desert me?

I spend a worrying amount of my life feeling like an utter fraud. I am always the first to qualify and apologise for everything I do... "yes, I sing, but I'm not outstanding", "yes, I'm an actor, but I'm not very good", "yes, I swim, but I'm really slow". I'm secretly convinced that one day someone is going to look up in the middle of the rehearsal and say "Sorry Teg, time's up. You've had your fun now go and get a real job and let those of us who can actually do this get on with it". I'm bound to be discovered some day, and not in the "hey, kid, come be in my movie" kind of way. In the "I've just realised you really haven't got a clue what you're doing", found-out, kind of way.

But then, occasionally, just occasionally, something happens which makes you think that maybe what you see in yourself isn't - shall we say - entirely objective.

On Friday I am speaking at a youth conference run by a theatre in Chichester on 'how to be an actor'. I was called by a friend who works in their education department, explaining that they wanted an actor to come and talk to the young people about what's involved in getting into my line of work, and what it's like once you're there. You know the drill, dispel a few myths, crush a few dreams, that kind of thing. The thing was, they wanted someone who had, and I quote, "worked hard to get where they were, were on their way, and successful". I nearly fell over.

Last night, (and this is a snippet from a very long and boring story - so take it for granted there is a context, but I shouldn't ask about it if I were you!) I was singing in a bar in London, and I belted out a decent enough rendition of New York New York, which got cheers and applause a-plenty, including - astoundingly - heartfelt plaudits from a jazz pianist who was watching. A Ronnie Scott's regular who'd stopped me in my tracks when he had taken to the keys earlier in the evening. And again, I was stunned.

Me? Really?!

Isn't it funny how we decide what we can do, and then do our level best to stick to those limitations? Perhaps it's time to put aside the preconceptions and find out just exactly what I'm capable of. Because when you reach one rung of excellence, it's only a short leap to the next, and the next, and so on.

I recently heard someone say "if you can dream it, you can do it". An admirable sentiment, but possibly just a little saccharine for what I'm driving at, but how about we settle on "imagine what you could be capable of if only you would let yourself try"

I think I've got a new mantra.

xx

I have always depended upon the validation of strangers...

Why is it that the people least suited to acting always seem to end up as actors?

Acting is an amazing job, don't get me wrong. The roar of the greasepaint and so on and so forth - I firmly believe that it's the best job in the world, and if you can do it as a job and still pay the mortgage then in my humble opinion you are on to a winner. But let's be honest here, it's not the best for the self esteem, is it? Where most of my friends (alright, not my friends, because I seem to know mainly freelancers, but most people in general) will go through a job interview or two every few years, we actors change jobs much more frequently - say every few months. And those are only the jobs we get. For every casting we book we probably lose - oh, I don't know, 4 or 5? Maybe more, 10 or 12?

Rejection is the centrepiece of the profession. And I probably spend as much time chanting to myself "it's not because you're not good enough, it's because you're not right for the part" as I do asking "what's my motivation"? So why (oh, why, oh, why etc ad nauseum) does it seem to attract nut jobs who thrive on adoration and seek to validate themselves by the opinions of peers, superiors or - erm - otherwise?

Just recently, I met a man. He's got an incredible singing voice, and plays jaw dropping piano, BY EAR, and is just generally lovely. And before you go running off to snitch on me to Pierre, it's OK; yes he's lovely, but gay, and this is a purely platonic thing. But, for some reason I can't quite fathom out, I'm desperate for him to approve my singing voice. Now, I know I can sing. I know my voice is fairly decent. Not world stopping, but good enough. And yet I'm embarrassing myself with how much I care about what this guy - who I've known all of about 10 minutes - thinks of it.

It seems that nowadays, in the age of Twitbook, blogs, Bebo and the like, nothing is real until you've broadcast it to the world. Unless you've seen it in someone's tweets, or in a status update, can we be sure that it really happened? I even find myself experiencing something and then shaping it into a pithy one-liner. And because I'm me, it has to be 3rd person, preferably in the present continuous (I will never forgive Facebook for getting rid of the 'is'). "Tegwen is dreaming of snowboarding", "Tegwen is well aware that she should really be tidying the flat", "Tegwen is exhausted after a long day's rehearsals". It's never quite enough to simply 'feel' these things, they have to be validated by the world at large.

But here I am. Logging on to share this with you all. Because you'll validate it and then I'll know it's real. And in a bizarre kind of philosophical recursion, I'm blogging about how odd this is, but I'll check back here periodically through the day and everytime someone comments I'll know that you're reading this and somehow that'll make it all worthwhile...