Making a short!

I’ve heard from enough people in our ‘industry’ that it does seem to be a fact: It’s who you know rather then what you know that makes the difference sometimes. I’ve never really been good at that…making ‘connections’ getting ‘contacts’. I prefer not to think of life as some great form of high school where knowing the cool crowd is what gets you in. And yet…

I bumped into a friend of a friend at an event whom I had met once briefly last year sometime. I knew that she was an actress like me, and I recognized her, but I can’t say I knew her name specifically. We met truly this year in March, when we exchanged knowledge of names for the first time, and a facebook friendship request later I received and message from Denel Honeyball on a Monday morning.

She was part of the One Day Movie Collective, at that stage still in its infancy, and they required an Afrikaans actress to be in a short film. I said I would do it, without regard for content now that I think about it, attached my email and waited for the script to be sent to me.

And before I had printed the scripts I was part of the inner circle with a few more facebook invites to pages and groups. An actress, part of the One Day Movie Collective, and one of a diversely skilled group of people. All in love with making movies.

So last Sunday, after leaving a choir camp, early, and after a morning rehearsal for upcoming dance shows, I headed off to Johannesburg to film a short film, entitled Droom.

In the film I play a lesbian, and I was informed the wardrobe required would be an 'indie-rock vibe'. So I decided to go in a dress, simply because its easiest to change clothes underneath, and forgetting the layers of tape on my knees that I require lately in order to dance I arrived at our director’s home in Johannesburg. When I met her she looked at my knees:

“Is that your interpretation of a lesbian?”

After removing the muscle tape from my knees, rather quickly, I met our director (in the style that really counts with an exchange of names!), cinematographer and our director’s girlfriend, a professional photographer by trade who was taking stills during the shoot and helping out in general. Like holding reflector boards, or making sure passing hobos didn’t steal our equipment while we were shooting. Denel and I ran our lines together in the car on our way to location, did some quick makeup touch ups in a bathroom mirror, while the rest of the team scouted the ideal location, and headed off to shoot the first film for the One Day Movie Collective.

If you live in the Gauteng area you will know that last Saturday was inexplicably cold, wet and generally miserable, so we were thankful for the brief moments of sunshine we did have on Sunday for our outdoor shoot. We rehearsed and set up the shot, then waited for the glimpses of sun between the clouds and did takes as best we could with passing moments of sun shine before it was lost again for a while! Standing outside in the cold in my dress our director decided to go with I was freezing while our cinematographer tried to estimate when the sun would shine bright enough again so that we could film the shot. There wasn't exactly   opportunity to do many retakes. So as actresses Denel and I had couldn't fumble. That added to the fun.

A still from Droom with Denel Honeyball and myself.

It was such fun, working with people from such different professional backgrounds, working together to make a film simply because it was something we wanted to do. A film that we wanted to make. It was an honour to work and get to know these people, with all our little fumbles. Including me forgetting that my microphone pack was clipped to the bench and not my clothes. I fact I was reminded of sharply as I tried to stand up in the take!

If any writers, actors, cinematographers, camera operators, directors are editors want to get involved with the One Day Movie Collective click the link and like the facebook page to receive updates. And if you don’t mind holding up a reflector board to see what making movies is all about, then you can click too!

The stars do shine brighter in Africa: At the Naledi Awards

I’m not someone who believes in coincidence. So when the head of the college where I teach at ‘happened’ to let her students know that she had managed to get tickets for the students to attend the Naledi Theatre Awards on Monday the 17^th I knew the timing was not a coincidence. So, as the drama and theatre lecturer I called and asked if there would be a ticket for me as well. A weekend spent on tenterhooks and Monday morning provided a message: She had managed to get a ticket for myself, and for my boyfriend/partner/long-suffering-plus-one.

So straight after a Monday morning audition I hopped through my second shower of the day to get ready for the awards, and then head off on the trek from Hatfield to the Lyric Theatre at Gold Reef City.

A red carpet, wine on arrival and circulating snacks set the tone for an evening of glamour. And surprisingly for me, running into some acquaintances.  A few people that had studied at the university while I was there, and some friends I had met along the way. I also saw some faces that I recognized from shows and put faces to names that were familiar. As someone who grew up in a small town, and an actress who is in awe of a lot of these people I felt a little like Alice in Wonderland seeing these people, and attending the same function. I bumped into a friend, and as I didn’t know for certain that I would be attending until a few hours before the awards ceremony I hadn’t read through all the nominations. I asked, rather sheepishly:

“It’s probably in bad taste to ask at the awards, but are you nominated?”

He laughingly replied that he hadn’t been, and had ended up at the awards in a similar fashion to the way I had.

The awards themselves were amazing with performances from some of the musicals performed in South Africa in the past year (including Phantom's Phantom Jonathan Roxmouth and Cabaret's Samantha Peo), as well as some firm favourites and the amazingly talented Allan Committee who was the hilarious Master of Ceremonies and had the audience in fits of laughter throughout the evening (which ended in just over two hours).  As a young actress, attending for the first time it was nice to be to there without having been involved in a production that was nominated, as if I ever am in the future it creates perspective. No matter how many stunning performances there are, there can be only one winner. And at the end of the show, I’m not working for awards, I’m working for every audience member who attends each show.

At the end of the evening I was talking to a fellow actress when I was asked to stand for a photo just before we left to go home. I didn’t think much of it, until a photo I posted of the Nalide awards on Instagram got a comment

.

Mika Stefano, a South African entertainment and gossip blogger commented on my photo that he had a photo with myself with fellow actress Denel Honeyball and choreographer Nicola Elliott and that he would be posting it on his facebook page. And so it was…

Nicola Elliot, Denel Honeyball and Myself, photo courtesy of Mika Stefano's facebook page.

International Pool-Side-Ho: De-Robing

I’ve always told my students that they need to decided what they are willing to do on screen or stage, and what they aren’t because once you are pressured with an offer you might end up doing something you regret. I am certain that nudity is not something that I am comfortable with, but I had never considered being clothed in a shot with other actresses who are nude. And by the time I found out that this is exactly what I would be doing there was no turning back. And to be completely honest I’m still not sure how I feel about it. I do know that I, as a clothed actress, was treated very differently on set by the male crew members than those who weren’t.  

Two aspects of the shoot were entirely new to me, the first was the nudity. In light of how exceptionally conservative coke and been when it came to what we ladies were and were not showing it was quite a shock for me that no one was trying to cover my cheeks in between shots, or make sure that my cleavage was not showing. The second aspect was the pyrotechnics, as we were shooting an action series. One of the sequences we shot involved a large gun fight and explosion during the evening. Personally I like to think it was because of my acting skill, but it might have more to do with the fact that I’m blonde and was wearing a neon pink dress over my bikini and I would therefore be visible in the weaker light, I was chosen to be involved in this shot. Along with two of the ladies who were doing nudity. While robed we rehearsed ducking under tables and chairs while actors screamed, without much enthusiasm considering they were actors ‘bang bang’. Then on the cue of the explosion we were to run inside the house of the location we were shooting on. One the first rehearsal we three ladies, all still robed, ran into the house, as we were told to do, and not to stop until we were in the kitchen. Once we were in the kitchen we were greeted by the family who owned the property we were shooting on, along with their two young sons of roughly 10 and 12.

As we walked back to our first positions one of my co-stars looked at the other:

“We have to run in their just now without our robes. And the kids are sitting there”

They both panicked. One of the crew members involved with pyrotechnics, who we had been talking to earlier walked by. He was very Afrikaans and rather animated. We had signalled to him to come closer. He shrugged and mouthed “Why?”

One of the ladies called: “The boys are inside” and pointed to her robe.

We could visibly see the gears change in his mind as realization of what was about to happen dawned on him and speedily changed direction to run inside the house and ask the family to temporarily vacate the kitchen.

When we did shoot the scene the directors decided not to have us ladies running around. I have to admit the first time we shot with the noisy blanks I was not prepared for it. I was required to very little acting considering how real ammunition rounds sounded surrounding me (we were trapped in the cross-fire of the shooting) and how loud the rounds we were. As we ducked under tables and deck chairs all three of us convulsed as the shots were ‘fired’ around us. Even by third take our bodies reacted to the sound of each ‘bullet’ being fired. And then there was the explosion!

Our Afrikaans pyrotechnics friend had set of the small explosion two or three times the day before to test what was supposed to happen. I will never forget watching him converse with the third assistant director, who was very British. His ‘English’ was so peppered with Afrikaans words in all the functional places in the sentences that I could read the confusion on the British Third AD’s face as the Pyro Guy was explaining what he was about to do. He didn’t have the heart to tell Pyro Guy that he didn’t know what he was saying and just nodded as if in confirmation and walked away. Pyro Guy was none the wiser, and carried on with his job.

Now as the explosion was to be set off with some sort of radio device the entire cast was to switch off their cell phones, as a cell phone could potentially accidentally activate the explosion. And nobody needed to be told how dangerous it was. I do not have any understanding of pyrotechnics in film, but I assume they are meant to be more flash and less bang. Although we were very far for the explosion I could feel the heat on my skin every time it flashed up into the night sky.

On one of our takes I had to dive underneath a table during the explosion, exactly where one of the crew members had dropped a glass earlier during a previous sequence. I had a piece of glass in my forearm, and didn’t fancy it getting infected considering that I had been crawling around on the floor with a bleeding arm for about 20 minutes. I went to the third AD who worked mostly with us. All I really wanted was a plaster, but the medic was called and I was inspected, disinfected and plastered, all the while under the eyes of about 50 male crew members.

“Hey Alvin, you never spend that much time helping any of us”

This was followed by general laughter. I smiled graciously to my make-shift audience, and went back to my ‘first position’ to redo the take.

As with any job, a number of things happened that were new and funny. An apricot fell out of the tree I was standing under just just missing me as the director called ‘action’.  Jewellery was forgotten and snuck back on, and prayers were said that no one in continuity would pick up on it. Three Champaign glasses were broken. I had to do a scene walking across a blistering hot pavement. And in between each take I was hopping from foot to foot to the amusement of the crew. But one of my top moments was that of the ‘poisoned food’.

Two of us clothed ladies were to stand around a table filled with food and feed it to one of the cartel members. One of the crew members came to us and asked if we were comfortable with our assignment and as he was leaving said nonchalantly: “And by the way, the food is poisoned”. We rehearsed the scene, and the cartel member we were acting with took a bite of some of the food placed all around us. One of the female crew members walked up to us:

“Guys, don’t eat the food it’s been sprayed with insecticide.  We have to do it so flies don’t sit on the food during takes. We usually have sings up”

They guy from earlier chipped in: “I told you it was poisoned”

International Pool-Side-Ho

I have, so far, had an interesting progression in the types of roles I have done for camera. I started out as a baker, with almost no makeup on and piece of linen on my head. I then played a stripper, progressed to a Vegas Showgirl, and most recently in January I portrayed a ‘Classy Hooker’. I would have called it a pool-side-ho, but we’ll get there shortly.

Two days before going on set, I received a phone call from my agent. From my photograph I had been chosen to do some work for a British action series which is being shot in South Africa. Now I know my dad watches the series, but that is about as much as I knew going in. I was of course interested in working with a British director. As a South African actress the word 'International' make your eyes sparkle and your mouth drool. When I received the confirmation email I saw that my character would be a ‘Classy Hooker’. I called my mom. “Well, if you’ve ever thought you’re not sexy enough, you now have your answer” was her response. Earlier last year when I was cast as stripper I made it abundantly clear to my agent that I was not prepared to do nudity, so at least I was sure of what was required of me in that sense.

Our spectacular location

So GPS in hand off I went for my two day shoot, on one of the worst roads I had ever driven on. Upon arriving on set I immediately headed off to the makeup ladies. They always know in which direction to send one. I did realise that there were almost no other women on set either. Slightly early, I was the first of the girls for the day to arrive, and as I signed in by the appropriate people I was handed a cerise pink card saying ‘Classy Hooker’ as a form of identification. As I queued three other girls arrived, with bleached hear tight t-shirts and tiny shorts. In retrospect this should have been my first clue. The three ladies were handed yellow cards that said ‘Hooker’. I assumed that we would be working together, and they were really friendly so I introduced myself and had lunch with them. A little while later I noticed another dark haired lady who had come while we were eating lunch. She had the most spectacular tattoos and a cerise pink card. Another dark haired lady arrived and the six of us, three cerise pink cards and three yellow cards were herded into makeup. We were divided between the makeup artists, and the false lashes were divided between us. One the ladies in charge came over with a ‘Look Book’ for us, as we were to we were to be Columbian hookers. Curlers were put into my already curly hair, and I was based, powdered, painted, lined and glued into place. I was moved into the main trailer for the finishing touches on my hair. The head of makeup grabbed me and looked at the girl seated on the swivelling high chair next to me. You could read the unimpressed look on her face as her hear was teased. The head of makeup laughed: 

“Honey we are not doing what you would choose to do. In fact, if you chose to do this I would be forced to stop you”

This broke the ice, and I could help but laugh as my own hair was teased into a high pony tail, and my fringe was teased over to one side.

Only I can manage to play a hooker and not wear my
heels in any of the shots! 

I was one of the last girls to be finished and as I made my way to our trailer (YES THE SIX OF US HAD OUR OWN TRAILER) the wardrobe lady in charge of us followed me in. Most of the other girls already had their gowns on over their costumes. That is another thing I had learned on set. Always take a robe. Firstly, it tends to get cold on set sometimes, and generally you don’t have anything with you, so it’s good to have when it gets cold. Secondly, if you’re wearing a tiny costume, and you have to walk past mostly male crews it’s nice to have the option to cover yourself.

I was put into a pair of tiny silver denim shorts, which I was just thankful I fit into, and one of the shiniest metallic tops with an open back I had ever seen. I was given a pair of colourful stiletto heels, given large gawdy jewellery and a rather cute pair of aviator sunglasses. We sat around in our trailer until we had to set to start the real work.

Now, at this point, as an actress all you have with you is what is going to be in frame, a cell phone you can usually hide in your costume somewhere and some of the other girls had their cigarettes with them. As we arrived someone from wardrobe, on set, would check if were completely camera ready. The wardrobe lady who had loved my top in the dimly lit and air-conditioned trailer realised the blinding and reflective potential of the shirt I was wearing in the sunlight and it was immediately decided that I had to change…post-haste as the director wanted to start shooting as quickly as possible. Abigail, who was the wardrobe lady in charge of us grabbed me by the arm and we went briskly into an out of the way empty room. 

“What underwear are you wearing?” As she had strapped me into my shirt I knew very well she didn’t mean my bra.

“Black boy cuts.”

“With a little bum cheek? Fantastic”

So as it turned out all she had with her was a black bikini top and a  bright pink crocheted dress. My underwear would be serving as my bikini bottoms. I had once proclaimed that I wouldn't do nude work, but underwear was completely fine. It seems that when you say these things you truly get tested. I was changed in a matter of minutes and in place to start rehearsing for the first shoot of the day.

The six of us were positioned around a pool with a river in the background. The cameras were ready. We had rehearsed our small action and knew what to do.

“OK ladies, robes off”

The three yellow carded girls were wearing only bikini bottoms…

Oh so Glamorous...

I seem to get two stock responses whenever I tell someone that I’m a drama student, or an actress: 1. Oh, are we going to see you on 7de Laan one day (A local South African soap opera) and 2. That’s so glamorous.

As a masters student with a deadline this week I did two things this weekend. I sang at a wedding and I worked on my Masters dissertation. In between breaks at the wedding I was sitting and working on my dissertation. One of the girls I was singing with on Saturday asked me what I was studying as I sat behind my books. Classic response number 2, and as I sat up into the early hours of the morning for the umpteenth time typing away behind my laptop I couldn’t help thinking again to myself, the life of a drama student is not really that glamorous.

And it’s not just about the hours I’ve spent on the floor of the library, or studying in the wings of a campus theatre with a flashlight while I was doing technical work for a show. Studying drama is hard work both intellectually and physically. We have all the demands of a theoretical course and then we have shows and practical work on top of that. Working barefoot a lot of the time for practical classes and in the theatres on campus the black paint on The Masker theatre stage would attach to the soles of our feet blackening them and the insides of our shoes. We called this phenomenon ‘Masker feet’ and the only way to rid yourself of the black soldered to your soles was to attack your feet with pumice while showering!

As a stage actress the glamour is definitely illusion.  The costumes, which were often too small from wardrobe because only anorexics can be actresses, are designed to look good on stage, not necessarily to feel good on you, and there’s nothing quite like wearing a period dress in the middle of summer under the scorching lights of the stage with your partner sweating on you! And as luck would have it, we would perform in the freezing cold Grahamstown in the heart of their icy winters barefoot and in dresses. During the evening shows our exhalations on stage would be visible as the vapour from our hot breaths would reach into the cold air around us.

I think it’s one of the reasons why once you’ve worked with someone on stage there’s a special bond, forged from suffering together, being tired together and laughing together. There are those moments you’ve shared on stage which are hysterical or frightening, and that no one else outside of your cast can understand. And let’s face it, once you’ve travelled together, eaten each other’s food, sweated on each other, spat on each other, and more often than not had to change in some weird small space with no privacy you can’t really get much closer.

I’ve rolled in people’s spit on stage, I’ve told a sweaty partner its ok they can lie on me. In physical theatre people have dropped me, stood on me and probably somewhere along the line I’ve been exposed to someone’s blood. I’ve been blown away by sand on set, and my toes have been misshapen from wear fishnet stockings for 17 hours a day. I’ve broken bones, and stage hands have carried me out the theatre in a mess of tears mascara and facepaint. And today I sit, dedicated to my profession in my pyjama boxer shorts with a sea of books across my living room floor. Yes, its glamorous!

Showgirls Coke Style!

A family friend knew that I was to be in an advertising campaign for Coke, that would be airing sometime this year. Last night a google search brought her to a little website: Coke Chase, and there she found the advert we had all been waiting for with baited breath, because according to the signed contracts, and for obvious reasons, we were not allowed to mention anything about the advert online. A phone call later, here it is! The first half of the advert we shot last year! I'm the girl on the right of the canon!

Seeing the advert online was strangely surreal. Sitting in my pajamas, and quite out of the blue was the culmination of a projected which has started in late August for me already, and earlier for the production team. Sitting on my couch I did however feel far removed from the girl in pink, rhinestones and glitter who was  on youtube. After letting all the other girls who were int he advert with me, the game was on!

Now, you can go online and vote for either the #CokeShowgirls, the #Badlanders or the #Cowboys at www.chasecoke.com! As a showgirl, my fellow glitter gals and I ask everyone who stumbles upon this site to go vote for the #CokeShowgirls to win, and if you’re desperate to rather see our footage that’s fine too! Just enjoy the game, and vote! If you’re in America, you can see the results of the vote during the Super Bowl. I will be watching on youtube and posting here on Monday!

May the best team win…

Hero Showgirls: Myself, Dunty La Trobe and Lindi Peters
Find more images of us as www.cokechase.com

To a resolute New Year!

The well wishing for new year has began already. Its all over facebook and twitter and cell phone messages. Positivity for a new beginning has flooded all forms of communication, and we wish strangers who we see “Happy New Year”.

I think after an entire year we all need it. We need to start the new year on a good note. A positive. Note. A determined note. Whether you are determined not to let the tragedies and hardships of the year transpired follow you into yet another year. Or whether you want to bring the good things with you into the new year we all determined, today, to make it a happy new year. We all know that by the time the weekend rolls around we will have broken some of those well-meant new year’s resolutions, or by tomorrow we’ll be making, probably the most frequently made resolution on New Years Day: I’m never drinking again!

As for me, I’ve started preparing for a good new year. I’m planning websites, patiently battling the errors in the personalized email I’m trying to set up. I’m preparing for the songs I want to write. I’m planning the plays I want to write. I'm preparing for the shows I hope to do with schools (scribbeling in a notebook while sitting in the pool!). I’m dreaming about which theatres I’d like to work in and who I’d like to work with. And I too am setting goals for the new year. And its exciting. And while we are making plans for the new year I like to look back.

A year ago I had no commercial camera experience as an actress. A year ago two small plays entitled SUIKERBOSSIE and KNEES did not exist. I hadn’t performed in As Night Falls. I didn’t have a broken toe taking me into the new year, and I hadn’t set foot in Stagedoor before. I’ve met good, bad and odd people, and been to auditions. And if my car hadn’t been stolen in October I would be driving around in a new car today.

My perspectives have changed, my goals have changed. The way I look at myself has changed. And as we enter another I think we need to find that balance between growing, and still remaining true to ourselves.

Lastly, I’d like to thank everyone for following this blog this year. And I’m resolute that tomorrow we will have a new year. With new experiences, and repeating old mistakes. And, maybe just, I’ll make it!

The Audition Must Go On!

I have a history with hospital emergency rooms and performance. From the age of fifteen already. For my final physical theatre exam in my Third Year a friend of mine and I performed, what we still consider to be, a really good piece of choreography which the two of us co-created. On our second last performance of the said piece I broke my toe in the first minute or so of the choreography. As this happened without a noticeable fall, stumble or curse of any sort, and probably assuming the look of panic on my face was part of the performance, my partner carried on with the choreography, and so did I. For about another seven minutes. The moment I walked gracefully into the wing, and outside the eye line of the audience I let rip, I thin shocking some of the first year stage hands in the wings. A fireman lift from a stage hand down the stairs of the theatre, and a call to my boyfriend later I found myself in full costume, hair and makeup waiting to be x-rayed. That was two years ago.

Three weeks ago my friend, Mr Gopala Chetty and I were to perform, yet again, the said piece of choreography for a showcase at the institution we were both teaching at. Needless to say we removed the move that had broken my toe before. We were to perform on a cement floor, and the new, fancy wooden floor was to start construction the very next day. After our performance. Once again, in full costume, Mr Chetty and I rehearsed the piece for the performance later that day. I came down out of a lift, in a manner that I shall call, probably unnecessarily, not entirely ideal. Smashing the little toe of my left foot and the knuckles of three of my toes into the soon to be converted cement floor. The two of us watched my toe grow and turn a rather pretty shade of red. I limped back to our offices, determined to change before going back to the exact same emergency room, determined not to be in the exact same costume as two years before.

A doctor confirmed a piece of bone had broken clean off my now purple toe. I was slapped in a moonboot, given enough painkillers to tranquilize an elephant (which bruised my ego slightly) and was told to wear my air-cast for 6 weeks.

Now a week before this incident I received notification for an audition for a musical that was to take place less than a week after my mishap. A musical I really wanted to partake in. My audition slot had already been booked, my backtrack had already been downloaded and my monologue rehearsed when gravity and I collided in a mash of bone and cement. I wasn’t going to take this sitting down. Well, metaphorically anyway. I arrived at my audition, looking the part if you could ignore the large grey moonboot on my foot and the set of crutches which allowed me to move ungracefully from chair to chair. I had also bitten the inside of my cheek open in the fall, and was on antibiotics.

As fate would cruelly have it, the entrance had a particularly high stair, which I had to take in full view of the panel. I lurched down the stairs, smiling as apologetically as my slightly swollen cheek would allow and started my story. I told the panel of my recent injury, but that I was propped up, medicated and there to audition. As the audition was also supposed to consist of a dancing piece, I told the panel that I would understand if they didn’t want me to audition for them, but that I was there none the less, and hopefully my CV would speak for itself considering my dancing skill. Ironically, the aspect of my audition I would be the least worried about. I was commended for my bravery, or perhaps my stupidity by the panel, and was allowed to audition. I sang my song and performed my monologue, under direction of the panel in three different accents, including German, Russian and American. The audition had gone well, they were astounded at how good my American accent was, and I was thanked, strangely sincerely for once, for coming in to audition despite my rather recent injury. After tackling the large stair back up again I was out. My first handicapped audition completed.

Teach

For the past two months I have been lecturing drama at a tertiary institution in Johannesburg filling in for the head of department who was off to do a play. When lecturing, even though I lecture in the arts I nonetheless believe in punctuality, and generally showing up for class and handing in assignments. Preferably they day that they are due. Now I imagine the teething process when being transferred to a whole new way of doing things, and a new lecturer for students can at times be jarring.

From my experience teaching acrobatics to little children, kids attempt to push you as far as they can in the beginning, to find out just exactly how far you can be pushed. Test your boundaries to see just to see where exactly the law is laid down. The teething process with drama students required a re-examination of the term ‘boundaries’.

In my first acting class with the students I prepared various exercises for them to do, to make the class slightly more relaxed, and to allow me to see exactly what level they were on. I also desired to create an atmosphere which would foster fantastic collaborative work, and challenge the students as actors. The first student took her shirt off, without reason and entirely unmotivated considering the context of the scene. The next group had some rather explicit sexual references. So much for the atmosphere.

The next day I did improvisations with a group of students. During one of the sessions two of the students were doing some really good work, but work which might be compromising for them if taken out of the context of the classroom. One of the students started recording them on her cellphone. I told her to put the phone away. I was ignored. I then placed my hand in from of her phone and when she wouldn't relinquish I took it out of her hand for the remainder of the scene. At the end of the session I had to explain to the students the importance of acting class being a safe space for experimentation. And two weeks later my car was stolen off campus.

I have found, among other things, that teaching is not exactly my passion. I also realized that while teaching I learned a lot about my craft from a different perspective. I also learned that as a teacher you had better have you P’s and Q’s together. In fact you had better have the entire alphabet at the ready. Because students can be reckless.

A large number of my students did not show up for my classes. And as they did not deem it worth the trouble to either see me, or to find out from their peers if there was anything they needed to do for class. So when the absentee student missed an important deadline I wasn't surprised. I was surprised however when a group of students decided to yell at me because they missed the deadline because they weren't in class. The formal complaint against me might have been upsetting, if they hadn't actually accidentally admitted their guilt in the complaint.