acting – Stefanie Moore

Monologue Mayhem – Part Deux

So I’m trying to write more monologues at the moment for no apparent reason other than the world is tough and it can be hard to commit to something longer. Here’s one, anyway, called Mudslides.

Cassie (mid 20s) is sitting on the sofa with a remote control in her hand.

Cassie: I got stuck in a mudslide once. Yeah. El Salvador. I turned around and this .. just this wave of shit was cascading down the road. Anyhow – I mean I was wasted – but I did manage to scrabble away and then I lay down and I looked up at this big scab of a sky and I thought …

I’m going to write a blog post about this…

And I did. It was called ‘Live It’ and it was about the mudslide and how exhilarating and rare these near death moments are.

I mean – I lost a flip flop that day, not my house. But still – 3257 likes in two days – that says as much about you as it does me. So I kept pumping it out and then I got my first deal – posing with vegan running shoes, then cork yoga mats, an an organic lip filler. All in six months.

And it means that 2 years later I’m now, well I was, the kind of woman who leaves her flat in the morning to go to another house that isn’t mine that has a beautiful bottle green kitchen so that I can pose holding a griddle pan like a newborn, extolling the powers of apple cider vinegar. Or in down dog explaining the wellness of breath. I tell nearly 1 million people how to be almost as good as me.

So you’re thinking that’s it then, the mudslide, that’s the moment that changed her, smug get.

Nope.

The mudslide made me, but it didn’t change me. I was already a smug get.

The moment that changed me came about ten days ago. I’m standing in the garden of the hired house dressed in a white linen smock and I’m talking to the camera.

Talking about tea tree oil. And how fulfilling it is to grow tea tree plants and then use them to distill your own oil and then to use this oil to tackle cellulite.

Now this, this is when I snapped to. I could hear myself telling people to grow a plant, a beautiful and complex thing, in order to destroy it, in order to rub it on their own arse cheeks, just so that they could be their ‘best selves’ and by best I was definitely implying their thinnest, no question. And all the time the planet was shifting beneath me and there were probably mudslides going on somewhere so I – yeah just like that – I stopped talking and went home and I haven’t been out since.

I’ve got through three series of Law and Order since then. Hashtag proud. And the only post I’m interested in getting is the leaflets from pizza places or … no. That is the only post I’m interested in getting.

There’s 20 seasons of Law and Order to watch. In yesterday’s tracksuit. And let’s face it – no-one’s life is worse for me not telling them about tea tree oil and arse cheeks, is it?

Steve Brookstein

This here’s a monologue that I wrote for Up ‘Ere Productions and their Talking Heads Programme. It’s called Steve Brookstein. Have at it, dudes.

Steve Brookstein

Caroline (mid-late 30s, in a relatively formal outfit, is peering off stage through some long curtains, watching someone out of view with some anxiety.)

(With forced brightness) Oo – now then, hello – I’d rather you didn’t fiddle with the delphiniums (pauses for his response) Well- if they’re looking a bit crispy swivel them round. Okay?

(She returns to the room, the brightness falls. She starts gloomily applying make up. Stops)

They sent a boy over. From Hull. Bruce said he’s doing the course, the same one that I did. Doing the course I did, I thought, that’s an odd choice, for a boy from Hull. ‘We thought you might need some help’ said Bruce and and then he sort of wrinkled his eyes up. ‘This one’s tough for everybody at Restful Souls.’ He said.

He shouldn’t wear that brown leather jacket, not in this weather. It only enhances his bullishness. I opened my mouth to fire back but then I thought leave it Caroline, when a man wrinkles his eyes up like that he thinks he’s being sensitive and you won’t dissuade him otherwise.

Bruce is very huggy (and it’s too much in brown leather!). I’m convinced it was him who’d stashed the vintage pic of Linda Lusardi in amongst the coffee filters . I didn’t know people still did paper porn. I think it’s a predilection. And I could tell from the way he called us together afterwards in the staff car park to denounce the objectification of women, that it cut a little too close to home. The only red face was his.

You know, I can see feelings. I’m an empath. I empathacise every day. Maybe that’s why I got the ‘calling.’

If this is a calling. Can it be a calling if you had to print off your own certificate?

My sister thought I was absolutely fruitcake. Caroline, you’re the number three children’s entertainer this side of the county line and a balloon artist of note and you’re going to give it all up? All that time working your way up the google rankings to commit career death? She was fraught that day, off the back of a slew of IKEA runs, but still, too abrupt.

She’s not an empath.

(Looks at herself in the mirror. Then she goes back to curtains. Peeks out.)

Pardon? No. I’m fine. If you’re at a loose end though, could you defuzz the chair fabric? What? (Pause for response) Well, you wrap some cellotape, there’s some in the first aid box, I don’t know why, wrap it around your hand, no, sticky side out and (does the gesture) lift it off. Yes, just like that, fantastic.

(She keeps her smile as she returns to us, gives us a knowing look regarding the boy from Hull. She starts to do some vocal exercises. Stops.)

The bereaved are terrible at providing detail. ‘She was a good mum’ – could Jerry Seinfield do anything with that? Unlikely. No. It’s only when you get to look beyond the digestives that you find the real dirt. I miss a good home visit. Douglas was a sponge. He’d be next to me on the sofa – by god he had a knack for this – and he would wait till they were up and at the tea tray and then he’d whisper in my ear ‘There’s hiking boots in the hall’ or ‘Michael Buble – DVD – mantlepiece – 2’oclock’ and then we’d start again – ‘was your wife a keen rambler? A light jazz fan?’ and they’d be off – telling us about the time that she’d passed out on the 3 peaks challenge, or when she’d almost touched Jamie Cullum’s shirt cuff.

Because think about it: I’m charged with writing the big finish, tying a whole life up in a sparkly gift bow, for a person that I’ve never even met. The only way I can do it is with specifics, that’s the stuff that pushes them over the edge. All those mourners – close family, old friends, members of your amateur dramatic society – are brought together for one day to sweat it out, flop it on the floor and leave it behind for Nadia to sweep up along with the shredded Kleenex. If they leave in bits, I’ve done my job.

( Through curtains to Boy)

What was that? (Pause for response) Well if they’re saying they haven’t got the passcode, they’re leaving it a bit late. Get them to look at their spam.

(She returns, starts checking teeth)

You know , I had an email from a woman the other day, asking whether her son would be ‘prepared’ by robots. Imagine that! Weird sinewy metal arms cradling your head, washing your ankles, buttoning up your party shirt. I told her no, of course not. It was still Keith and Sheila, fabulous couple, and they did it with the same love and care as before, just with two pairs of latex gloves on rather than one.

2020. (she shrugs).

(She pauses thinking about the ceremony ahead, Her mood has changed)

The first time I stepped out into that empty room was awful. Awful. I said the words, but I didn’t ‘give’ them. I should have said ‘sorry Andrea, you didn’t get the best from me today’ but by that time, she’d disappeared behind the curtain and what good is an apology to a box on fire?

Two days later, I’m standing ‘in the wings’ if you like. And Douglas sidles up to me. He had this way of creeping up so you wouldn’t know he was there until he was practically on you, remarkable, I’ve only ever experienced it before with a black alsation in my local park and a street mime, once, in Bury St Edmunds. No malice, just a quiet mover. Anyhow, he’d wiped around the catalfaque, opened up the Zoom room, put the music on. Ave Maria. You know that they’re not a real music lover if they go for Ave Maria. It says virtually nothing about the person in question. I imagine them lying in the coffin when that comes on, thinking, why this? Avoid. Just my advice.

Anyhow Douglas says to me, how are you feeling? And I say ‘I feel like …’ and he says ‘Steve Brookstein?’. And I look at him – because he’s absolutely right. I feel like Steve Brookstein. I feel like the man who won the first season of X Factor, bagged himself a number one and then just – fell away.. I feel like a man who had it all, a man who is standing, in that moment of iffy behind the curtains, knowing that he is about to perform with all his slick professionalism to an audience of stragglers on a P & O ferry.

Empathy. Guilty as charged.

Not that I have anything against Steve Brookstein. The industry’s very cruel, and he has a terrific voice. But what Douglas said that day was so right and wrong and funny, that it put a rocket up my jacksy. And I went out and really eulogised. I mean really eulogised.

After that, Steve Brookstein stuck. I think we dared not not say it if you know what I mean. Every time, Douglas would be out front, fingering the mousepad with a face like a newsreader, all business, and then he’d turn away and mouth it at me- Steve Brookstein. Or like this – ‘Steve Brookstein’ (does funny voice/face) . And it never failed!

(She takes a moment, suddenly upset.)

(Almost to herself, pulling herself together) I’ve got my notes, here. Ready. But. May be I should just go out there – just go out, put my hand on the coffin and sing it. (To the tune of Goldfinger) Steve Brookstein!

She thinks for a moment.

Douglas’ mum wouldn’t get it though, bless her. And the boy from Hull will probably report me. The bereaved of course, they want the greatest hits of Douglas – the scout leader, dutiful son, keen gardener. Who am I to deny them?

(Trying to be cheery, but struggling)

(One last time. Hopefully). Steve Brookstein. Steve Brookstein. Steve Brookstein.

(She looks crestfallen – it hasn’t shifted her mood. Ave Maria starts playing. She looks up, rolls her eyes. )

Oh no. (She starts to laugh)

Onwards.

(She heads out behind the curtain.)

Angel Meadows and Sleeping Lions

I lived in London for 11 years and depended on the tube for every single journey I made. Even now, I can plot a route across the capital in 30 seconds; I relish the challenge of finding the quickest route from A to B.

3 years into my Manchester residency (parp) and I still miss the speed and commonality of Tfl. My commute to work now feels like a portal into ‘Last of the Summer Wine’. Trains are slow and they smell, a mixture of pollen, scotch egg and urine. So I don’t leave the city centre much. I’ve become a little insular. But it turns out that it’s okay, because I only needed to walk 5 minutes from my flat to enter a world not dissimilar to how I imagine Hells Kitchen once was, a world of more than just spit and sawdust.

On Friday I went to see Angel Meadow, the inaugural project from HOME, delivered by the acclaimed ANU Productions. We were told to meet in a square on the other side of the Oldham Road and I guess, await further instructions. Curiosity piqued, I had a look online. One reviewer had found it too much and had to leave. Great. I’d had a jangly week at work and would take ‘too little’ over ‘too much’ any day. The pull of the sofa and a bland world cup tie between whosit and the other team was very strong.

Thank God I ignored this urge, because Angel Meadow was without doubt the finest bit of theatre that I have ever experienced. And I mean experienced in the most literal sense of the word.

Angel Meadow takes place in and around the Edinburgh Castle, a derelict pub which called time 10 years ago after a particularly nasty riot of Oldham and Wrexham fans. The Castle itself is slap bang in the middle of Ancoats, an area not unfamiliar with blood grudges. Ancoats is the home of the industrial revolution and subsequently home to some seriously messy gang wars between rival factions who moved there to work, notably Irish and Italian communities. Apparently the cast and creative team had arrived in Manchester without a space in mind and having discovered the castle, they moulded the piece from the lives and histories that the pub and surrounding area revealed to them; times when women believed in the devil and drank bleach for their sins, where men formed allegiances and rivalries at remarkable speed, where children were cheap and life was very fucking quick.

I’m not going to describe the show in detail, because I wouldn’t do it justice (I’ve wrestled with how to write this since seeing the performance 2 days ago) but also on the offchance that the company may perform it again, in which case I urge you to sell your least favourite body organ to procure a ticket. Truth be told, I couldn’t speak of the full experience if I wanted to, as I only caught a fragment of it. Each performance is for eight people at a time and we were picked off, reassembled and reformed many times over the course of an hour, but always made privy to performances of such heart-breaking conviction that it felt like a gift and a blessing to bear witness.

Angel Meadow is totally immersive I’ve seen companies like Punchdrunk and Shunt and never felt truly touched – how could I with 50 other people in the room? And then, for the inhibited amongst us, there’s always the nagging anxiety: ‘Don’t pick on me, please don’t single me out’. Involving the audience can be enthralling, but it isn’t the same as making them perform. When this happens, encounters become forced, uncomfortable and leave Sue the office manager feeling exposed, like she’s fallen short all at the same time. Angel Meadow avoided this by not turning us into performers, but by taking away the audience. We fell through the space in this funny old run-down pub, sometimes landing together, sometimes alone. I might grease up a boxer for a fight or have a chat in the kitchen about flowers. Either way it’s just me (and maybe one other) and the performer, no-one to mediate or judge. We were free to play.

And if this still sounds eggy and uncomfortable, it isn’t. The performers are so extraordinarily committed that you allow them to pull you through this sordid wormhole without resistance. You move from watching a play, to watching people, to being part of the group. The final event was delivered with such energy and conviction that I came out shaking. And I know that sounds like a shitty theatre critic thing to say, but I’m not wearing a top hat, I’m not arsed about the fourth wall and I don’t cry at soliloquies. I don’t care for a lot of the stuff that I’m supposed to, stuff that’s ‘groundbreaking’ and ‘ award-winning’. I’m a human being who thought she wanted to spend the night on the sofa and ended up having an earth-shattering experience in Angel Meadow.

Of broad oaks and little leaves

I know I’m not alone.

Last night, at approximately 6.37, it kicked in: the gut wrenching pangs of realising that the sweet taste of freedom has almost completely slid down the gullet towards the sour stomach pit of realisation.

I had work tomorrow. I had to get up. I had to interact with adults and children on a neverending pedastal of stress, each step made up of deadlines and demands. And emails, emails, emails. Like I said, I know I’m not alone in this feeling! But in the spirit of things, I decided to replace my otherwise Beckettian monologue of repeating ‘Do I have to go in tomorrow?’, and do some research on the dreaded sunday feeling, and how to resolve it.

Not for me the first few sites that I tuned into, who seemed to accept that work was something to be managed like a taciturn orca. I didn’t want to read about ‘Time management’ and Éffective strategies’. I wanted to be inspired. And somewhere, lodged on page three of my google endeavours, I came across some quotations from a man called Khalil Gibran, who wrote a book called The Prophet.

Granted, I haven’t read the book and I will misquote him, but the gist of his writing shed a new light on the Sunday feeling. He believes that work is essential and a joyful act at that. This is what he writes (with my commentary in italics):

Älways you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune (true that!). But I say to you that when you work you fulfil earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born (huh?). And in keeping yourself with labour, you are in truth loving life. And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret (hmmm….okay…..).”

Granted, I don’t know what life’s inmost secret is – hands up if you do, because I want a detailed powerpoint presentation on what that is. And I’m also not sure on how to achieve this state of bliss while trying to drill the three sentence types into my year 9’s heads on a wet and dreary afternoon, but it was a helpful perspective today. Instead of finding ways of managing work, to strap it down and hold it in place and hate the whole darn thing, to actually take a moment to appreciate the act of work, of all the myriad decisions that we make while working, of the processes that we adapt to and in so doing show an understanding of life. It made a difference today: I actually enjoyed a discussion with students about two poems that we were studying, rather than marshalling them towards the right answer. Instead of despising my commute, I enjoyed the chance to be still and see a new world emerging from the darkness. I felt prepared and ready.

The other point that he made resonated, and that was regarding work envy. At school, I didn’t really care what I wanted to be, I just wanted to be renowned for it. Since leaving school I’ve tried my hand at a variety of jobs, but they’ve always had the potential for fame nd glamour: I was an actor and then I worked in television and all the time I was focussed on how to become known in these circles. Looking back, I realise that my focus was wrong and maybe I should have enjoyed the work more rather than looking to be the next thing. (Or maybe stopped and realised how little I was enjoying my work and rung a few changes…). And now I’m a teacher and I sometimes think of the phrase ‘Those who can, do, those who can’t teach’. For a long time it has seemed like a failing in me, that I’ve ended up as a teacher, unlikely most days to even get a thank you from my students. This feels particularly galling when I turn on my television set and see any of my peers acting their little socks off in a primetime dramas, maybe even making a move on Hollywood, the big time. Would you like some salt with your wound, Madame?

What Khalil Gibran advises us to stay away from thinking about is of the status of particular jobs in relation to each other, but not to denounce them. When I see a compadre doing well in their chosen field, I should stop musing bitterly on their shelf life and how it will all end badly for them as a way of gaining temporary and illusory satisfaction, I should think on the joy inherent in my own work. The quote that I have been musing on today was something like this:

“Both the broad oak and the blade of grass feel the same sunshine’. This is not to suggest that my job as a teacher is any less signficant than being an actor (some would argue the opposite in fact), but that relative values don’t matter. If you are gaining joy and satisfaction from your job, it is the same feeling regardless of external recognition.

Unless your occupation is a serial killer. Or you are Rupert Murdoch.

I’m not normally one for spirtuality, but this struck me as sound advice, certainly more practical than other guides with their talk of ‘maximising business opportunities’ and ‘learning to succeed’. It’s certainly something that I will hold in my head until I finally learn to feel 100% grateful for what I have.

Are you there God? It’s me, Nefny

So, the Daily Prompt yesterday got me thinking .. what role does faith play in my life? A gut reaction is it doesn’t. I don’t really think about it. The only things that I put my faith in tend to be random uncaring objects and events (if I cross the road before the yellow car passes me, then I’ll get the job). Am I the only person who does this? Besides, I don’t even do this so often anymore. It’s an acting relic, gone but not forgotten.

Anyhow, I think yellow car syndrome belongs to the realm of superstition, hokum, old wives etc etc unless of course they miraculously work, in which case they become ‘a ritual’, like boxers doing their gloves up in a particular way or composers eating a specific brand of mint before they take to the stage. But this debases ritual, doesn’t it? Ritual is something mystic, informed perhaps, sacrosanct. I think people who say they have rituals ‘pre-performance’ actually have ‘habituals’ in the cold light of day. Bloody luvvies.

But before I disappear up my own behind entirely, let me ponder on my faith or lack of it. What do I have faith in? I’m baffled. It’s not a God. Okay, I called Him or Her or Them some pretty horrific names when dad died, but in truth I haven’t really done the legwork (churchgoing, meditating, observing) to use the Great Holy as a punching bag. Christmas is a purely food based event in my house.

Honestly, I envy people who have faith. They have a purpose. Without faith, what’s going on? I mean, what the hell is in my head all day long? I imagine that those who have faith carry it around with them like travel scrabble (but more intense and spiritual) in their heads and they can just dip into it when there’s nothing else going on. That’s why they’re so positive! So I can see why having faith is beneficial, although I don’t really know what the ‘faithful’ do when they have it. Suggestions on a postcard, please.

When I think about who or what I have faith in, the answer is more straightforward: my family. They never let me down, and I accept the barbed comments and snide looks as the penance I must do to bask in their reflected perfection. Otherwise, I have faith in the things that I love, but not always my ability to do them. So I guess that I don’t have a lot of faith in myself, which probably influences my ability to have faith in anything else, which in turn is probably a legacy of my ‘yellow car’ days. If you don’t believe in your talent to do the job, you have to lean on totems, don’t you?

Undoubtedly, if I had more faith in myself, rather than the travel scrabble in the sky, I would run faster, be published and have better hair. Because I’d put in the time and effort. It’s easier to sit on the sofa and think nasty thoughts about people who are doing the work, then do the work.

Do you ever write a post that comes so painfully close to the truth that as you write it, it feels like a hot potato in your throat? This was one. Back to the drawing board….

Moment carpet

I’m so behind I’m so behind I’m so behind. If I were one of my students, I’d bollock me right now. Oh look, I am bollocking me right now! Below is a response to a daily challenge from about a month ago, which I’ve only just got round to reconsidering. I found it quite cathartic, if a little self-indulgent (the best kind of blogging in my opinion). Let me know what you think.

I have a lousy memory. If there is a food based trigger, I’ll be fine; I’ll remember everything single detail of a meal from 1994, but ask me who or where I was, then, forget it (literally). So thinking about memories and moments that have changed the game is quite tricky. They have a habit of collapsing in on each other like dominoes. I find epiphanies genuinely difficult to isolate. For me, however, there is one moment which stands out when the synapses cleared and all those little patches of half thought and self doubt wove together to create one long carpet of moment. Carpet of moment is a good name for an easy listening album, as well. Double win!

Anyhow, here’s my moment carpet.

I’m about 25 and I live in London. I’m an actress – I went to drama school and have an agent and everything – but it’s not quite working as I’d hoped it would.

I was terrific at drama school and university and I have some great reviews under my belt. But lately, I’ve become embarrassed to mention what I do at parties and such because of the way that the conversation inevitably turns out.

“What do you do?”

“I’m an actress. I act”

“Aaahhhh (slight pause here, because they don’t want to appear nosey). What have you been in? Anything I’ve seen?”

“Mostly theatre. Which is great, because it’s what I want to do”

“Anything on telly? Been in anything good?”

“No, not really. Some student films, shorts, but ….”

And we settle into a shared moment carpet, woven from their disappointment and my own feelings of inadequacy and hatred for this pleb imbecile that doesn’t have the social skills to make me feel better about not getting a part in Eastenders.

You’d be amazed at how many times I sat on that bitter rug.

So I’ve felt like this for quite a long time by 25, but I don’t give up. I say it’s because I’m not a quitter and ‘it’s my dream’ like people on X factor do, but really it’s because I’m too scared and lazy to think of anything else to do.

Today, this day, is a big day. I have an audition for a two line part on a TV series that I have never seen and didn’t bother to watch in preparation. It’s a big deal. I have the script in my hand in an envelope and I’ve been told: “It’s a big deal.”

I have done some prep. I’ve been told that it’s for the part of a ‘rough chick’, so I don’t wash my hair and wear an old adidas tracksuit top. I’m secretly annoyed because I’ve lost an entire day’s pay at the call centre for two crappy lines in a series I don’t even watch. My brain compensates by telling me that my bad mood will make me extra spiky for the part and I protest against being here by not reading the script. Somehow I manage to reconcile these two polarised mindsets. For this, my friend, is what auditions do. They make you clinically insane.

I go in to the holding bay and it’s immediately obvious that I have never watched the series. “Rough chick” means footballer’s girlfriend in a biker jacket. Every other candidate looks better than I do on a night out. The room is full of leather jeans, stillettos and glossy heads, bent over their two line mantras, rehearsing with complete focus.

They all look like me. Better groomed but just like me; short, smiley, brunette, blue eyes. It’s like walking into a room of half-animated clone robots, lips twitching, eyes inwards. At first, I sense puke rising up my gullet and then the familiar fear that they’re all better than me.

And then something else. I look at the script in the envelope which I haven’t even opened yet and just looking at it makes me feel totally different.

The envelope is sealed. I don’t care about this job.

I don’t care about this job because I don’t care about acting anymore.

I don’t care about acting anymore because I don’t like how it makes me feel.

Boom! The moment carpet; the million disappointing auditions, unread letters, earnest headshots, fatuous courses, half baked fringe projects, rude directors of limited talent, fluffed accents, straightfaced bullshitting, just to get through the door. I don’t like it! I don’t have to like it! I go in for the audition. I don’t get the job. The next day, I quit my agent and do something else.

Years later with no regrets. Life is truly more creative now then when I was working as a ‘creative’ and is 100 times more fulfilling.

That TV series is still running, though, but I still haven’t watched it.