On Being Yente

I cried over my lines in the shower this morning. No concerns. It was a good kind of cry.

I'm really worried about my performance right now. See, I'm on vacation--right smack dab in the middle of the rehearsals, I had a vacation planned. I'm so worried about this...that everyone in the show is getting better and better (yesssss, I have a typical actor's ego....), while I'm just 'staying in one place' in my part, my character development, and so forth. I'm worried that I won't shine the way I want to.

I'm particularly having trouble with my second act speeches. Yente just blathers on and on, rarely waits for people to comment or ask questions...she has long speeches. And the Eastern European way of forming sentences--real 'Yoda-like'. :-) I'm worried that in my nervousness to learn them and recite them, I'll just rattle through them with no 'acted' character at all.

The last monologue is the one I'm working on now, where she tells Golde what she's going to do since she and all the other Jews have to leave Anatevka. She tells Golde that she's going to the Holy Land to be a matchmaker. I heard myself delivering the lines, and suddenly, she was really me, telling someone (Dennis, Stan...) about some big new idea I had. And Yente became Chris and Chris became Yente, in that moment. And that small epiphany made me cry.

Yay.