Memory of the week.

When I was in year 9 my mum signed me up for acting classes. I had no actual interest in the dramatic arts at all - I suppose I was good at public speaking, but the thought of being thrown into a group of self-obsessed idiots all competing for the roles of lead caveman and woman in a pre-historic adaptation of Romeo and Juliet pretty much horrified me consistently throughout my adolescence. I think she signed me up because I was shy and needed not to be, although the reasoning isn't entirely clear eight or so years down the track. Maybe my parents just wanted me to be famous so I could look after them in their old-age. 

Needless to say I did not enjoy acting class. They made us do activities like staring into the eyes of a random partner non-stop for a whole minute and making videos to our "future selves" with messages of encouragement and inspiration. They went on a lot about individuality, celebrating being "you" and wanted to know an awful lot about us in order to make us feel special and included.

The thing I found really weird about the classes, therefore, was that we all had to wear the same ugly embroidered polo shirt every week. I didn't take this too seriously at first, so one week I showed up wearing my "Big Red Bus" London t-shirt instead. Apparently my surly, non-joiner attitude coupled with a blatant refusal to conform to hideous shirt-wearing was too much for my perky acting coach, who proceeded to approach me and ask if I was "okay." 

As I looked into her face up close for the first time, I remember thinking how different she looked than the way she presented herself to everyone. There were lines around her eyes that made her appear much older than she did from afar, and she wore a searching, almost desperate expression on her face as if she really believed that she could change my life by singling me out in acting class and asking me what was wrong. I wondered in that moment how much effort it took every day to be this person. I wondered if anyone really knew her. I wondered what she'd had for breakfast this morning. She seemed like the kind of person who didn't like to be alone. 

I watched my "past self" video a few years later. Fourteen-year-old me looked nervous, lost and weird. I talked about stupid things like hoping my future self was taller than I was then. There was nothing really indicative of who I was at the time in the video at all, except perhaps the fact that I was wearing a pair of giant purple rave pants. I was trying so hard to complete a task that I did not want to do, in front of people who thought it was the best idea ever, that I ended up sounding like a watered down version of one of them. I was unable to fully commit to inspiring and encouraging my future self and saying shit like "I hope you're following your dreams and going to lots of auditions and not worrying about what the haters say," but equally unable to say what I really wanted to say, which was probably something like "I hope you're not going to this fucking acting class anymore you idiot, what on earth were you thinking?"