Hey William. Hope things are going well in the world of acting etc etc.

I'm a fairly young guy, studying A Level Drama (just before University) here in the UK. I was wandering if you could give me some good advice for me to aspire to.

Cheers

Curdy

try it now, while you're young. there's always time to try something else later, and you won't be cursed with wondering, 'what if?'
practice and rehearse. a lot.
be yourself.
write notes for your oscar speech so you don't repeat yourself and forget to thank me.

Thanks for the reply, its just what i needed to hear. A lot of the time i get directors trying to snuff out 'me' in my characters, they tell me toi stop being 'me' and it does annoy me but i always thought that they were always in the right, but now i shall take a different point of view into account.

Thanks again

Curdy

Creating an absolute principle of who's you and who's the character quickly becomes tricky. If you're just Curdy in every role, it might be argued you're not adapting enough to each character. On the other hand, characters on the page are just words, so you must bring your own physicality and emotions to them. So Kean's Hamlet and Olivier's Hamlet are the same character but differently played.

Yeah I definitley agree, the play that i'm currently in, which is in fairly early production stages, ie- learning lines, is a play entitiled 'Too much punch for Judy'. There are only 5 of us altogether in the play, and there are around 9 characters, so some of us have to double up, which i am really enjoying so far as my 2 characters are completley different, so it is challenging but really great fun to do. One of my characters is an extremley emotional police officer who goes through a lot of upsetting times and quite frankly he doesn't know quite how to handle it despite the eyars of experience he has had, and the other character is a very young, fairly immature bloke whos thinks the world revolves around him etc etc. So its really great fun to do, having a little trouble with the highly emotional scenes but they are coming. Thanks again for the inspiration, and its really good that you have pointed it out to me that the way i play the characters is my own interpretation. And if you are in England at all around May 2006 and don't have a busy scheldule you would more than welcome to come and see the play.

Thanks again

Curdy

thanks for the offer, curdy. if i'm over the pond, i'll holler.
give yourself time with the emotional scenes. 1) you're a guy, 2) you're young, and 3) emotional expression is a skill like other acting skills, and it takes time to develop.