Acting: there's no day off

            Cinema is my passion and I take every chance to collaborate in short films and independent projects. Casting Call Pro is so far the website where I see more opportunities for short films, one of which I’ve had the chance to audition for. This chance was completely unexpected. I had decided to take the day off,  not to think about auditions, plays, things I have to read or others I have to research, practicing this or that.  That’s a problem when you’re self-employed. People might think that you’re lucky to have all the time in the world in your hands, but what happens is that you end up not stopping or taking a proper break, like everyone does: relaxing on Sundays and simply stretching on the sofa after dinner. I love what I do, I love acting but then I have lunch in front of the pc or if I decide to take a break, sometimes I feel my body can be there, shopping, seated in a cafe, walking in the park, watching some rubbish stuff on the telly, on YouTube, but I am just pretending to be relaxed, because deep inside my head is somewhere else. I try to remember those acting exercises, where the objective is to be completely present, feel your feet on the ground and clean my mind of ideas, dreams, to-do-lists, it’s f***ing hard, but I really try and I tried that on my day off. I needed urgently a pair of boots, so that was my excuse to give myself a break. I could be more imaginative, because trying to find a pair of shoes in Oxford Circus, on a weekend, in December, when Christmas is right on the corner, proved not an ideal scenario for a relaxing day. Well, I found a pair of boots, I tried a few more things that I really liked (just to suffer a bit, because I couldn’t really buy them) and as I was leaving the store I received this message on my mailbox “Here you have a script for your audition tomorrow”.  I was extremely happy because it’s a short film that I really wanted to do. When I read the character description, I immediately thought “I want to do this so badly” and I just headed back home to fix the scene and explore its multiple choices.  I was so happy that I found that working in what I am passionate about relaxes more than any other thing, especially queuing 15 minutes to pay for the boots. I remember one quote that I read somewhere and it’s something like this “find something that you love to do and you won’t have work anymore in your life!”; Off course that you always have to work hard, but everything is so much easier when you are motivated, when you have drive to do something. I don’t think I got the part otherwise I would have gotten a recall already but the audition was great fun. I repeated the scene lots of times; I received lots of direction and alternatives to play it. At one point I just forgot that I was auditioning because I was just enjoying so much talking about the scene and the character. There’s a great auditioning book that I follow and which helps me a lot exploring scenes: Audition: everything an actor needs to know to get the part, by Michael Shurtleff. I can definitely explore some topics of this book in other posts. It has been a great insight for me and I will be really happy to share my discoveries with everyone.