As I walked to the bus stop today, a certain song came on my mp3 player – Florence Vallieres’s “Bouge Pas”, and for whatever reason, I found my mind and body roiling with Iago’s seething anger at being betrayed, my breathing convulsing in waves, determination striking my eyes.
This then switched to Peter’s (from Romeo and Juliet) scared meekness, to Trigorin’s stance, to Lysander’s bravadoed strut, to The Wiz’s moral certainty, to Bottom’s wide apace, to Le Beau’s giddy toes, to the isolation of a creepy kid I played in grade nine, to Marvin Heemeyer’s smug sense of superiority… and it occurred to me…
Though I may not remember the words I spoke in each role, the individuals themselves whom I have portrayed, whom I have birthed in conjunction with the text, still breathe within me, still expand the borders of my personality. And for that, I am thankful. Grateful. And for that… I am filled with a desire to play every kind of strange and extreme individual, from the lovestruck to the broken, so that I can build a a more complete and wide-ranging me.
Pretending to be other people in order to expand myself.
Cheers,
Andrew Wade
Andrew Wade 