One Month In
Posted by Anne Adams on 3/27/2008
We are almost a month into Carter’s Way and it has been wonderful. As well as humbling, at times tough, scary, but most of all…wonderful. Eunice is a hard part for me sometimes. I love her, I believe in her, but sometimes when I want her to be so much more than just the “white girl who messes everything up,” as one audience member referred to me, I can get frustrated. As an actor, naturally you want to do the playwright’s play justice, but I would be lying if I thought that happened every night. Eight shows a week and all you want to do is knock it out of the park, but sometimes unfortunately that just doesn’t happen. On my last blog one audience member informed me that I didn’t understand the character at all and that she was disappointed in my performance. I was extremely insecure for days after I read that, but then I realized – this is the business, Anne! This is what happens when people come to see any form of art, they naturally and rightfully judge it. And you are never going to please everybody. So now I am in the process of trying to learn how not to get down on myself, and instead let “critiques” fuel my fire…to try harder and harder every performance to reach the audience. To tell the story with strength and integrity.
When you learn a lesson like that – and you’re surrounded by amazing, strong actors such as K. Todd Freeman, Ora Jones and James Meredith (to name a few) — it is impossible not to feel more empowered. To feel like you have become a stronger person. It is a blessing.
March 31st, 2008 at 10:21 am
Just want to say that I’m rooting for you, Anne. I haven’t seen Carter’s Way yet, but every role I’ve ever seen you play has been incredible. You are a gift to the theatre community in a lot of ways, but above all you are an incredibly talented, compelling and brave performer.
And now, a quote about the artist’s life, from my ol’ friend, Rilke:
“…all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be pressed or hurried by anything. Everything is gestation and then bringing forth. To let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s own intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity: that alone is living the artist’s life: in understanding as in creating. There is here no measuring with time, no year matters, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come no summer. It does come. But it comes only to the patient, who are there as though eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly still and wide. I learn it daily, learn it with pain to which I am grateful: patience is everything!”
Which reminds me of a little something our mutual ol’ friend, Mark Cohen, once told me: “Darling, try and forgive yourself for not being the actor you’ll be ten years from now.”
All my love to you, Anne! I think you’re fantastic. (And very, VERY pretty.)
October 21st, 2010 at 4:18 am
There is here no measuring with time, no year matters, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come no summer. It does come. But it comes only to the patient, ugg boots uk who are there as though eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly still and wide. I learn it daily, learn it with pain to which I am grateful: patience is everything!”