Is everything an ACT?!?

But that question is besides the point of todays post anyway.

We will leave philosophising for another day and instead we shall regale you with tales of my escapades as an actor.

The first serious foray into acting was when I said “Why not?” to an offer given by John, an older proffesor during my brief foray into the adventure that are the Anglo-American studies at Prague´s Philosophy Faculty of Charles University.

Every year, he puts on a play with students.

One of Shakeapears. In English. And this year was the time for Hamlet.

Oh boy.

If I were not given the role of Rosencrantz, I am certain I would´ve failed everyone else, but fortunately, that guy doesn´t have too many lines compared to the others.

I am not great at memorization. I still can barely comprehend how the actor playing the king was able to remember the pages upon pages of text.

Well, the distinct repetition in his cadence at the end of each line gave away some of the wizardry, but one could hardly blame him.

I tend to not really notice the audience when I am on stage, since I am focused on my performance and the stage forms a kind of a distinct space at that time, disconnected from the world.

It was a grand old time and the whole escapade is stuck in my memory as remarkably smooth. Probably cause that cool Englishman has been doing these things for years at that point.

A complete opposite of the next production I took a part in.

That one started with a march and a demonstration organized by the Czech Pirate Party to oppose some regulation on the freedom of the internet.

I met there a guy and buddy from one of the schools I went to and he mentioned a musical he started to rehearse.

Since I´ve been getting into musicals at that point after listening to Hamilton, that idea intrigued me.

That musical was called Birds, Birds, Birds and was an original creation of Petra, who we became friends with.

We have rehearsed that musical for about 2 years. It was written as we went about it, getting together sometimes at Petras home, sometimes at a dance studio and in the end we have reherarsed in a newly created underground meditation retreat space that one of the actors helped open.

It was a teenage lovestory with the main character going a bit crazy and having halucinations of a raven tulpa, but otherwise mostly straightforward.

There I discovered the downsides of working with too smart and a bit autistic (in many different ways) people.

Petra was overthinking every aspect of her writing and taking a long time to deliver (she ended up getting help from a co-writer).

Another guy was too chill about things andoften forgot what should be done, despite trying to be helpful all the time.

Yet another guy had to have everything explained thoroughly and often had strange, particular demands that he blamed on his mental health.

And then there was the girl who studied psychology. And constantly tried to motivate everone with her analyses.

Despite me mostly having fun, we barely made it to the premiere, running on fumes.

There was only one showing, and that was it.

After all, Petra wrote it because of her own relationship hangups, and she got over those so thoroughly during the musicals creation, that in the end, her work kept only dredging up memories that were better forgotten.

Then came a musical stemming out of a series of workshop ran by Terka, who was part of a particularly succesful American high school musical troupe (they had shows for people outside the school).

She usually did teach kids, and it showed, since the musical we did was made from different parts of her musicals she did with children, and was thus about problems in school.

However, that did not mean I did not enjoy it. In fact, the exact opposite.

Since one of our female members fell out suddenly, there was a need for a replacement of the main villain.

A new kid in school, a rich manipulative bitch with a great song how her daddy can buy her a car if she wanted (at, like 14 or so). A real Murrlogic waifu, that one.

And that was the first time I crossdressed.

And I loved it.

It was again just one show.

But through it, I met some very lovely people that I visit for boardgames every now an then and twice for New Years Eve since.

Doing things together with those people have forever elevated them to the status of Friends, and no amount of self doubt and rational reflection will ever be able to knock them back to I Desperately Want Them To Be Friends But Realistically We Are Probably Just Acquiantances If I´m Really Being Honest With Myself status.

And that feeling warms my heart.

There have been a couple of teenage movies that we shot in our Opus Dei club, but most of them got lost in postproduction hell and out of those that ended up getting made I do not remember much anyways. Same with that one movie we shot in school.

I have been an extra a couple times as well. I remember doing a day on the set of Psychopompos, a student Lovecraftian horror film that was shot in 3D.

With an actual big boy film camera that took forever to focus.

Never actually seen that movie, it requiring a 3D cinema to be experienced fully. It was my first encounter with professional filming and how long it takes.

There were a couple times where I starred in videos made by our CZ/SK Bronies fandom.

The ones that come to mind are those made by Televize Honzdir . They are in Czech and comprise mostly of fandom in-jokes, but if you ever manage to understand them (a considerable feat), you will find them hilarious. I promise.

They were mostly made for screening at our brony line during some Czech cons.

And, at the bottom of the post, the most promising achievement of my acting career.

I starred as a hobbit in a movie.

That is, as Valík, one of the main trio of characters in the yet unreleased Lord of the Rings fanfilm, Stíny Kraje (Shadows of the Shire) .

How did I do it, you ask? (Sorry for being presumptuous.)

Well, first, I had to have all those random previous chops behind me.

Than I had to make friends with a girl I met at a weekend meetup of Czech and Slovak LARP creators and organizers.

She is an actual actress and an organizer of Harry Potter LARPs and an overall cool, wacky Moravian.

When the movie lost an actor that was supposed to play my role, she (as the actress of the films main character) suggested me as a replacement.

The pub meetup with the director was more serious than I expected, but, I do have a very hobbity stature, if I may say so myself, and I believe that was what carried me through.

The movie was shot over the course of two summers during weekends in the Orlické Mountains, where the cameraman built sets of hobbit houses on a hill next to his parents house.

It was a semi proffesional production, with rented filming (a Red camera) and lighting equipment paid for from 2 crowdfunding campaigns from a Czech Kickstarter variant, Startovač, and the rest being unpaid, with cooking and lodging provided by the cameramans parents (bless their souls).

I can´t wait for the full thing to come out. I believe it is going to be something truly special.

Unless I ruined it.