Day 4 -- Thursday, February 11

The penultimate day on a sitcom is usually the least eventful. It most often consists of camera-blocking all day and then a run-through for producers at the end. That was our schedule today and when I arrived this morning, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Why, then, did I leave the set in a horrible mood eight hours later?

One problem is that no one really has much invested in the show any more. It's not returning next season and they only have a handful of shows left to shoot. As Nikki Cox put it, it's sort of senior year and all the grades have been turned in and everyone's getting very restless. Now, that's been the case all week and I've been totally fine with it. The energy level and focus are pretty low during rehearsals, but it seems like the kind of show where that doesn't really hurt too much. In fact it may even help. When the point of your program is to put the lead in as tiny an outfit as possible, how crucial can it be to do your Meisner warm-ups before rehearsal?

And so all week it's been kind of fun and light. But today it was different. I think I felt like I was getting notes to try to improve my performance but I wasn't in an environment where I could pull that off. So then I felt bad that I couldn't follow through on the director's suggestions and it made me uneasy. I don't like to be perceived as either not caring enough or not being talented enough to take notes and improve my performance.

Now, it's possible no one noticed any of this but me. In fact, it's probable. But still, my lines are not that funny and I have the natural tendency to blame my performance and/or delivery for that. Add to that that I'm not sure I'm doing everything the director wants. That's when I panic and start assuming that people think I'm not doing a good job.

Anyway, that's the bottom line. I feared that people would think I wasn't being a good actor. So I left the set a little down. Maybe it's just too hard to stay up all week when you're working on a "senior year" sitcom. It's a good learning experience and I imagine everything will be better tomorrow.

Go on to Day 5

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