26.04.2016

My Art! My Love!

We do what we do for many different reasons. There are those who love the applause. And those who love the rush. Some just do it for the love of it. Some just like the fame. I act because if I don’t, I die. 
Yes, I do what I do to stay alive. My heartbeat is hidden in my love for my craft. My reverence towards it. My art, my craft is what keeps me going. Dramatic much? Why not? I am after all, a dramatist. 
There is a high an actor gets after a really good performance. One in which you dig and all of you comes to the scene. Deliveries so strong that the director is left too stunned to call “Cut!”. I love such 
moments and I love bringing them often. I take pride in my work and wouldn’t want to touch a script that doesn’t move me. In the same vein the day I pick up a script and fail to move an audience that’s likely to be the day I will step back and reconsider the acting thing. 
Sadly, I don’t always like it. Lately I find it hard to love it everyday. 
The environment I find myself having to work in is testing and mostly uncomfortable. We battle for the most basic of things. Dressing room facilities. Green rooms. Chairs. Umbrellas when filming in the sun or rain. Little things that could make the actor deliver better.
Little things that producers are increasingly deciding that actors can do without. 
We need to fix things in the industry so that actors who love acting as much as I do can continue to choose to act. The actor needs an environment that appreciates the magic they are paid to bring to the screen. The actor’s needs on a set need to be met in order for them to focus on the business of bringing their character to life. An executive at a channel has a fully kitted office. Desk, chair, computer etc. They get given each and every tool that their employer knows they need to deliver on their performance contract. Yet the same channel exec will collude with unscrupulous producers to make the actor’s environment less and less conducive for their work. South African actors keep the ugly end of the deal and yet it is their talent and hard work that keeps advertisers spending on television channels. The working conditions of actors in this country keep deteriorating at an alarming rate. Pretty soon a simple request for coffee will be regarded as a am impossible demand. There is a dangerous trend among producers and production people to paint their cast as demanding and problematic. The channel execs who are never on set to fully appreciate the pressures that the actor works under take the word of such producers and start to label actors as problematic divas who are impossible to deal with. I find myself wanting to educate so many channel people on the basic conditions of an actor’s working environment. This way the not so kind producers won’t have too much space to abuse actors while claiming that they are being impossible. Perhaps it is time we draw up such a charter for ourselves. A rule book on the basic things that 
are non negotiable for actors at work. We need to get organised and fix this thing. If we don’t we’ll lose many talented actors and all the industry will be left with will be famous faces with social network following and not much more to offer. I love my art. I honour my craft. I worry about where our industry is headed.
Fellow thespians… let’s unite and fix this game. It’s up to us.