As a teenager my hobby was acting. I loved the theater. Me and my brothers would have our own shows (no, not always that good. My oldest little brother, had the longest one man shows in the world in the basement at our grandparents place. They had a curtain dividing the biggest room in the basement, so we had our own stage. Fantastic. But the shows that the little four year old or what ever he was then put on were not always that good... Thing "Waiting for Godot" with out the irony and fun... And it is not that "Waiting for Godot" is the most fun. It is a good play but not fun. Far from it... Well, anyhow, we did our own plays and terrorised the family and the neighbours with it. Me and my friend were also often showing for our neighbour. How could she stand it??? But she did, even when the shows included singing and dancing which was not one of our greatest
talents... It must have been awful... On the other hand, perhaps a bit like when I was six or so and performing at my first and only (as far as I remember) gymnastics event. Dressed in blue dresses,
supposedly as smurfs. My mother laughed and laughed and laughed, because while the rest were busy looking coordinated and pretty I had my own little show, doing everything but dancing. A nightmare for any gymnastics leader with prestige. Interestingly enough I can't remember the show itself, but I remember practising for it. I was so jealous over the long silk bands that the older kids got to swing, it looked so pretty. Being a smurf didn't feel like my thing, it was below my dignity...
Also put up shows with my cousins on my mother's side as soon as we had a family gathering. But later on I got more serious about acting. We had school plays every semester, and I joined a group in the evenings too. It was so much fun, helped build my confidence and made me feel good.
I miss the acting a lot, don't know why it stopped. Guess it was a mix of things: Getting older, getting other interests, moving to another school and so forth. Several of the people in our group also moved on, so one problem was obviously that there were no groups available in the small village that I grew up in. I learned so much from the acting though. I learned to talk in front of people - I was horrible shy before that. Guess I still am, in some (many) cases, but what acting t
aught me is ways of dealing with it. (And when that doesn't work, I can pretend to ignore it... ;-)) I also learned one very important thing though the more serious acting I was doing for some time. To use my voice. And to use your belly when you talk instead of doing what many women do, talk using a much higher pitch than needed. That is just bad for your voice, and makes it more difficult to be taken seriously. And to lower your voice is good for other things too. Like telling children off... It is much easier to get their attention when lowering the voice and using more base, i.e more belly when talking to them... Well, I have my tricks. ;-)
But it still doesn't take away the fact that I miss acting. And unfortunately it is too late and I am too busy to take it up again. Guess I have to find other ways of expressing myself. But that is another discussion... In the meantime I can enjoy others acting. Someday I hope my German is good enough so that I can go to the theater - the real live thing - here and understand all the aspects...
