Week 8a- Khalil & Kash

The program art from Thousand Island Playhouse's
production of Salt-Water Moon in 2013.

Note: This will be sitting in drafts for a bit until I'm ready to publish weeks 5, 6, 7 & Motown but I need to write this all now while it's still in my head.

So Khalil and I are doing a scene from Salt-Water Moon by David French, and it is so hard. The dialogue itself isn't all that difficult, we're only doing about seven pages, and it's a lot of banter. It's the words in the words, the emotions, and the deliberation behind every word that's killing me.

Everything I've been in, I've always been more of an extra, or I at least had the freedom to build my character. With Mary, I can't do that. She isn't some character who's only there for a few scenes, or is just there for atmosphere, the whole show is about her and Jacob. She has a plot, a life, a personality all established.

The fact is, I'm not Mary, and I'm nothing like her. French describes her as "...seventeen, a slender, fine-boned, lovely girl with short black hair." She's young, smart and witty, with a sense of humour that's sharp. She's strong and independent, the kind of woman who fights for everything good, like her sister, like her freedom. She's competent, confident and a fighter. She's everything I wish I could be and never managed to be.

I'm really struggling to play her so much right now, and I'm so jealous of how easily Khalil's been playing Jacob. It's like he blinks, and suddenly he's a 17-year-old Newfie who's worked as a fisherman and a mason. Not only that, but it pisses me off how jealous I am at Khalil's talent. I feel like a bloody 4 year old and it drives me mad.