thespic presence

Becoming an actor is something that one must have wanted when he or she is still a child. When someone asked me, I said I wanted to be a doctor, which is the most common thing to aspire for a kid. Later, I wanted to become a computer engineer but realized that it cannot be reconciled with my dislike for math and the rigid discipline it entailed. During the first year of high school, I realized I could write and sometimes fancied delivering the news, so it was some kind of a toss between journalism, broadcast journ, or the more general mass communications.

It was during the last months of high school that I started to get hooked on the TV show The Practice. It was a courtroom drama that I would kill just to watch. I got hooked with Dylan McDermott’s character and Lara Flynn Boyle. So great was the show’s impact that I wanted to become a lawyer. I actually didn’t think of the social responsibility that lawyers are tend to be attached with but that great feeling of having the entire room listen to you as you deliver your closing statement or debunking the claims of the other party. So intense was that ambition, that although I was already registered with a Mass Com course on the first week of freshmen registration, I came back before classes started to have it changed and got myself re-sectioned with the Political Science and Philosophy majors.

But that flame didn’t last long. I found myself wanting to do Mass Com work. It wasn’t disappointing. After all, I love writing. And our learning was not confined to the four walls. We got an investigative story published about the Davao bombing anniversary and made a documentary about gangsterism in Davao.

It was also during that summer production workshop that I realized I could become another person I didn’t think I was capable of. I acted for a short narrative. I was ‘cast’ by the other group, though I was the director/scriptwriter for our group. And despite the tight schedule of the class, I gave in to the opportunity to see myself on screen. It was really silly watching me, that on the screening I hid at the back. Actually, all of our attempts really seemed silly. After all, we were given by our wonderful teacher a mere one week to complete the job. And it’s an attempt; at least we should be credited with that. Anyway, as I said I looked silly, especially with the part that I cried. It was in the church and my ‘director’ told me that I should be able to convey with emotion in exchange of what should be a dialogue with God. We had no time to rehearse because it was getting late. Even now, I refused to view that again. But I must admit that acting is something new to me and eventually I get to do it in small plays our class produced. It was exciting.

When you’re acting, it feels like you’re in a different world. I can see that is the reason why we get lost when we’re watching good actors and actresses. They are able to transport us into their world. If there would be an entirely bizarre twist in my career path, I’d probably consider acting. But then I would think of all the nasty stuff you go through as a beginner in showbiz and all the pretentiousness that you have to endure, then I know I’d be kidding myself. And then I think of the effect it would have in my psyche having to undergo the rigid auditions in SCQ and Starstruck and being paired with others whose sole ambition in life is to become an artista, and then ending up with something loose in your mental framework because you can’t even construct a sensible sentence. I cringe. Auditions would be terrifying but then an offer is tempting.