I know throughout my acting career I will be faced with many decisions regarding my standards. I am aware of this and have accepted it as part of my job. I do have "a line" that I will not cross but it can only be defined as I proceed with my acting career. As situations in acting class or auditions come up I will have to look the script over, consider the message and decide what I will do. As the years pass my "line" will become more clear.
I am not opposed to swearing in acting. I prefer not to of course, but I also know that no one is perfect. I will have the chance to portray some very real, flawed characters. For this reason I will be very picky when deciding what scenes and plays I will do and what ones I will not do. I am always on the search for clean scenes to use it acting class. While I don't mind swearing some I don't feel it is necessary for me to do while learning the skill of acting. There are so many wonderful plays out there to study. I am convinced that one can learn to be an amazing actor without have to speak like a sailor.
A few weeks ago I attended a workshop with a casting director that works on several TV shows. Each of us received sides(lines to read) to read at the workshop. I thought, "it's a TV show, the sides are five or six lines long, how many swear words can there be?" Well, apparently, there can be quite a few, needless to say I was surprised. I was not going to read my part. After looking over the sides that were given to other actors (which were not filled with swear words) I decided I would ask for different sides. Clearly, if these other actors had sides with no profanity it wouldn't be difficult to provide me with a cleaner set of sides. The woman in charge emailed the casting director who happily provided me with a better option. I was grateful but also kind of nervous, wondering if I had just made some blacklist because I wouldn't do what they asked. But I went and did my lines, the casting director never mentioned it and could've cared less. Phew! I was glad it worked out!
The next day in acting class a guy in my class had a scene but didn't have a partner. I got volunteered which I was grateful for but I didn't have a chance to prescreen it! What was I getting myself into? I quickly tried to scan it to get a sense of the scene, like how inappropriate it was. My teacher told me not to read it. I could just read it cold, she said. Little did she know I was skimming it for swear words! The little I read seemed okay so I went with it. The scene went well. I said the few swear words that were in it. It went well. It was not nearly as bad as it could have been.
Acting is going well. I love my class. The teacher is great and I am learning a lot. I am finding plenty of good, clean scenes to work on. I am currently working on a scene from Doubt. I am very comfortable being a nun; it comes quiet natural to me. And there will be no profanity! Win, win!
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