Reinvention of an Idea...Myself.

It's so interesting watch the creation of "type" in this business.  In terms of casting, my casting has been a bit skewed from my type due to my abilities as a Staged Combatant.  I find myself getting cast a lot as a bruiser, because I can also choreograph the fight.  Through those casting, my resume has pushed me in one direction that my acting style doesn't generally match, and what has been so interesting in the last year, has been to find the happy medium.  As I've readapted my "type" I've found myself saying goodbye to things that I have been holding on to.  For one, I less and less find myself being considered for the younger roles (Damn that Irish receding hairline) unless it's a charactery role, such as The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and speaking of charactery...I find myself being considered in a charactery way.  Between my work on How I Learned to Drive and many callbacks for The 39 Steps, I have found myself working to explore this side of my type but be careful not to eliminate the solid foundation that Ithaca has given me.  

Then the honest questions begin.  Do I like the type that I'm being made out to be, and if not, how can I change it?  What do I need to do to be the person that I want people to see me as.  Is there a way?  It's hard to know, but it is something fun to explore.  Rather than explore type in reverse, I'm finding myself being pulled towards a type that I don't always love, and am really enjoying exploring aspects of myself that I don't like, and could change to be more who I want to be.  What I've found is as I become comfortable with these new adaptations of my traits, is that people have started to see me in new types?  I've begun to morph between character types and my auditions, callbacks, and castings have been truer to me, and more honest towards what I would like to be seen as.  

I'm not a person who believes too much in type.  However directors know what they want, and so there will be predetermined "types" for every show that actors go into.  What I've loved exploring, is how my type, and my actual personality slide together to  to create the kind of person that I truly would like to be seen as.

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