A Really Short Skirt

My acting teacher, Mark Lewis, is always saying that we need to learn how to advocate for our characters. He told a story once about how his mentor left an acting classroom in tears because the actor who was performing a part was not putting his heart into it. "That character is trapped on the page," he said to the student, "you are the only chance he has to be heard."

There are so many things about acting, and my acting classes, that I want to understand but don't. And the idea of advocating for the characters--not just faking their emotions--was so hard for me to grasp. So when I was assigned the part of Georgie in "Spike Heels" by Theresa Rebeck, I had no idea that I was about to get the chance to see just what Mark was talking about.

The first thing I noticed about the part was that Georgie liked to use the f-word. Her final speech of the scene was just littered with it, and I had mixed feelings. While I'm not opposed to swearing on occasion, I don't want to be flippant about it. I do hold a distinction between a character and myself, so I didn't automatically rule it out. At a small Christian college, Mark would never assign a part like that without first knowing the actor. But in Acting II, he leaves it up to the student to make her own decisions about what she will do with the text.

I read the play before starting rehearsals, and I finished it in tears. It was unlike most of the plays I'd read, and it was absolutely not the best. But something in Georgie's character struck a chord in me, and I felt the first tug of wanting--really wanting--to do her justice. To advocate for her. She was a girl who used her sexuality brazenly to get what she wanted or needed, because that's how the world she knew worked. The scattered f-words in my scene were nothing to most of her lines in the play. My heart broke when I read her words about how she made a big fuss and yelled, but in the end she always did what those more powerful than her--in this case the men taking advantage of her at work--wanted.

Rehearsals began and the work was much more intense than anything I'd done before. I was out on a limb with Georgie, and I knew it. I felt like I had nothing in common with her, nothing I could relate to except that I wanted to do her justice. I chose to swear because I cared about her--if I hadn't cared I wouldn't have left the f-words in. But I felt that I had to play her as she would be seen. But over and over, when we did the scene, I felt like an impostor. What did I really know about her life, and how could I possibly play her?



The day we did the scene in class, I changed into a really short skirt. Like, really, really short. If I bent over you would have seen my panties, and I wore spike heels and a tank-top. I felt incredibly self-conscious. When Mark asked me how I was doing, before the scene began, I said, "I'm wearing a really short skirt." He asked me to come out from behind the couch I was unconsciously hiding behind, and I stepped out to stand in front of my classmates and accept their gaze. It was terrifying. When the scene was over, I told Mark that I didn't feel like I could play Georgie. I just didn't have the experience. But he shook his head and said, "You've stood in line at the supermarket and seen the magazines. You know what it's like to be a woman in this culture."

We continued rehearsing, and I began to feel more comfortable in the scene, if not with Georgie. And then I decided to do a monologue from a different part of the play in class. I chose one of Georgie's rants at Andrew, the man who has taken her under his wing and is, somewhat unintentionally, also taking advantage of her. That day I was so nervous I was shaking, but as I did laps around the room, trying to focus on "winning the scene," as Mark would say, I knew it was either go big or go home. I was nothing like Georgie, but I wanted so badly to advocate for her. It was new and terrifying to feel that way.

I've never acted like I did the day I gave that monologue. I think everyone in the room could feel my focus as I stood in my bare feet and my negligee and shouted more profanities at Josh, one of the guys in the class that Mark asked to help me. "Pause after you say the word," Mark said. "You chose to say it, and you need to own up to that." As I stood before Josh--a huge, muscular man--and shouted in his face, I felt for the first time in my life like I was doing this character justice. I was advocating for a character who had no one else to do it. And she was no longer trapped on the page--not for the few minutes each time I strapped on my spike heels.

I don't think that circumstances make bad decisions okay. I think the character was responsible for all of her decisions, and I'm not justifying women like Georgie who choose to live the way she did. But through the experience, I gained a little bit of understanding, and a little bit of respect. And I loved her. More than anything, I just loved her. She needed to turn her life around, and the way the play ended, that wasn't gonna happen. But what enabled me to play her was that love, and that deep desire to make her voice heard.

The effects of Georgie were farther reaching than just my realizations. On the last day of class several people spoke about my short skirt, and the way they judged me as soon as I stepped into the room. Just like people would judge Georgie--and perhaps rightly so. But I hope that if the class got anything, they would understand her need to be heard. And I hope the next time they see a woman like Georgie, they won't condemn her without loving her.

~Ruthie