I'm Glad My Mom Died(12)

“What?” I ask.

“Barbara Cameron accepted you. She wants you to take a weekly acting class to get more comfortable with yourself, something like that, but she accepted you.”

Mom shakes her head in awe and pride. She breathes a sigh of relief, then pulls me into a hug.

“You’re a principal actor now, sweetheart. No more background for my baby.”





9.


I HATE ACTING CLASS. I’M two months into the one Barbara Cameron insisted I sign up for if I were to be represented by her. I go every Saturday from eleven a.m. to two thirty p.m. Even though it’s a chunk of time away from home, I don’t look forward to this class the same way I look forward to church because I find acting even more uncomfortable than being stuck at home.

Each class starts out with a bit of “loosening up.” The dozen of us walk around mimicking Miss Lasky. That’s Laura’s last name. Not only is she Barbara’s second-in-command, she’s also our acting teacher. She stretches her face out in weird contortions, opening her mouth freakishly wide or bulging her eyes out. I have no idea how this helps us act better, but I know better than to be an annoying kid who asks questions.

“You have to always be ‘on’ in class,” Mom reminds me on every one of our drives home. “Miss Lasky’s watching. And the kids who are annoying, don’t take direction, ask questions—those are the kids who won’t get sent out on auditions. The kids who will get auditions are the ones who shut up and do as they’re told.”

After the face gymnastics, we pretend to be various animals. Some of the other kids seem to have fun with it, but it makes me feel like an idiot. I don’t know how to trumpet like an elephant, purr like a kitten, or grunt like a monkey and frankly, I don’t want to. Let’s leave the animal sounds to the animals.

Sometimes Miss Lasky has everyone freeze, and then she points to one kid to do the animal sound solo. It’s supposed to help with getting over our inhibitions or something.

“Trumpet, Jennette! Trumpet like you mean it!”

I don’t mean it, but I try my best. I’m humiliated.

After the dreaded animal sounds, we move on to memorization technique. We’re given a scene and we have thirty minutes to memorize our character’s lines, then we go one-by-one spewing our lines “cold,” the showbiz term for “rapid and without emotion.” We’re told this technique is important, especially for kids, so that we don’t overwork the material and sound too rehearsed in auditions. Apparently, memorizing a thing “cold” so we have it down pat, and then adding in the emotions later is the best way to keep the scene fresh.

Memorizing is the part of class that I dislike the least, maybe because I’m best at it. I usually memorize my lines within fifteen minutes and then just spend the next fifteen going over them to solidify them. I also don’t mind saying words without emotions. The emotions are the problem, the words aren’t. Forcing emotions into a thing is uncomfortable in the first place, but then putting on those emotions for other people to see feels gross to me. It feels weak and vulnerable and naked. I don’t want people to see me like that.

After memorization comes scene work, my least favorite part of the class because it’s the part where I have to perform. Each week, in preparation for scene work, we’re assigned a scene that we have to memorize and break down. Breaking a scene down is a process where we ask questions about our character and the scene and what’s really being said underneath the words on the page. What does my character actually want? What does the character I’m interacting with actually want? How are these things at odds? How does my character feel about the character I’m interacting with? After breaking the scene down, we have to rehearse it enough that it’s ready to perform in front of the rest of the class come Saturday.

Each of us gets up one at a time, performs our scene, then goes through our breakdown with Miss Lasky. I wish so much that I didn’t have to do this part. I don’t like sitting up on the little studio stage, acting out a scene in front of everyone. I don’t like to be observed. I like to do the observing.

Miss Lasky said in our first class that no parents were allowed for the scene work portion, but Mom insisted.

“I had stage four metastatic ductal carcinoma—breast cancer—and my bones are weak from the chemo. Sitting in the car for too long pains me, and I’m not supposed to walk around in the hot sun.”

“Well, there’s a coffee shop right up the street,” Miss Lasky said with a tense smile.

“I don’t believe in spending two fifty on a cup of joe,” Mom said with a tenser one.

And that was that. Mom’s been the only parent sitting in on the scene breakdown portion since the beginning of class. I’m glad Mom gets what she wants, to watch me act. But it does add stress to me. I can feel her judgments and see her reactions out of the side of my eye. She mouths my lines as I say them and overanimates her facial expression when she wants me to mimic it. It’s difficult to perform while navigating Mom’s sideline coaching at the same time.

When class is over, I feel a huge wave of relief wash over me because Mom gives me the rest of the day off. I don’t have to look at my scene for next week until tomorrow. For tonight, I’m free.





10.


“I DON’T WANNA SAY THAT word,” I tell Mom as we look over my lines for an upcoming audition for Mad TV. The sketch is a parody on Kathie Lee Gifford and her two children—I’m trying out to be the parody version of Kathie’s daughter.