Sweet Relief

All this week, I've been working on memorizing nine and a half pages of nearly uninterrupted dialoge for a web series I was set to act in. As if that wasn't enough, I had to deliver these lines in a German accent, which I had never really attempted seriously. I found at an early stage that my efforts to approximate Siegfried from "Get Smart" was not adequate, and I was directed to learn a grounded, realistic accent. Thus was incited a long process of working and waiting.

A good amount of the months which transpired before the big shoot day was not spent actually working on either the lines or the accent. I've had plenty on my plate, and so it often seemed like something that could wait. Every now and then I'd spend a little time on it, but not so much that I could really gain momentum. The anxiety of knowing that I was running out of time to properly prepare for the inevitable mounted.

The finalized script came with around three weeks to go, and so the learning of the accent was finally joined by the learning of the lines. At a reading, I got a little of the way on the accent, but waited until there were about four or five days to go before getting serious. I then got very serious, spending hours each day laboriously learning my lines and attempting to get the accent in the absence of trained assistance.

That came on the big day, and I was pleasantly surprised by how few takes I blew by blanking on lines or even by failing on the accent. To be sure, there were some of those, to the extent that a line was changed because I could not get a word no matter how many times we worked at it, but mainly it went well. Nothing was quite as challenging as running, I found. After just a bit of that and the delivering of all those lines, it was over. Suffice it to say I was quite relieved.