Moral Quandary

Last night, I was offered a part--and it was a good part too, emotional, juicy, and Shakespearean. The theatre company was in a bind, and so they said "Hey! You've come highly recommended! Memorize this part and don't suck by Sunday!"

As a New York actor, I have a knee-jerk response to "You're wonderful! I want to hire you, darling!" It involves oral gratification. HOWEVER: the putative play would have run over the time when I was supposed to tape the wedding of a sister of the best friend of my fiance. A committment that I asked The Boy to fulfill, as a favor, because we're getting married next year and the last wedding that I saw was as a half-blind 14-year old.

I want to say that I remembered all of my committments and didn't promise two things at once. That, of course, did not happen. So I stayed up until two, sitting in the tub, trying to stuff "If the king is dead, what would betide of me?" into my head, while attempting to ignore the cloud of doom that emanates from The Boy when he gets pissed off.

It took my father, The Boy, and several other dog-owners to make me realize that the knee-jerk reaction was a good way to fail at several things--the part (because who memorizes Shakespeare in five days?), the committment, and in some part, my relationship. Because that's how actors torpedo relationships--they let their schedules dictate their lives, and forget that there's anybody else who has a say.