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Fadzayi Maposah, Correspondent
Acting is hard. One has to audition for a part and impress the production team.
Auditioning for a part means that you are up against some competitors who also want the role so one has to brace themselves for an impression that lasts.
One has to go out to impress and this may mean going not just an extra mile but climbing mountains.
Then after getting the part, there are lines to memorise. Depending on the part, the lines can be few or constitute a book or even books.
Besides the lines, there are tones that one has to remember. The way a word is spoken conveys a different meaning.
There are words that need to be harsh while others should send gentleness.
Aww acting is not easy. What about the gestures and the mannerisms that may come with a part?
Some of these gestures and mannerisms have to appear inborn yet one has had to act the part. One has to learn to walk and live the act.
Then there are the rehearsals. No matter how gifted one is there are days when one may not have the energy to actually go through the performance but it has to be done.
One too has to create bonds with the other cast members who may not have been the ones you expected to act alongside but who the production team considered to be the best for the part.
Then there is the production team itself. On most days they seem like they have just landed from hell and have no immediate return mission!
On some days they can be the most awesome team that one wonders if they look like the awful ones that have been there. If asked why they do that, they will say they want to have the best production ever.
I have acted in some plays. Let me add some flesh to that.
I have acted in some plays, the last time being in Mhondoro when I was in journalism school as part of our community interaction which involved using various media platforms to reach out to the community.
We had radio shows, a television show, and produced a newspaper where the community could see themselves and their stories in print.
It was interactive and on the very last day we acted out our experiences and lessons learnt.
Then I was a bit older and since we knew that each one of us would have something to do, we did not exactly have auditions, we simply agreed on the roles and once there were volunteers for any part, we considered that it was taken. There were no high pressure auditions.
Once in primary school, I acted as the stepmother in Hansel and Gretel.
I did my best to be the bad step mother and on the first performance night, I did a lot of shouting and ranting and must have done some damage to my voice box.
The performance ran over three nights and by the last night, I was such an evil stepmother that even my voice was a little croaky!
Bear in mind that back then there were no microphones when we acted in primary school.
Some people are so good at acting that the audience fails to separate the acting from the real life experience.
There have been some incidents where actresses or actors have been attacked for the “bad roles” that they had and people thought that is who they actually are.
One will have acted so well that they actually become the character.
When we look at the storylines that as women, we watch and devote our time to, it seems we think we too are acting being women.
Life is no rehearsal, everything is lived in real time. We need to be in production teams and have real women sides of the story told in episodes that attract large numbers in terms of audience so we all read from the same page.
Let us be honest, how feminine are the women in the movies we watch?
To what extent do the actresses truly reflect the challenges that women encounter in their daily lives?
How many of you have watched a film that addressed menstrual health issues?
Have you seen any films recently — or even in the past—where female characters, perhaps during a casual coffee moment (as is often depicted in movies), suddenly discuss how they struggled to get a good night’s sleep due to severe period pain or that they were behind time because they had to attend to a period mishap that happened as they slept?
Have you see in any movie someone going through their bedroom chest of drawers only to realise that they had forgotten to restock on their sanitary ware or a discussion with a daughter in the kitchen as groceries were being unpacked that a mother /aunt or grandmother passed on a packet of sanitary ware that they had bought for them.
No women in movies do not have such real lives.
Instead, we have storylines that depict them as being out to impress men, and in some cases two women are pitched against one another fighting for a man.
I believe that can re-do these story lines and add our voices and issues even in those movies that have diverse audiences. We can set the agenda for our issues to be discussed.
As what happened to me as the step mother in that play back in primary school, we do not have to lose our voices as our issues are brought up.
Storylines should be influenced to highlight that there are issues uniting women rather than dividing them.
Having lived the experiences should make the acting real. #AccelerateAction!
Online Reporter