So I've just learned about this word/concept and it's been making me stagger a bit.
It's Greek in origin, and the Greek word means something like 'having a goal' or 'creating completion'
Aristotle uses it when talking about plants and seeds. It's the essence of what's in a seed that makes it grow into the right kind of plant - the essential thing that makes a tomato seed grow a tomato plant or a pumpkin seed a pumpkin vine. In other words, the entelechy of the acorn is an oak tree, the entelechy of a caterpillar is a butterfly and so on.
It's a fantastic word that holds in it the concepts of soul, potential, growth, transformation, self-actualization, possibility. It's a way to name one's purpose and reason for being.
What kind of oak tree is already there, waiting for me to manifest it?
I love this HowlRound post not just because it gives me a newer, better piece of vocabulary: open-gender casting - the idea that a character can be played by an actor of either gender as their own gender. An example from my resume: playing Toby Belch as a female character. Another example of this would be a playwright writing characters with the intention that they can be played by either gender.
The other term I've been using as a catch all is cross-gender casting. Moving forward, I'll be using this term to describe scenarios where a character is played by an actor of the opposite gender as the gender of the character. An example from my resume: playing MacBeth as written, as a male character.
The post over at HowlRound by Susan Stroupe is intended as a conversation starter on this issue. So head on over, and make some comments!
Man! I was at an industrial audition this week with some needy actors! Do you know what I mean? Apologetic body language during slate and profiles. Afraid to point out that there was actually one more character in the side than actors in the room so the assistant would need to read in. Needing the job so much that they hadn't prepped the sides well enough to get off the page and deliver lines to camera, and therefore weren't able to pick up the pace when given the direction to do so.
One of the things that makes auditions so terrifying/excruciating/difficult is the power dynamic. The people on the other side of the desk or camera are the ones making the decision on who gets the gig and who doesn't. And when we NEED those people to choose us, the energy in the room gets really hard to deal with, not only for the other actors in the room, but for the decision makers too.
How does one get past the neediness? Observe an audition from the other side - be a PA or a reader or find some other way into the room and you'll see how many factors go into casting that you never considered.
More importantly, cultivate an audition attitude. Lighten up and don't take it so seriously. Get to a place where you can take approval seeking out of the equation. Know yourself. Do your homework, take classes, get comfortable with the process of auditioning.
And flip it - the people on the other side of the table need you! If you come in and blow the house down, they can relax - you made their script sound good, their concept works, their story makes sense - because of you and your skill and talent.
And you might just want to listen to the song I've got below. I often make sure that the last thing I do before I leave the house is kick off the audition shoes and dance and sing along w/Jill Scott. And I take the amazing ladies of The A Group to the audition with me in my mind, to back me up with moves and harmony and all their red sequined awesomeness.
So I've just learned about this word/concept and it's been making me stagger a bit.
