Please do not feed the actors.

To me, not just as an actor, but an all-around theatre person, the most important thing to do while on stage is tell a good story. All other aspects of theatre are still important, but if the story is missing or flawed, those aspects are irrelevant. For example, you can have a wonderful set design or cutting-edge lighting and sound, but without a story to support, you might as well be in a museum. You can have amazing choreography or someone with an exceptional singing voice, but without a story to tell via the dance moves or through the lyrics, all you have is someone showing off their craft. You can have outstanding actors with the ability to evoke any emotion on demand, but without a story to tell, well, they’re just being pretentious. (There’s actually a word for that kind of theatre, but it’s a bit rude so ask me later and I’ll tell you.) The same applies to other works of art as well, film and TV particularly. If you’re not telling me a good story, I’m changing the channel ...

Well here we are. My blog, welcome back. Can I just say right now that 2011 pretty much sucked thank you very much. Last year, all in all, more shit things happened than good. I’d really like to avoid any clichés about how the New Year is good for starting new things and resetting yourself and blah blah blah. But they’re all true. So that’s how I’m viewing the beginning of this year. Never mind that it’s already February; I feel exceptionally ready to take control of my future, many thanks to the three weeks over Christmas I spent in America with friends and family. Man I needed that. Actors will agree with me that it’s terribly common to hold a day job while building up acting experience and waiting for an acting career to take off. Well I’m so sick of waiting around for my career to take off that I’ve realised how vital it is that I go for it on my own terms. I need to stop waiting . I currently have a stable but temporary day job and I’ve been telling myself I’d be able save up s...

I’m pretty sure I’ve said this before, but even if I haven’t, I most definitely will be saying it many times in the future. This is the frustrating fact that everything in life happens at the same time. Hey Life, I have an idea. Instead of handing me twenty things to do at once, why not spread it out a little bit? Give me a few, important, manageable tasks and opportunities now, and then a few more later. You could have given me some back in January when I was pulling my hair out because nothing was happening and I felt like I was going nowhere. What’s that, you say? It’s not how you work? Fine then, I shall be tearing my hair out for different reasons. I shake my fist at you, Life.   Let me attempt to summarise my last two months, not in chronological order but in ... Jonological order, I suppose. Firstly, I enjoy my current day job as a bartender. I work in an excellent atmosphere, and it’s nice to have a permanent full-time job and be slowly climbing out of debt. I’ve had to l...

It always seems that my busy-ness comes in waves. I can have nothing on my plate for weeks at a time when all I do is worry about how I'm going to afford to pay my bills next month, and then suddenly have five things going on at once, and feel stressed about pulling myself in many directions simultaneously. This would be normal for most people, but, with my inability to properly manage my time, I instead go through phases of freak out: when I'm stuck at home, I panic because I'm not working, and when I'm so busy working I panic because I feel I'm not getting enough stuff done at home. ("Work" here applies to both acting jobs and the day job.) Currently I am very busy. I don't usually undertake student films anymore, but I agreed to one recently because it's only one day of filming, and it sounds like it would look good on a showreel. Some actors forget that when you do a student film, it is being produced by students, and I completely understand ...

It's 5am here now, and I can't manage to fall back asleep and I don't know why. What to do, what to do? I know, I'll post something in my new blog. That's logical, right? The past couple of days I've actually gotten quite a few random sparks of ingenuity (rare I know) and inspiration concerning interesting things to write about. I've forgotten them all now. Sorry. I'll try to be more focused in the future (though to be honest I wouldn't suggest placing your bets - focus is not one of my strong suits). (Side note: I've written this in bed and on my iPhone, and I have a love/hate relationship with Apple's predictive text software, and upon proofreading this blog I found the previous sentence had said, "focus is not one of my string suits." I wish I had a string suit.) So, I'm still a novice at this blogging thing, so bear with me, but I think I'll just say what's on my mind. Welcome to the twisted world of Jon Marx...

I don’t typically make New Year’s resolutions. I kind of hate them. I could go on for paragraph after paragraph about how they only set people up for failure, and how a calendar is merely a human construct, but instead I have to stop pretending that I’m not making a New Year’s resolution and admit that I have. (Also, I don’t want to start this blog by being overly negative and turn away potential readers.) Although I wouldn’t like to admit it, I’ve made a New Year’s resolution. I’m going to start a blog and commit to it at least twice a week. I have a number of goals with it: I will document my efforts at establishing my career as a professional actor in London . I will use it to organise my thoughts in a coherent manner, and hopefully I won’t be so scatterbrained. I also want to get back into writing, since I like doing it, and seem to find too many excuses or distractions and avoid it. I think if I start a blog then at least I’m writing something and will eventually form a daily ha...