Phil Gyford

Last year I began taking a few acting classes, and I’ve been meaning to write about the experience since. Thinking about a subject for too long makes the potential writing grow over-long and over-stale; there’s a lot to be said for writing something short and quick, particularly for those unfortunate enough to be faced with reading it.

First things first: why am I doing acting classes? A few reasons, in vague order of importance…

1. I work at home and felt the need to do something that involved moving more than my typing fingers (other than staring into space at the gym).
2. Because I don’t get out much I desperately felt the need to do something that involved interacting with real people before I became utterly incapable of empathy with real live humans.
3. I enjoyed the small amount of acting I did at school and university and it’s always been at the back of my mind as something to try again.
4. I usually fill my life with things I feel I should do, and I thought acting might, unusually, be something fun to do.
5. It was unlikely, but if this lark ended up as a way to earn some, any, money by doing something other than staring at lines of code, that would be a bonus.
6. Like every other film-obsessed geek I have dreams of directing something someday. Again, unlikely, but a first step would be to gain some clue about how acting works.

The first class was fantastic and, despite some dull points, eight months later I’m still loving it. I’ve even had the “Christ, I really don’t want to be doing anything else with my life other than this,” revelatory moment, which at the back of my mind I was hoping for but seemed unlikely given how rarely I’m enthusiastic about anything.

I’ll write more about the classes soon.