Dawn Glover is an aspiring actress living in Los Angeles, California. Here she tells us what its like…
I’m writing this from the studio apartment that I share with my French roommate whom I found on Craigslist. My MacBook (purchased with the Student loan money that my future grandchildren might have to finish paying off) is sitting on a kitchen table that was pulled off the sidewalk, and in a couple of hours I will board the train to get to work because I sold my car to pay my first month’s rent in La. The biggest paycheck my acting has earned me in the state of California is $200.00 bucks, and a casting agent recently asked me to “suck it in” even though at 5’7 I weigh under 120lbs. I am “living the dream.”
You see, I can’t afford health insurance, but a month and a half ago I was sitting on top of a black piano as a spotlight slowly came up on me and to a room of over a hundred people I was Roxie Hart. The tension that I felt just before the light hit me, and then the giving in to the moment, to the song, to the character; experiencing the transformation from playing Roxie Hart to becoming her is the most delicious thing that I know. Living for two hours as this myopic, sexual, saucy, ravenous, broken, murderous woman; a woman who I, Dawn, could only identify with pieces of but by the end of that journey could truly understand. I could understand why she would shoot Fred Casely, and treat Amos so heartlessly. Maybe that sounds scary, that I could understand a murderer and without judgment appreciate her point of view, but that’s the very reason that I do this acting thing. I was the “why” child. I’ve always needed to understand everything to the fullest in order to be happy, and especially people. I want to know why they do what they do, why they tick like they tick, and for me being an actor is this beautiful way to explore those things. I believe with all my heart that if everyone spent a day “walking in the shoes” of their enemy there would be no war, or murder, or hate. I believe this because I believe that where there is deep and true understanding only respect can live. For Roxie Hart performing was about the applause, the mock approval that filled the void in her for a few moments at a time (and I must say that she taught me how to enjoy a curtain call). For me “living the dream,” is my journey to creatively getting to know the characters, and the humanity that fills my world.