One of the hardest things about directing is just to be patient and remind yourself that you've been in Week 1 of a rehearsal process yourself, and you know what it feels like.
I had accidentally gotten a laugh on a line in a play I was in during high school. I got hooked, but I had no idea I would ever be able to support myself by acting. I knew no one in the business. I was from the Midwest. No one within a radius of a thousand miles was doing anything like that.
I was horribly shy all through grade school and high school. But somehow I got up the nerve to audition for one play in high school - 'Auntie Mame.' I got a small part as the fiancee who comes on in the end. I got laughs. I wasn't shy at all doing the part. I can do anything on stage and write it off as a character.
I'm not trying to blow out a camera lens or make the audience's hair go straight back from my sheer volume, sheer energy level.
