NDA
So in an ideal world, this blog would tell you everything that I’m up to. Except that in a professional sense, I can’t tell you anything about what I’m doing, as I’m bound by the terms of an NDA. For the uninitiated, that’s an acronym for non disclosure agreement, an increasingly popular device that actors have to sign in the world of self taping so that nobody knows what they’re doing, sometimes not even the actors themselves. I can throw all the preparations given at drama school about having to read the whole play in order to get a grip on character out of the window as they send us 6 to 8 pages to turn into a rounded performance. We have to make our decisions on the character and on portrayal from the information available to us, which can be sparse in the extreme. If it’s a self tape for a decent part with a couple of scenes, then it’s quite possible to build up a head of steam and characterisation. It can be more difficult when it’s two lines as “Drunken Lawyer”. That means th