I’ve never touched the inside of a car in my life, but I guess that’s one extra challenge to being an actor. I have to pretend I’m someone I’m not all the time. This is just…more of that.
Probably should’ve research the lead role a little more thoroughly. I Can’t Believe It’s Not Margarine is a wonderful musical, though. It’s about a kah-razy parallel universe where everything is the opposite, and of particular note to my character, trains drive on the road instead of cars. My character doesn’t have a clue how to service trains, but when he along with several others volunteers himself for an experimental procedure in which they’re zapped to another dimension, he finds out that in this universe everyone drives cars instead of trains and he’s super good at servicing them.
So that’s his dilemma: stay in this alternate Toorak, car servicing as his chosen profession, or return to his home dimension? My first quibble is that, not being the main role, I feel like my subplot could’ve been given more time. I don’t even get a solo; the best I get is in the big Act I finisher, Losin’ My Dimension, where I have a verse about how easy it is to service cars as opposed to road trains.
And then I, myself, am just not comfortable looking comfortable servicing cars. I know nothing about them, and yet arguable my big scene is set inside the character’s mind as he examines one of these strange road cars and realises that he finds it all very easy to understand. Maybe it’s time for me to go method; you know, actually get inside the mind of a mechanic. I could pick any garage in South Yarra for car services and repairs, take a look at what they do…maybe through binoculars because all the noises make me feel anxious.
Is that a thing you can do? Or is car servicing a trade secret deal, where their ways and methods are jealously guarded?
-Ryley